Backlog Refinement: How To Properly Do It

Do you feel your team works hard but always on the wrong tasks? Backlog refinement, formerly known as backlog grooming, is a project management process that can help avoid similar issues.?

It includes reviewing the items on the backlog (a list of a project’s tasks and characteristics), making sure they are relevant, editing them, and prioritizing those that should be done first.

Learn how to do backlog refinement properly, while we answer the following questions:

• What is backlog refinement and why is it important?
• What are the main steps in conducting a successful backlog refinement meeting?
• What strategies lead to efficient backlog refinement?
• What are some common mistakes to avoid during the backlog grooming process?

Get concise answers to some common questions and leave with key takeaways.

By the end of this guide, you’ll know exactly how to optimize your team’s efforts to get effective results.

What Is Backlog Refinement?

Backlog Refinement is a significant part of the project development process where the development team reviews, edits, and prioritizes the backlog while building strategies, defining success, and focusing on crucial features for the business.?

If done correctly, this process can help the team:?

1. Understand what exactly needs to be done?
2. Know what to do first?
3. Get ideas on how to plan the sprint efficiently?
4. Spot potential obstacles during the process
5. Achieve better communication

The team should review the product backlog, edit it, and set priorities to align it with the latest decisions and requirements.?

The process may include many specific actions, including the following:

1. Clarifying requirements
2. Splitting items into smaller and more manageable tasks
3. Placing items that require urgent attention on the top of the list
4. Removing irrelevant items
5. Adding new items
6. Adjusting the existing tasks

What Makes Backlog Refinement Important?

Backlog refinement is important because it improves project effectiveness by providing clear, relevant tasks with set priorities. The development team will understand what has to be done and in which order.

Another crucial reason this process is essential is the prediction of possible difficulties and challenges that might come with future tasks. Early prediction of potential risks and obstacles can help the team create strategies and start working on solutions in the early development stages.

Finally, backlog refinement fosters communication and collaboration between team members, leading to a deeper understanding of the entire process and precise sprint planning.

Crucial Steps in Backlog Refinement

If you’re wondering how to start backlog management and how to make it right, you’re not alone. Although the process sounds simple at first, sometimes it can be difficult to organize, and having a clear plan is necessary if you want to make the session productive. This will be your routine, so having a plan that works will lead to long-term efficiency.

To make your backlog grooming shine, we’ll guide you through key steps, adding tips, examples, and key roles to make the procedure understandable and effective.

Here are the crucial steps in backlog refinement:

• Prepare for the meeting.

Prepare well for successful backlog management, especially if you’re the product owner. Make sure to go through the materials before the session and identify the items that need special attention. Review priorities and requirements in advance, and write down the information you’d like to cover during the meeting.?

Encourage other team members to do the same and show up with ideas and suggestions based on their areas of expertise. This is the step that can determine if your meeting will be productive or a mess.

• Invite relevant people.

Besides the product owner and the scrum master, consider inviting the entire development team, including designers, developers, business analysts, database administrators, security engineers, technical architects, and testers. The more relevant professionals you include, you’ll have more comprehensive discussion from various perspectives. If that’s too many people, invite key representatives.

Don’t forget to include the stakeholders or at least consider their feedback. The goal is to focus on tasks that are crucial for the business at a given moment, and excluding stakeholders could move the focus to less relevant items.

• Eliminate irrelevant and outdated items.

Let’s be honest, the backlog can sometimes become full of ideas and projects that simply don’t fit the project needs and objectives anymore. Keep your backlog manageable and neat by removing old and irrelevant items. That includes ideas and tasks that are not aligned with your goals and stakeholder needs.?

The whole point of backlog refinement is to keep the backlog fresh and relevant, so getting rid of old tasks that haven’t seen much progress for a long time can be highly beneficial.

• Review, break down, and edit backlog items.

This is a crucial part of the entire process because it includes a thorough inspection, analysis of each item, and modifications that match your project’s current needs. You should make sure tasks align with your fresh goals, and if they don’t, determine what exactly needs to be changed.?

Remember to break down massive and complicated items into more manageable, smaller ones that can be solved in one go. This will help your team handle them faster and plan the sprint with higher precision.

Now, since you’ve reviewed all the items and divided them into bite-sized pieces, you should roughly calculate the required effort for each of them. You’ll get an idea of how long the project will last, giving your team a manageable amount of work for each sprint.

Last but not least, prioritize the most urgent tasks. Think about which piece can bring the most significant impact on your business and which one needs to be done for others to begin.?

