Backlog Grooming (aka Backlog Refinement)
- When: Usually every other Thursdays, 8a - 9a prior to end of current sprint and before next sprint
- Lead: Mary Jo Kochendorfer (Deactivated)
- Product Owner, Team Leads + chosen team members, Scrum Master(s)
- No more than 2 hours
- Objective: Review the high-priority tickets and/or discuss what the next sprint should focus on. The product owner will highlight the functional priorities and the tech leads will highlight the technical priorities.
- Meeting Invite: OpenLMIS v3 Backlog Grooming.ics
Process Details:
- Backlog grooming is most likely to succeed when the following have been accomplished prior to the meeting:
- The Product Owner has defined the functional priorities for each team for the next sprint. These are marked in bold within the particular team's section.
- The team has created tickets in Jira with sufficient detail that relate to each functional priority.
- The team lead has curated these tickets and linked to them in the "Backlog Grooming Sprint NN" page each ticket should have a checkbox next to it
- During the meeting:
- Product Owner outlines functional priorities and the team discusses any conversations that are jotted down per functional area
- Review each ticket that is proposed by functional area
- Determine if the ticket is scoped well enough and if there are any dependencies that aren't accounted for
- Develop a roadmap of gaps that need to be completed in the backlog before the next sprint can start
- The team prepares for the Planning meeting where story points and estimates are defined.
Backlog Grooming Page Sample
This section displays a subset of the backlog that was completed for Sprint 47:
Vaccine Stock Based Requisitions
- A:
-
OLMIS-4055Getting issue details...
STATUS
(MUST)
- - OLMIS-4016Getting issue details... STATUS (MUST)
- Q:
-
OLMIS-3916Getting issue details...
STATUS
(MUST)
Fulfillment
- Q: - OLMIS-4077Getting issue details... STATUS (MUST)
- - OLMIS-3826Getting issue details... STATUS (MUST)
-
-
OLMIS-2734Getting issue details...
STATUS
- Fulfillment current Integration Test approach slows developers down
Items to note:
- Each functional area is in bold
- Each ticket has a checkbox next to it representing a task
- One item without a checkmark means that this ticket was considered, but not picked up by the team.
- The priority defined by the Product Owner is in parenthesis (MUST) to signal to the team leader that this is critical.
- The "Q:" signals to the Product Owner that this issue has a question that needs to be addressed before the sprint beings.
- The "A:" signals to the Team lead that the Product Owner has responded in the ticket.
Meeting Notes