Glossary
What is a readiness bar?
The set of things a demand must have before it may be promised: the problem stated apart from the solution, an intended outcome, a named owner, a capacity figure from the delivering team, the dependencies, and the open questions written down.
The bar's power is its position — before the commitment, not after — and its honesty valve: it can be crossed early, but only with a recorded exception naming what is missing and who accepts the risk. A bar that cannot be crossed gets routed around; one that can be crossed silently is decoration.
Readiness bar vs approval gate
An approval gate is permission: a person or a board says yes, and the work proceeds. What it checks depends on who is in the room that day, and the record it leaves is usually a name and a date. A readiness bar is evidence: a fixed list anyone can check, applied the same way to every demand, whose answers stay attached to the work after the meeting ends.
The two can coexist — someone still has to say yes — but the bar changes what the yes is based on. A gate without a bar approves the presentation; a gate with a bar approves the demand.
Setting the bar at the right height
Too high and it gets routed around: people commit in a meeting and enter the work afterwards, so the bar measures a process most commitments never went through. Too low and it is decoration. The six items — problem, outcome, owner, a capacity figure from the delivering team, dependencies and open questions — are the floor for work that is large enough to be expensive when wrong. Small, contained work can reasonably clear a lighter bar, such as an owner, an expected outcome and a target, as long as choosing the lighter path is itself a recorded decision.
Calibrate it with outcomes, not opinions. At quarter end, compare commitments that cleared the bar with those that crossed it by exception. If the ready ones miss just as often, the bar is checking the wrong things.
Common mistakes
Adding an item after every miss until nobody can clear the bar honestly. Allowing it to be crossed silently, which makes it decoration. And checking presence rather than content: an owner field containing a team name, or a capacity field containing the requester's guess, is filled in but not ready.
Related terms
- Commitment exception — A recorded justification required to commit to work that is not yet decision-ready, naming why it is early, what is still unknown, who accepts the risk, and what condition would change the decision.
- Delivery governance — The practice of deciding what to commit to — establishing value, ownership, capacity, dependencies and open questions before people, budget or a date are promised.
- Decision-ready demand — A demand that can responsibly be committed to: the problem stated apart from the proposed solution, an intended outcome, a named owner, a first capacity figure, the dependencies, and the open questions written down as unknowns.
This definition comes from building DeliverySheet — it takes a vague work request to a clear delivery decision, so the shape, owner, capacity, dependencies and open questions are on the table before anyone commits people or a date.
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