Putting the most important items on the top of the list ensures that your team always knows what should be done next, doing essential work first and “nice-to-have” tasks later.

• Establish clear completion standards.

Clarify the acceptance criteria for each item, explaining what needs to be achieved so the task can be considered finished. You’ll help your team understand the tasks better and determine how much time they’ll need. Make sure your instructions are simple and clear.

Dos and Don’ts for Efficient Backlog Refinement Meeting

For some people, backlog refinement is just another meeting in a busy week. However, if you take this matter seriously and implement our tips into the session, you’ll make your product development more effective.?

Dos: Practical Tips for Effective Backlog Management

Here are some best practices that will keep your team engaged and streamline the entire process:

1. Ask yourself: “Which item will bring the most value to my business?” and dedicate more time to those tasks. Prioritizing is essential because you want the strongest possible impact on your projects and not all the items are equally important.
2. Make backlog grooming meetings regular and schedule them at least once in two weeks or once a week, depending on your organization’s needs. Consistent reviews will keep your backlog relevant, fresh, and prioritized according to the most recent goals.
3. Stay open to different opinions and encourage your product development team to share new ideas and comment on current items from various perspectives. The open dialog leads to a broad understanding of the project’s many aspects.
4. Simplify communication and project management by implementing digital platforms like Jira, Asana, and Microsoft Projects. You’ll all have easy access to the backlog to manage it between the meetings.
5. Always involve stakeholders in the backlog management process. If you don’t, you might lose focus and spend time and effort on things that are not crucial for the business at a given moment.

Don’ts: What to Avoid During Your Backlog Refinement Sessions

Let’s discuss actions that can slow you down and damage your project development’s effectiveness. These are the things you should steer clear of:

1. Coming to the meeting unprepared is probably the biggest mistake you can make. If you haven’t reviewed the backlog or prepared the agenda, it’s better not to have a meeting. You’ll waste your and your team’s time.?

Make sure every attendee reviews the backlog before the session, and determine what crucial segments require special attention.

1. Overstuffing the backlog is another common mistake that can negatively affect your meeting’s outcome. A lot of tasks can lead to your team members’ lost focus and confusion. They might forget what their priorities are.?

So, instead of flooding the backlog with many tasks, keep it simple and clear with defined priorities.

1. Turning a blind eye to technical debt might seem harmless in the beginning, but it can bring long-term problems. Some of the common consequences of opting for quick and easy solutions in code are slower development, higher costs, and bugs.?

Try to find a balance between quick and proper solutions to create an effective codebase that won’t cause problems in the future.

To bring it all together, make sure your team is prepared and engaged for regular backlog meetings. Involve stakeholders and the development team. Use project management tools, make the backlog simple and organized, and, whenever you can, choose high-quality instead of fast solutions.

Key Takeaways to Improve Your Backlog Refinement?

• Always prioritize. Regularly update priorities to be sure your project development aligns with current needs.
• Simple and manageable. Keep the task list clear and divide complicated assignments into multiple smaller ones.
• Review before the meeting. Always come prepared and with a clear agenda to maximize effectiveness.
• Choose long-term success. Maintain code quality and avoid technical debt by balancing between fast and proper solutions.
• Useful digital platforms. Use project management tools like Asana and Jira to easily organize and manage the backlog.
• Define success: Every team member must know exactly what success should look like, so it’s important to define the acceptable outcomes.

Backlog Refinement for Your Effectiveness and Success

Set your team up for success with our comprehensive guide on backlog management and try not to miss a session for the best results. Being consistent is a large part of favorable results.?

Share this article with your team so you can all understand perfectly what should be done in your regular sessions, and each one of your sprints can bring significant progress.

Remember, backlog refinement means turning your goals and needs into actions and bringing your vision to life! Keep refining, and each session will bring you closer to your goals!

Frequently Asked Questions

Welcome to the FAQ section, where we give straightforward answers to some of the common questions to further boost your knowledge and understanding of backlog management.

Who Should Run Backlog Refinement?

The product owner should run backlog refinement meetings, followed by the scrum master, product managers, and representatives of the development team.

How Frequently Should Backlog Refinement Sessions Happen?

If the sprints last one week, backlog refinement sessions should happen weekly. If they last two or more weeks, meetings should follow the sprint cycle and happen at least once during that period.

What Is the Purpose of Backlog Refinement?

The purpose of backlog refinement is to prepare the team for the next sprint, allowing the owner, stakeholders, and other attendees to agree upon the current priorities and goals.