Which tasks must be completed prior to the Ready to Deploy step?

The task that must be completed prior to the Ready to Deploy step is feature acceptance tests. This is because feature acceptance testing is a critical process that ensures the developed features meet the specified requirements and are functioning as intended. These tests are conducted to validate that the application behaves as expected before it moves into the deployment phase.

Completing feature acceptance tests provides assurance to stakeholders that the product is ready for release. It helps to identify any defects or issues that need to be addressed, thus reducing the risk of problems occurring after deployment.

While other tasks like code clean-up processes, user acceptance testing, and unit tests also play important roles in the development lifecycle, they are typically completed in different contexts or stages of the software development process. Code clean-up occurs to enhance the overall quality and maintainability of the code, user acceptance testing verifies that the system meets business needs from the end-user perspective, and unit tests focus on verifying that individual components work correctly. However, the priority in relation to getting ready for deployment distinctly places feature acceptance tests at the forefront of the final preparations before an application is deployed.