What is Backlog Grooming/Refinement?

First and foremost, this is not an official sprint event nor a meeting.

Backlog grooming, also commonly referred to as backlog refinement, is the process in which the PO and the team review the Product backlog to ensure that it is up-to-date. Additionally, backlog grooming is used to refine user stories and prioritize them for the next development sprint. While doing the backlog refinement, the PO and the team regularly eliminate user stories that are no longer relevant or needed, develop and add new user stories based on changing customer needs, reprioritize user stories for the next sprint, split user stories that are too large or complicated for one sprint into smaller, more manageable ones, and provide estimates for stories (the engineering team is mainly responsible for this). The goal of backlog grooming is to have a good enough backlog that enables the team to deliver visible, valuable increments of the product, while adapting to changing needs and requirements.

The Scrum guide originally called it ‘Backlog Grooming’ but its name was changed to ‘Backlog Refinement’ due to a misunderstanding of the term.

While doing the backlog refinement, the PO and the team do:

• Eliminate user stories that are no longer relevant or needed
• Develop and adding new user stories based on changing customer needs
• Reprioritize user stories for the next sprint
• Split user stories that are too large or complicated for one sprint into smaller, more manageable ones
• Providing estimates for stories (the engineering team is mainly responsible for this)

It’s worth mentioning that the engineering team is often undervalued in the grooming process. As a product owner, you hardly have a clear view in terms of technical development (feasibility). Hence, having the engineering team to take a look and advise at the early stage (not just grooming) is a very good idea. As Marty Cagan says:

“If you are just using your engineers to code, you are only getting about half their value.”

To sum it up, backlog grooming is a crucial aspect of agile development, but it’s not just about reviewing and updating the backlog. It’s about collaboration, transparency, and continuous improvement. By keeping the backlog up-to-date, prioritizing based on value and dependencies, and involving the engineering team in the early stages, the team can deliver high-quality, customer-focused products that meet business goals and adapt to changing market conditions.

Tools to facilitate a Grooming session

Backlog grooming can be a challenging and time-consuming process, especially when working with a large or complex backlog. Fortunately, there are several tools and techniques to facilitate backlog grooming, improve productivity, and foster collaboration among team members.

Planning Poker

Planning Poker is a popular and fun tool that helps teams estimate the relative size or effort of user stories, usually in terms of points (with Fibonacci sequences) or T-shirt sizes, using a deck of cards with different values. It’s a gamified approach to estimation that allows everyone to participate, share their opinions, and reach a consensus on the story’s size. Planning Poker encourages discussion and prevents anchoring bias, where one person’s estimate influences others.

Here’s how Planning Poker works:

1. The product owner reads the user story to the team.
2. Each team member selects a card from their deck that represents their estimate of the story’s size or effort.
3. The cards are revealed simultaneously, and the estimates are discussed.
4. If there are significant differences in the estimates, the team discusses the reasons and votes again.
5. The process is repeated until the team reaches a consensus estimate or agrees to further refine the story.

Affinity Estimation

Affinity Estimation is another estimation tool that helps teams group similar-sized stories into categories or t-shirt sizes to avoid the detailed estimation that planning poker requires. It consists of placing the user stories on sticky notes and grouping them by size, based on a predefined range of sizes (e.g., 1-3, 5-8, 13-21).

Here’s how Affinity Estimation works:

1. The product owner creates a list of user stories.
2. Each user story is written on a sticky note.
3. The team collaboratively groups the user stories into categories of similar size, based on predefined ranges or t-shirt sizes (e.g., extra-small, small, medium, large, extra-large).
4. The team discusses the outliers and refines the grouping as needed.

Affinity Estimation is a quick and easy way to estimate the relative size and effort of user stories, making it an excellent alternative to Planning Poker, especially when dealing with a large number of stories.

Story Mapping

Story Mapping is a tool that helps teams visualize the user stories as a sequence of activities or steps that the user performs to accomplish a goal. It’s a visual representation of the product backlog that enhances the team’s understanding of the customer journey, dependencies, and priorities.

Here’s how Story Mapping works:

1. The product owner creates a list of user stories.
2. The team collaboratively organizes the user stories into high-level activities, usually from left to right, that represent the user’s journey.
3. The team details the user stories within each activity, from top to bottom, to represent the priority and dependencies of each story.
4. The team can use color-coding, icons, or other visual elements to provide additional context or information.

Story Mapping is an effective tool for backlog grooming and sprint planning, as it helps the team focus on the big picture and identify areas that require further refinement or clarification.