How do you refine your team's backlog?

Bzzt. Defining the goal of your product isn't part of refining your backlog. That should have been done long ago...if it hasn't been done yet, no gold star for you. Bad PM! Experienced PMs won't speak in terms of priority because it's a false construct. We simply don't talk about things that aren't "priority". All that matters is relative urgency. Also, don't be duped into thinking that the bottom half of your backlog will ever get done. The only items that need to be groomed is the distance of your planning horizon: probably three to six months at most. Consider a "rolling magnifying glass" metaphor: the things coming soon need more details, the things further out don't (yet).

Refining a team's backlog needs a goal-oriented approach, involving the entire team, prioritizing and estimating items, breaking down large tasks, regular grooming, effective communication, and continuous improvement. This is pretty much standard. What's ignored in the real implementation, in my experience is, NOT "maximizing work not done". Maximizing the amount of work not done means limiting input to the system to the level at which the constraint in the process can process work - choke the system and it yields sub-optimal outcome. The simplest way to do that is to allow downstream process steps to pull work, rather than pushing work into the system. Leadership in each stage at the team level helps, instead of a top-down flow.

My Product Owner holds the position of VP of Data Science, and my In a current project, the lead Dev and I have adopted a non-traditional approach by engaging in daily discussions with him after the standup. However, in this particular environment, the PO bears the majority of the pressure, whereas the developers experience less. As a result, he has the authority to make changes to the items in the sprint backlog as needed.

A radical perspective here: don't have a backlog. The logic is very simple: - if it's important, it'll come up - if it's clear enough to be done, then define it with the team and do it with the team - if it's a thing for later, then it's not worth taking the time to do track it yet: priorities may change - if you need to spend time to figure out if it's worth doing, then spend that time, and then when you know it needs to be done, prioritize it, which means.. Define it and do it. So, radical idea: don't have a backlog.

In line with the radical idea from above: all these conversations are highly valuable, but "the team's backlog" is the wrong place to store their outcomes. If you are going to follow the radical ideas of just-in-time work (to avoid work-in-progress inventory) then you should only spend time on the most valuable ideas. Obviously, you need to be able to compare ideas to figure out which one is most valuable, and that means you want a tool that specifically allows you to do that. The "backlog", as the name indicates, is "work we didn't get to yet", and it provides zero value to the team; all it does is make them feel like there's neverending work of unclear value to be done.

The aim is always to refine and deliver value in the system. Collaborating with stakeholders is quite essential for refining the backlog. It's done through a series of steps like - gathering feedback, incorporating insights, involving stakeholders in refinement sessions, and maintaining effective communication. Now, during collaboration, certain key areas are worth monitoring - are we involving stakeholders early enough? are we brainstorming on the diverse perspectives by asking most relevant questions? are we managing the expectations right? are we in continuous engagement mode? are we resolving conflicts timely? are we celebrating small wins with the stakeholders? are we retrospecting? #collaboration #stakeholdermanagement

I like this slightly better than SMART goals but the end result is largely the same. This is a useful framework, but like all frameworks, it has a "checklist danger" : it may become more important than letting the people involved just.. Make the right decisions. I prefer the "3 C's" - Card/Conversation/Confirmation. Define behavior and success, then talk about it (JIT specification), then have automated and manual testing, including user review, as required, to make sure it works.

If we ask "why" INVEST, and what's the cost of not applying such criteria, then perhaps it will help cover the gaps outlined clearly. Lack of clarity - unclear priorities - difficulty in estimation - lack of testability - overly dependent items - difficulty in adapting to changes. Any of this happens, the first impact is seen in the downgraded team morale because of poor outcome. So, if anyone monitoring the outcome wears a thinking hat, needs to take a step back and treat the team as the first level customer to seek feedback, and chalk out an improvement plan.

The value and urgency of any given unit of work are highly dependent on context. Context includes current feature set, number of customers going through a particular workflow, other units of work you'd like to deliver, and so forth. The best prioritization is also going to be JIT (just-in-time) customization, when enough of the uncertainties have collapsed into reality. And don't worry - removing this task from product owners or product managers doesn't mean they'll suddenly be idle. It just means they'll be able to have better, deeper conversations about the work that really matters.

Or you could *not* have a backlog, and then you don't have to do this *at all*. How many items can you put in your backlog? Beyond how many items does it become wasteful to have a backlog? If you can't do this review/adjust for every single item, before it goes into the backlog, probably your backlog is too big.