Product Backlog Grooming

Backlog refinement (also called grooming),  advises teams to dedicate 10-15 % of every sprint to this activity.

Key Players:

• Product Owner
• Team
• Scrum Master

Process:

During the meeting, everyone helps prepare the Product Backlog for the sprint planning meeting. This usually includes:

• Adding new stories and epics,
• Removing user stories that no longer appear relevant
• Extracting stories from existing epics, and
• Creating new user stories in response to newly discovered needs
• Splitting user stories which are high priority but too coarse grained to fit in an upcoming iteration
• Re-assessing the relative priority of stories
• Estimating effort for existing stories (T-shirt sizing) (Optional here, to be taken in Sprint Planning)

Benefits/Why is this helpful?

The intent of a "grooming" meeting is:

·         To ensure that the backlog remains populated with items that are relevant, detailed and estimated to a degree appropriate with their priority.

·         Groomed backlog will help streamline sprint planning meetings; otherwise, they can stretch on for hours.

·         When product backlog items contain clearly defined acceptance criteria and are estimated by the team members, the planning process does not have to be tense or overly long.

·         By dedicating a time to backlog maintenance, the team ensures that this preliminary planning occurs prior to the sprint planning meeting.

How this is different than Sprint Planning Meeting:

At this meeting, the Product Owner and the team negotiate which stories a team will tackle that sprint.

·         Time-boxed to two to four hours, this meeting is a conversation between the Product Owner and the team.

·         During the sprint planning meeting, the product owner describes the highest priority features to the team.

·         The team asks enough questions that they can turn a high-level user story of the product backlog into the more detailed tasks of the sprint backlog.

·         PO to answer questions, clarify acceptance criteria, or renegotiate.

·         Team sizes story in story points based on complexity and effort required.

·         Stories are broken down to tasks and tasks are estimated jointly in hours.

References:

http://scrummethodology.com/scrum-backlog-grooming/
http://guide.agilealliance.org/guide/backlog-grooming.html
http://www.capriconsulting.co.uk/difference-between-productbacklog-grooming-sprint-planning-and-elaboration/

Regards,

Arun Manglick