Backlog Refinement: A Quick Guide With Examples

Backlog Refinement: A Quick Guide With Examples


Backlog refinement is a process by which the scrum team keeps their backlog in good order. It is an ongoing process between the product owner and the development team, where they collaborate to make sure the product backlog is clean and orderly. It can involve removing outdated user stories and tasks, adding new user stories that come from newly discovered insights, or breaking larger user stories into smaller ones. Assignments and estimates might change and backlog refinement is used to determine the amount of effort necessary to implement, as well as the order to do it. Project Manager is a cloud-based work management software that has dynamic kanban boards that have custom workflows and task approval to set who has authority to approve and move tasks forward.

The purpose of backlog refinement is to have a product backlog ready for the next sprint. This is done by the scrum team having a chance to ask questions of the product owner, such as what should we do if the user enters invalid data here? Are all users allowed to access this part of the system? What if A, B or C happens? These questions are vital to ask before the next sprint, as it gives the product owner an opportunity to answer them. Backlog refinement also keeps your backlog clean and relevant, and only those items in the backlog will be built.