Backlog Refinement: Benefits, Steps, and Best Practices

A well-maintained product backlog is essential for delivering a product that meets stakeholder expectations. However, in Agile projects, teams expect conditions, requirements, and customer expectations to change. 

Regular backlog refinement can ensure that your product backlog is properly prioritized, edited, and organized based on the project’s current needs. 

In a nutshell:

• Backlog refinement is the process of editing a product backlog to ensure alignment with emergent requirements
• Refining a product backlog involves sorting items by priority, aligning stories with updated requirements, correcting estimates, and sizing work according to Sprint durations
• Benefits of backlog refinement include improved alignment, prioritization, sprint planning efficiency, and collaboration

What is backlog refinement?

Backlog refinement is the process of reviewing, organizing, and editing product backlog items to ensure alignment with updated requirements, customer expectations, and business needs. It is an ongoing process that occurs to prepare work before each sprint. 

Examples of activities that fall under product backlog refinement include:

• Estimating task scope
• Dividing larger work items into smaller tasks
• Anticipating potential barriers to task completion
• Ranking tickets by priority
• Defining ticket requirements 

Backlog refinement vs. backlog grooming

Backlog refinement is the same as backlog grooming. However, the term “backlog refinement” gained more traction due to the negative connotations associated with the word “grooming.” Both are correct in the context of editing backlogs. 

Backlog refinement vs. sprint planning

While backlog refinement refers to the process of updating items in the product backlog, sprint planning refers to the process of selecting what product backlog items to work on during an upcoming sprint. Ideally, you will already have refined your backlog before conducting a sprint planning session. 

Who is in charge of backlog refinement?

Backlog refinement is the product owner’s responsibility. However, their output should receive approval from all parties involved, including the development team, stakeholders, and other organizational higher-ups. 

What is a backlog refinement meeting?

Teams achieve the best product development results when backlog refinement is a collaborative effort between the product owner, development team members, and stakeholders. That’s why the product owner should run the backlog refinement process as a meeting. 

A collaborative backlog refinement meeting ensures that the backlog accounts for every perspective. 

Stakeholders align items with business goals, while team members refine work items based on their ground-level knowledge of what is achievable. The product owner finds a compromise between both points of view. 

Why refine your backlog refinement?

Proper backlog refinement yields many product development boons. We’ve listed a few of its best benefits below. 

Aligns work with updated objectives

Everything involved in product development changes, whether it be team capacity, business needs, resource availability, insights, market conditions, or stakeholder expectations. Development teams must update product backlog items to keep outputs relevant to evolved circumstances. 

Let’s say you created your product backlog under the assumption your team would have a limited budget. 

However, after impressing stakeholders through a series of successful sprints, they decide to invest more money in the team. It would be a waste of resources and potential not to account for the budget increase when refining product backlog items. 

Keeps product backlog items prioritized 

Backlog refinement forces you to sort product backlog items by relevance and urgency. This lets you put the items that deliver the most impact at the top of your to-do list. It also keeps priority tickets from piling up, ensuring that the team responds to user needs as quickly as possible. 

Boosts sprint planning efficiency

Refining your backlog clarifies which tasks hold priority. The process makes it easier to select upcoming work for sprint planning. 

For example, if refining your backlog showed you which tickets users considered most urgent, you would prioritize these tickets during sprint planning. You’d enter the sprint planning meeting having a clearer idea of your agenda. 

Encourages collaboration

Backlog refinement encourages everyone in the team to pitch ideas about what to edit and prioritize. It keeps work items realistic to the team’s capacity while aligning objectives with stakeholder expectations, ensuring satisfaction on both ends. 

Refining your backlog also provides better team visibility. Everyone is aware of what responsibilities each team member should account for. This ensures that everybody in the team feels empowered and engaged. 

How to prepare for a backlog refinement meeting

Backlog refinement meetings require strategic preparation to run effectively. Below are few steps you can follow. 

1. Sort product backlog items by priority

The first step to backlog refinement is sorting items by priority. The process helps you identify which items are most relevant to your current objectives, thus narrowing down what you need to refine. 

Prioritizing tasks is easier when you have a system for determining priority levels. Examples of prioritization techniques include numerical ranking, the MoSCoW method, and the Kano Model.

Numerical ranking

Numerical ranking is a broad prioritization technique that assigns tasks a priority level between 1-3 based on their added value. 

• 1st priority items deliver the most impact to the problem at hand
• 2nd priority items help solve the problem, but aren’t necessary for functionality
• 3rd priority items are non-essentials that add minimal value

The MoSCow method

The MoSCoW method divides work into four categories. These are:

• Must-haves are work items that are crucial to a product’s functionality
• Should-haves are necessary but not as important as must-haves
• Could-haves are non-essentials that provide small boons
• Won’t-haves are irrelevant to current product goals

Kano Model

The Kano Model, named for Japanese researcher Noriaki Kano, divides the backlog into five categories based on the end user’s needs. These are:

• Mandatory for functionality
• Extremely relevant to customer needs and expectations
• Added-value features
• No-value features
• Features that deliver negative value to the customer experience

The best prioritization technique depends on the number of items on your backlog. If you’re dealing with simple objectives, the three-level system numerical ranking offers will suffice. 

