On the Scrum mailing list, Alan Shalloway came up with a great list for questions you need to answer before starting your Scrum teams. In his experience, this checklist becomes very useful after the organization reaches 75 people.

• How do I know I’m done planning?
• What documents do I have?
• What do I know?
• How do I know I’m ready for my first Sprint?

These are the business and architectural requirements for starting the first Sprint.

• Project/Product Vision Statement, OBT (Why are we here?)
• Release plan set
• Product backlog established and visible
• Initial Estimate w/Top-Line (story points) established and visible
• Sprint length set
• Prioritized and estimated Feature list
• Architectural goals/approach identified and visible
• Dependencies & Risks Identified and made visible
• Conceptual design completed

The Team and their Environment also needs to be prepared before embarking on Scrum.

• Team established with roles set
• Trained in Lean-Agile Software development (process and technical practices)
• Definition of “Done” established and documented (unit, functional, acceptance)
• Testing approach committed to (Unit, Functional, Acceptance) and visible
• Information radiator established and visible
• Tools for testing, coding, integrating, building selected and installed