Backlog Grooming

Created by Mary Jo Kochendorfer (Unlicensed)
Last updated: May 07, 2018

Backlog Grooming (aka Backlog Refinement) 

  • Lead: Mary Jo Kochendorfer (Unlicensed) and/or Team Leads

  • 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.

  • When:

    • Team VR:

    • Team JSI:

    • Team Ona:

    • Team Parrot:

  • 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:  (MUST)
  • (MUST)
  • Q:  (MUST)

Fulfillment

  • Q:  (MUST)
  • (MUST)
    • 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