An Agile transition starting with user stories, DoD & DoR

Context: Many smaller companies do not have time and effort to change their development processes at a time. In some cases, companies are not aware of the fact that many aspects of agile development are already in place. Objective: For this reason, only introducing a small set of agile practices in our SME-company case, namely User Stories, Definition of Done, and Definition of Ready, was our initial starting point for the evolutionary agile transition. Method: The introduction of these three practices was performed within a case study, assessing the results with qualitative interviews. Results: Our case study reports on the implementation of the selected practices and shows their benefits, highlighting the importance of User Stories as a central agile artefact. Conclusions: Based on the positive experiences made during the implementation of these agile practices, all employees of the SME opened up to proceed with the agile transition.