Backlog Refinement
A recurring collaborative session where the Product Owner and development team review, clarify, estimate, and prioritise Product Backlog items. Refinement ensures the top of the backlog is always well-understood and 'Ready' — small enough, clear enough, and estimated — before Sprint Planning.
Come eseguirlo
- 1
Product Owner presents upcoming backlog items in priority order.
- 2
The team asks clarifying questions until the acceptance criteria are clear and unambiguous.
- 3
Break large items (Epics) into smaller user stories that can be completed within one Sprint.
- 4
Estimate each item using Planning Poker, T-Shirt Sizing, or story points.
- 5
Flag any dependencies, risks, or assumptions that need resolution before the item can be worked on.
- 6
Apply the Definition of Ready: only items meeting the DoR threshold get moved to the 'Ready' column.
- 7
Stop when the top 2 Sprints of backlog are refined — don't over-refine.
Suggerimenti
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.
Variazioni
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.
Casi d'uso
Metodi correlati
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Prova gratisMethod descriptions on Workshop Weaver are original content written by our team, based on established facilitation practices. This method was inspired by work from Scrum Guide.