Rather than relying on pre-defined scheduling of secondary copy operations such as backup jobs, the illustrative opportunistic approach initiates secondary copy operations based on changing operational conditions in a storage management system. An adaptive backup readiness score is based on a number of backup-readiness operational factors. An illustrative enhanced data agent which is associated with the target database application (or other executable component) may monitor the operational factors and determine the backup readiness score based on weights assigned to the respective operational factors. The enhanced data agent may evaluate recent backup jobs to determine which of the operational factors that contributed to the backup readiness score may have been most relevant. Based on the most-relevant analysis, the enhanced data agent may adapt the weights assigned to the monitored operational factors, so that the backup readiness score may be more suitable and responsive to ongoing operational conditions in the system.