Problems occur when, as you point out, a story is simply not ready and the team decides to „do the best they can“. This will inevitably involve some guess work. The wrong guesses will come back to haunt the team and likely result in technical debt.

If you have a DoR and don’t adhere to it is worthless. My first question would be: Who created the DoR? If everybody (team, SM and PO) were involved and everybody agreed on it, the team has to skip stories that are not „Ready“. The SM should coach the PO during a sprint on getting stories ready. It is in the PO’s responsibility to plan ahead, otherwise he won’t get anything. If you have a DoR and don’t adapt accordingly, nothing will change.

I think this comes from the old thinking/idea to make the customer (or the PO) happy with starting soon and doing something. But this will not make the customer happy, because with this way the customer won’t get the best for the money. They get something that needs to be changed afterwards and someone has to pay for it.

What can we do beside letting everyone know the risk that they have to deal with? (As I said – we already have a defined DoR)