While delivering lower-value features later is likely to involve some rework, rework is better than no work. The roles of the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and self-organizing team in backlog refinement. Only members involved in prioritizing backlog product list attend the Backlog Refinement deep backlog meeting. In Sprint meetings team members are given great opportunities to communicate with others and identify each other’s strengths to build effective teamwork and achieve common sprint goals. The team members are able to recognise tasks and are able to prioritise items for delivery.

Items at the top are important right now and should be smaller in size and more details so that team could start implementing them in upcoming sprints. As you go lower the product backlog, the items are less important ad less detailed. A groomed backlog helps you not get overwhelmed by the number of incomplete tasks. It forces teams to deliver their product more rapidly and ensures the organization is moving forward on schedule.

A quick guide to Backlog Refinement

Indeed, during refinement you should also check that the items are still actually relevant and that they haven’t morphed into something else in the meantime. But if Backlog Refinement doesn’t become embedded, it can soon fall by the wayside. And when that happens, just watch the backlog become a free-for-all wishlist, full of undefined and unconnected items that lack rhyme or reason. The exercise of adding details to the items in a backlog is known as Backlog Refinement .

Backlog refinement meeting should be considered as the first part of Sprint Planning. Rather, the story may be for something like a service for another team to consume. Backlog refinement, when it is a regular meeting, improves overall project efficiency, keeps the backlog relevant and clean, and facilitates uninterrupted workflow. Agile Scrum, in turn, is very flexible and welcomes change as an opportunity. And working with change comes in many shapes and forms, one of them is working with product backlog regularly. Analyzing the estimated time each of the items will take to finish.

Tips to Improve Product Backlog Refinement

Most teams decide that a project manager, Scrum master, or facilitator helps keep people on track during meetings. Some teams even decide to assign time limits to each user story to keep things moving. While there is no required length of time for backlog refinement meetings, aim for around 45 minutes to an hour. If you think of refinement as a process, this can be done before or between two refinement meetings.

Sometimes during a grooming session, the team discovers another task that must be completed before executing a new feature. Adding new user stories in this situation ensures there are no gaps or missed steps as the team works on tasks in the backlog. Log all updates to the backlog items in a clear and short format. Do it either on the go during the meeting or shortly after, before you forget the nuances and important details. It will help the project in general but also will make your next refinement sessions much more efficient as people won’t have to go through a ton of notes. This would usually be the job of the product owner but any team member can take care of it.

The don’ts of product backlog refinement ceremony

That means the approach we use for backlog refinement a few months from now will probably be different than what we’re doing right now. Whoever is running the meeting should prepare beforehand by looking through the backlog and choosing which items to look at. Ultimately, the question of who attends Backlog Grooming sessions is dependent on the context and information you need. Client services or account managers, for instance, can shed valuable light on the client’s perspective. Depending on the item in question, the client themselves might want to be directly involved in the refinement activity.

As such, it cannot be confined to a single time-boxed meeting in each Sprint. Concrete descriptions of the expected behavior of the product as a result of the product backlog item using real-life data. Examples are useful for describing a solution and providing guidance on ways to validate it.

Product refinement is the result of the product refinement meeting held between the product owner/manager, Scrum Master, or CTO and the development team. The product backlog is a prioritized list of work for the development team that consists of product backlog items . Because a new user story can be added at any point of the project, the backlog is ever-increasing, can easily get out of hand, and turn into a scope creep. Product backlog refinement is one of the most critical meetings in an agile project. This is where one makes sure that the product backlog items are built.

And unless you have a polished backlog, your mission guide will get you no further than the first page of your backlog. We hope the backlog refinement tips shared in this blog helped you answer that question. Plus, refined backlog items are much easier to estimate and implement.

In fact, it takes strategic, deliberate thinking to maintain a well-managed backlog, through a process called Backlog Refinement . It also takes commitment, as refining the backlog is not a one-off task. It is a continual practice that needs to be embedded as a habit within a team’s regular working cadence.

