Backlog Refinement

Déroulé d'animation

1. 1

   Open the session: the Product Owner states the goal for the next one to two sprints and lists today's items in priority order. Announce the timebox and the stop time out loud so the group paces itself.

   5 min
2. 2

   Work through items top-down. For each one, the Product Owner explains the intent, then the team asks clarifying questions until the acceptance criteria are specific and testable. Edit the criteria in the backlog item live, on screen — not in someone's private notes.

   30 min
3. 3

   Split any item that triggers more than 15 minutes of discussion or clearly cannot fit inside one sprint. Slice by user value — a thinner end-to-end behaviour — rather than by architectural layer, so every slice remains demonstrable.

   15 min
4. 4

   Estimate each clarified item with Planning Poker or T-shirt sizing. When estimates diverge widely, ask the highest and lowest estimators to explain their reasoning before re-voting — the gap almost always reveals a hidden assumption worth capturing.

   15 min
5. 5

   Flag dependencies, risks, and open questions on each item, and assign a named person and a deadline to resolve each blocker before Sprint Planning.

   10 min
6. 6

   Apply the Definition of Ready item by item and move only the items that pass into the Ready column. Resist waving marginal items through — an almost-ready item becomes a mid-sprint surprise.

   5 min
7. 7

   Close by checking coverage: is roughly two sprints of work now Ready? Confirm follow-up owners, park anything unresolved, and set the next refinement date.

   5 min

Conseils

• Keep refinement to 10% of team capacity (roughly 4h per 2-week Sprint).

• Don't refine more than 2-3 Sprints ahead — requirements change.

• If a story triggers more than 15 minutes of discussion, it needs splitting.

• The Product Owner should come prepared — vague stories waste the whole team's time.

Pièges courants

• Letting refinement turn into a design meeting — solutioning every item in detail burns the timebox; capture the open design question, assign it, and move on

• Accepting one-line stories from an unprepared Product Owner and drafting acceptance criteria from scratch as a whole team — preparation is the PO's job, sharpening is the team's

• Refining the entire backlog instead of the top two or three sprints, producing over-specified items that go stale and get rewritten anyway

• Publishing refinement estimates as commitments or deadlines, which teaches the team to pad every number and drains honesty from future estimation

Variantes

Three Amigos: a developer, tester, and Product Owner meet briefly for each story before refinement to pre-align on scope. Async refinement: team comments on stories asynchronously in Jira/Linear before the live session.

Méthodes associées