How to make Definition of Ready an Definition of Done mandatory field in the user story.

Hey, adding one thing for anyone landing here now, because the accepted answer and Sergey's follow-up are really answering two different questions.

Making the fields required does exactly what Alexey described, but required in Jira means not empty. Someone can put a full stop in a DoR field and Jira is satisfied. It never checks whether the criteria in there were actually met, which is Sergey's point and it's the part that catches teams out.

If you want the criteria themselves enforced, the native route is a workflow validator on the transition rather than a required field on the create screen. Two limits worth knowing before you plan around it. Validators only exist in company-managed projects, team-managed has no conditions or validators at all. And a plain validator checks that a field has a value, not that five separate DoD criteria are each satisfied, which is why people end up scripting it or reaching for a checklist.

Full disclosure, I work on Definition of Done and Ready for Jira at ChefStackz. It keeps DoR and DoD as checklists on the issue and blocks the transition until the mandatory items are ticked, so it covers the enforcement step rather than the not-empty one: https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/2984911119/definition-of-done-ready-for-jira

Whichever way you go, the thing that makes a DoR actually stick is keeping it short. A ten item Definition of Ready gets rubber-stamped in refinement, a three item one gets read.

Alex

Hi, yes — you can make a custom field mandatory via Field Configuration.

The main catch is that “mandatory” only means “not empty”. Jira will accept any value, even if the actual DoR/DoD criteria are not really met.

If you want Jira to evaluate readiness properly, there are usually two options:

1. Use workflow validators with ScriptRunner / Power Scripts. This works, but requires admin scripting and becomes hard to maintain when criteria change.
2. Use a DoR/DoD app that checks Jira fields automatically. Like a "ReDo app". It shows a 0–100% readiness score, checks criteria like description, AC, estimate, assignee, epic link, etc., and lets you configure rules per project.

In my experience, checkbox-based DoR/DoD tends to drift after a few sprints. Objective auto-checks are much more reliable.

Every User Story that starts and progress through different phases will come to completion where we would want to have a Definition of Done to be checked for each user story.

1. Create a Custom Field having CheckBoxes for each Definition of Done.

2. Set the values for DOD and configure the field as Mandaory

3. Once the DOD field is created we need to associate it with the Custom Screen.

4. Create a Custom Screen and add the custom field DOD to the screen

5. Now Edit the work flow associated with the project where we want DOD to be configured, 

6.In the Transition of Testing to Done ; You can add/call the custom screen.

7. Publish the workflow and Check if there are any unmapped fields on the board ; If required do map the Un Mapped status fields.

Verification :

1. Progress a work item / User story from Dev  -> Testing and Further to Done

2. Popup screen should populate for DOD 

3. Select the check boxes for all the DOD values and Mark as DONE.