The time-box of Product Backlog Refinement

As the team discusses a backlog item, it’s crucial to identify any roadblocks that might impede progress. Depending on the type of issue, it may be advantageous to dedicate an entire, separate session to a roadblock or set of roadblocks. Now that we understand what backlog grooming is, let’s review where it fits into the scrum process. We help organizations and professionals unlock excellence through skills development. We offer training solutions under the people and process, data science, full-stack development, cybersecurity, future technologies and digital transformation verticals.

• If you review your projected plan beforehand and make sure all members know their roles – this should be clear straight up.
• As part of the backlog process, teams will usually estimate the size of the item.
• Sprint Goals are discussed and team members come to a common conclusion.
• This resulting plan is created by the collaborative work of the entire Scrum Team.
• In the Backlog Refinement meeting, backlog products are estimated and discussed to prepare an approachable backlog list.

Moreover, the facilitator ensures that the sessions are regularly scheduled, the right people are invited, and follow-up communication is sent out to the team after the session concludes. Refine your product backlog to ensure it’s up to date ahead of a sprint or planning session. Easily import issues from your Jira Cloud instance into this template, prioritize and update, and then send your refined backlog back to Jira. It’s crucial to allot enough time for preparing your refinement.

Who Should Be Involved in Backlog Refinement?

The Product Owner ensures that attendees are prepared to discuss the most important Product Backlog items and how they map to the Product Goal. The Scrum Team may also invite other people to attend Sprint Planning to provide advice. Various processes, techniques and methods can be employed within the framework.

Not being on the same page about the description or acceptance criteria of user stories can lead developers to implement half-baked stories or stories that lead to unexpected results. In situations like that, during review, the product owner would provide more clarification and send the user story back to the developer to revise and implement it as expected. It’s not hard to see how this back-and-forth might delay the delivery of the feature. The objective of a backlog grooming session is to position the team to deliver a better product more efficiently. The product owner who is spearheading the team has the crucial responsibility of maintaining the product backlog and conducting the grooming sessions to communicate next steps for the team.

Executives Activate imagination and innovation across all your teams. Features MURAL’s intuitive features make collaboration creative, engaging, and productive. No prior knowledge is required, but the experiences and knowledge will extend from introductory to intermediate or advanced. If your team is struggling to find them, try this epic splitting exercise and these suggested epic splitting steps. A skilled Scrum Master can help the team identify thin vertical slices of work that still have business value, while promoting a rigorous definition of “done” that includes proper testing and refactoring. Most Product Backlog Items initially need refinement because they are too large and poorly understood.

Scrum Reference Card Excerpt: The Backlog Refinement Meeting

PBR offers the team members the opportunity to interact with each other regarding stories. Grooming the product backlog should be a collaborative effort that involves the product owner and the development team. This helps to analyse the data correctly and to draw the right conclusions. It encourages collective ownership, and leverages the creativity of the entire team. It reduces the work load of the product owner, and helps ensure that the high-prirority items are ready .

Product backlog refinement is sometimes called product backlog grooming, and we will use those terms interchangeably in the article. We’ve discussed product backlog item with product owner and they’ve provided feedback. One or more models that provide further insight into the product backlog item. May include wire frame, report mockup, spreadsheet showing data calculations, state chart or process flow. We then discussed each item starting with the highest vote-getters and working our way down. It’s essential to separate your development backlog from your product and insights backlog and make sure each item is marked accurately.

The team should let those with the outlier estimates explain their reasoning and assumptions. It also helps, if you are recording the results of your discussion in an online tool, to have one person entering information in the tool who is separate from the facilitator. And rotate both roles so that everyone on the team has a chance to experience it and will have empathy for those performing the role. Every item in the backlog must be thoroughly explained with all the appropriate details. For example, a feature that needs API integration with another platform might need to be completed before the UI can be developed on the application.

If the item cannot be refined in 10 minutes, it usually means that either the item is too big and needs to be split, or, that you don’t have the right people in the room who are knowledgable about the item. Some people are critical of the use of the Definition of Ready. I don’t see it as much of an issue and if these types of things occur, they are easy to coach around. https://globalcloudteam.com/ A backlog can include hundreds of items or more, so it’s important to categorize them using labels and epics. A well organized and categorized backlog will makes the jobs of both the product owner and engineering team infinitely easier for upcoming sprints. Do not schedule backlog refinement meeting during the first and last 20% of the Sprint Planning session.