What is three-state readiness?

Three-state vs two-state readiness

A two-state field is either filled or empty, and an empty one means two different things: nobody looked, or somebody looked and found nothing. A checklist tick has the same problem from the other side — it records that a step was performed, not what it found. Both formats make the best news on a plan and its biggest gap look identical.

The third state separates them. "Assessed, nothing found" is a claim someone makes, about a specific dimension, at a specific time — and because it can be made honestly, nobody needs to invent a risk or a dependency to prove they did the looking.

Applying it to a plan

Take the dimensions a commitment depends on — dependencies, decisions, capacity and risks — and give each one of the three states. A worked example: dependencies are assessed with items (an API change is needed from another team, not yet agreed); decisions are assessed and nothing was found; risks are not assessed. The read is immediate and specific: this plan is not ready, and the reason is that nobody has looked at risks yet — not a vague sense that the plan "feels thin".

A workable rule follows from it: before a normal commitment, no dimension may still be "not assessed". "Assessed, nothing found" passes, because it is an answer. Items pass too, provided they have been dealt with — a dependency agreed, a decision taken, a risk accepted by someone named.

Common mistakes

Treating "nothing found" as a weaker answer than a list, which quietly restores the pressure to pad. Letting it become the default click, so it stops meaning anything — it should be a claim someone would defend. And never revisiting it: a "nothing found" recorded during shaping is weeks old by the time of commitment, and the commitment is the moment it needs to still be true.

Related terms

• Time-boxed discovery

  A time-boxed discovery is a deliberate learning step taken instead of a decision: a goal, optionally the questions to answer, a time-box, and a target date on which it must conclude with recorded findings and an explicit decision.

• RAID log

  A RAID log is a register of the four places delivery surprises come from — risks, assumptions, issues and dependencies — kept so each has demonstrably been looked at, not merely listed.

• RACI matrix

  A RACI matrix is a grid of tasks or decisions against people or roles, marking for each who is Responsible for doing the work, who is Accountable for the result, who must be Consulted before it happens, and who is Informed afterwards.