Product Backlog Grooming: Tips for a Better Product

Custom formulas work well for prioritizing backlogs in situations with a lot of data and a lot of complexity. Having this formula means our backlog of 150+ content ideas always stays on track. You need to learn something – For data infrastructure and analytics features, shipping later means you’ll need more time to gather data before you actually learn something.

An Epic has been completed when every user story underneath it has been completed. If you’re new to a team, it’s worth consulting with your Product Owner to understand what the process is. Most teams will choose to refine at least once per sprint using a method like Sprint Poker estimation. Others do it continuously, and check in together once per sprint. Since the product backlog is aligned to the product roadmap, the Product Owner holds overall responsibility for the backlog. You can think of the product backlog as the product roadmap expressed in small increments of work.

Prioritize Items

So whether you’re a seasoned refiner or a rookie, there’s something here for you. Guides Learn about best practices.Blog Articles about productivity & startups.FAQs Frequently Asked QuestionsLive Demo Try Eworking without register! Task Management Looking for task manager software to help you organize tasks? With Edworking, you can easily do it.Chat Communicate better with your team.

I teach participants to leverage the ELMO technique during backlog refinement. ELMO is an acronym for “Enough Let’s Move On” and it helps remind people to avoid boiling the ocean or rehashing the same thing over and over. Some teams even find it helpful to bring an Elmo doll to their meetings.

Scrum: The most popular Agile framework

The resulting graph provides insights that enable the Scrum Team to eliminate dependencies. The Developers assign a size to each of their Product Backlog items in relation to the reference entry. If they do not understand https://globalcloudteam.com/ an item, the question mark is assigned. Therefore Scrum Teams refine only items that move further up the Product Backlog. To avoid refining too much ahead of time, Developers should only spend 10% of their time.

The Scrum artifacts and the progress toward agreed goals must be inspected frequently and diligently to detect potentially undesirable variances or problems. To help with inspection, Scrum provides cadence in the form of its five events. Scrum combines four formal events for inspection and adaptation within a containing event, the Sprint. These events work because they implement the empirical Scrum pillars of transparency, inspection, and adaptation.

Meet at Least Three Hours Per Sprint

Not everyone on the scrum team needs to be at every session. One of the keys to good scrum is a well-refined product backlog. The Product Owner introduces the topic or product backlog item to be discussed.

For new teams, I recommend that they start with a regularly scheduled meeting. They can adjust the length of the meeting or the number of meetings or simply cancel a planned PBR if they find they don’t need it. Smaller, more specific refinements save time for stakeholders and subject-matter experts. Optimize the time of these external people so they never need to discern when, in a three-hour session, their PBI will come up. In this article, we’ll share a few ideas and agile refinement techniques that will help Scrum teams with backlog refinement and involve Developers in requirements development.

what is backlog refinement and how to do it?

On the extreme side, don’t let an unproductive conversation go on for more than five minutes. If a new idea is presented and you’re still heavily in the “I don’t understand” stage five minutes later, it’s a good sign the product owner needs to do more work offline. product backlog management techniques As a bare minimum, try for three hours per sprint, less than five percent of the total working hours of a two-week sprint. For a product that is underway and is following good scrum practices, this should be enough to keep the team from starving for work.

I have been a Product Owner, Scrum Master and Development Team member. I have worked with enterprise companies to small start-ups. While working with many teams across many companies I have found that most problems are not technology problems, but are organizational structure, process, and people problems. As a trainer I bring storytelling, a broad array of experience, and collaborative approach to teaching.

Essential Checklist for Effective Backlog Refinement (and What To Avoid)

Except this time you’re going to get more precise and reach better story point estimates. This rough estimation method is particularly useful for making sure that items are the right size to enter the Sprint Backlog in the future. T-shirt sizing is a simple estimation technique you may use with your team to get an initial flavour of how large or small a project is. When we focus too much on what we need to do, we often limit our options. We are blinded by tasks and minutiae and don’t take time to think creatively about the bigger picture.

• I find it helpful to make sure some level of work is done in advance of the PBR discussions with the full team.
• Product Backlog items that can be bought are priced and listed.
• If the agreement still can’t be reached, the facilitator , can go with the highest, the lowest, or the most common estimation.
• If you’re just starting out though, maybe having the Product Owner walk through the backlog is a good place.
• If the Product Owner or Scrum Master are actively working on items in the Sprint Backlog, they participate as Developers.

Expertise is an incredible resource; don’t lose out on the expertise of your stakeholders by keeping a narrow focus on the scrum team and the scrum team only. Your Backlog Refinement Meeting will naturally be longer than your regular Stand-Up meetings. But you don’t want it to be an hours-long slog that leaves the team frustrated and behind on their work. If the backlog is extensive, it is unrealistic to address every item. In order for the refinement process to be considered a success, the team needs to agree that the item has been refined to the extent that it is now actionable.

Techniques: Backlog Refinement

In general, we have found that smaller teams communicate better and are more productive. If Scrum Teams become too large, they should consider reorganizing into multiple cohesive Scrum Teams, each focused on the same product. Therefore, they should share the same Product Goal, Product Backlog, and Product Owner. The fundamental unit of Scrum is a small team of people, a Scrum Team.