Ready or Not: check what is ready to estimate
Scan a Laya board or a Jira project before a session: an AI clarity grade and your Definition of Ready for every issue, and help to fix the gaps.
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Ready or Not checks your backlog before an estimation session, so the session spends its time on issues that are clear enough to estimate. Open it with the Ready or Not button at the top of SprintPoker. It is for members of the workspace.
Two signals for every issue
| Signal | What it tells you | Values |
|---|---|---|
| AI clarity grade | Whether the summary and description say what needs doing and roughly how big it is, with a one-sentence reason | Estimate-ready, Needs more detail or Too vague to estimate |
| Definition of Ready | Whether the fields your team requires are filled in, checked field by field without AI | The number of criteria met, such as Sprint 3/4 |
The two signals are never combined: an issue can be clear and still miss a required field, or the other way round.
Run a scan
- Pick the boardUnder Board, choose one of your Laya boards or a connected Jira project.
- Choose what to scanSprint (an active or upcoming sprint), Backlog (the most recent issues that aren’t in a sprint and aren’t done) or, for a Jira project, Advanced Search with your own JQL.
- Check the Definition of ReadyThe chip names the fields your Definition of Ready requires; Edit opens it.
- Press Run readiness scanResults appear as they land, least ready first, as a List or as Cards.
Anyone in the workspace who can read the board’s issues can run a scan, and Recent scans lists everyone’s scans of that board. Sub-tasks, epics and Done items are left out.
Your Definition of Ready
There is one Definition of Ready per Laya board and one per Jira project; a Jira project’s is shared with SprintPoker for Jira. Each criterion is a field that must not be empty. A Laya board can require Description, Estimate, Acceptance criteria, Assignee, Labels, Priority, Due date, Start date, Sprint, Work type and Parent. Its bands set how many criteria an issue must meet to count as ready (Ready ≥) or amber (Amber ≥).
Edit it from the chip on the Ready or Not page, or in SprintPoker settings on the Workspace tab, under Definition of Ready. Changing the Definition of Ready of a Laya board needs permission to edit that board’s issues.
Fix the gaps
Each result offers AI help. These actions use AI, and nothing changes in your board or project until you choose to post or create something:
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
| Questions to clarify | Lists the questions the issue leaves open. Writes nothing. |
| Draft acceptance criteria | Drafts criteria for you to review. Accept & comment posts them on the issue as one comment, as you. |
| Dependency risks | Points out dependencies and blockers. Writes nothing. |
| Similar past issues | Finds completed, estimated issues from the same board or project that look alike. Writes nothing. |
| Split into smaller issues | Suggests smaller pieces you can edit, then creates them as linked stories, sub-tasks or standalone issues, as you. |
| AI Ready-Up | Fills in what vague issues are missing, as you: it adds to the description without removing anything, can add an ai-made-ready label, and scans those issues again. It never makes up story points or an assignee. |
Each action needs the matching permission: to post a comment, to create issues or to edit them.
Start a session from the results
Start estimation session opens Create Session with the scanned issues already picked. With Only estimate-ready issues on, which is the default, only the issues graded Estimate-ready are picked. If your role can’t host sessions, the button is switched off and says why: see Who can start a session.
Readiness elsewhere in SprintPoker
- The issue picker shows each issue’s latest grade as a dot, and its Readiness filter narrows the list to the ready ones. It shows grades from earlier scans only, so run a scan first.
- A Laya card’s panel has a Ready or Not section in its SprintPoker group. Check readiness grades that one card.
- The room shows readiness dots on the issues. After the reveal, a High confidence, Medium confidence or Low confidence line combines the issue’s clarity grade with how far apart the votes were.
- All Issues Estimated, which opens for the moderator who saves the last estimate, checks the session’s board and Jira issues against your Definition of Ready: “All 6 issues meet your Definition of Ready”, or “2 of 6 issues are missing a required field” with Review to list what each issue is missing (“Missing Description”). As the window says, it is a “Deterministic check against your Definition of Ready, no AI.”
- The SprintPoker overview shows the latest scan’s summary, or Check readiness before your first scan.
Email support@laya.net and include what you expected, what happened, and a link to the affected board or item so we can help quickly.