However, more complex projects might require the specificity of the MoSCoW and Kano methods. The Kano Model is particularly suitable for objectives that are primarily user-focused.

Other factors to consider when prioritizing items include:

• Constraints: Consider timeframes and budget. Some tasks might fall lower on your priority list if you lack the resources to execute them.
• Dependencies: If completing one task is required for beginning another, complete the parent task first. For example, you’ll usually need to draft a wireframe before coding the layout of an application.
• Value vs complexity: Complex items that deliver high value should be prioritized. High prioritization allows the team to start work earlier and provide value faster. 

2. Create and share the meeting agenda

Once your backlog is prioritized, set a meeting agenda. Identify the organization’s current goals and compare your highest priority backlog items against them. Study sprint reviews and retrospectives to identify new requirements or feedback you can apply. 

3. Schedule the meeting

Finally, schedule that meeting.

The product backlog refinement meeting should occur before the sprint planning session. Ideally, you should conduct it after your sprint retrospective and review to maximize feedback. 

Refer to the team calendar to identify member availability. Then, send invites for the date you select. 

The backlog refinement shouldn’t consume too much of your team’s time, especially since you have a future sprint planning meeting to break down the specifics of upcoming work. Forty-five minutes to one hour is ideal. 

Anything more will take time that is better invested in actual development work.

How to conduct an effective backlog refinement meeting

Maximize your backlog refinement meeting by centering on the right topics in the right order. The meeting should cover prioritization, user stories, sizing, and questions. 

Confirm prioritization with team

The first step to conducting a product backlog refinement meeting is to present the updated backlog prioritization. 

Open the floor for counter arguments if team members disagree with your prioritization choices. If everyone is in agreement, move on to user story discussions. 

Discuss user stories

Once you have a prioritized list of backlog items, discuss each with your development team. Some important things to do include:

• Realigning stories with updated information: Update the relevant information on the corresponding product backlog items to accommodate new requirements or other kinds of changes. 
• Assigning story points: A story point is a numerical value that denotes a story’s complexity. Work with your team to assign story points to stories to make upcoming work easier to estimate. 

Size product backlog items

Product backlog items must be achievable within the timeframe of a single sprint. If an item is too complex, break it down into smaller subtasks. This way, the team won’t be bogged down trying to complete an overly complex task within a short amount of time. 

Open the floor for questions

Once stories are effectively edited, estimated, and sized, open the floor for questions from team members and stakeholders. This way, you get to hear perspectives you might have overlooked. 

How often should you hold backlog refinement meetings?

You should hold one (1) backlog refinement meeting before each sprint planning session. Typically, this would mean refining the backlog once every two weeks, depending on the length of your sprint. 

Backlog refinement best practices

Much like everything in project management, backlog refinement has its own best practices to ensure things develop effectively. Below are some of our own tested advice.

Use a project management software 

With project management software, you can easily connect backlog items to stories, tasks, projects, and iterations, making work easier to track. Automation saves you from the manual load of ticking off and editing backlog items. 

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Some project management software also comes with backlog management tools. The Shortcut Backlog Page lets you create and connect backlog items to epics, workflows, and iterations. You can filter backlog items by story type, owner, team progress state, priority, and more for easier locating. 

Set a definition of “ready”

The “definition of ready” is your team’s agreed-upon definition of when a user story is ready for development. It is a set of guidelines that ensures that story requirements are clearly defined enough for team members to execute. 

A commonplace practice for setting a definition of ready is using the INVEST mnemonic. When writing a user story, ask the following questions.

• Independent: Does the task depend on other tasks?
• Negotiable: Is the task flexible?
• Valuable: Does the item deliver value?
• Estimable: Does the team have a clear idea of the time and effort the task requires?
• Small: Is the task achievable within the sprint period?
• Testable: Does the story have clear success or completion criteria?

Follow “D.E.E.P.” ideology

Aside from INVEST, you can follow the DEEP approach to refine backlog items. According to the DEEP approach, an effectively written backlog item must be:

• Detailed appropriately: Each user story must contain an amount of detail that is appropriate to its level of priority in the product backlog. High-priority stories should provide all the information a team needs to execute requirements properly. Meanwhile, low-priority stories need less detail. Time spent on editing is time spent away from development, so only work on what is necessary. 
• Estimated: Product backlogs exist to give team members a clear picture of upcoming work. Estimating work through story points or other criteria will help them understand how much effort upcoming sprints require of them. 
• Emergent: As with any element of an Agile project, the product backlog is dynamic. Expect to add, remove, or edit items based on emergent information. 
• Prioritized: Agile processes aim to deliver optimal value within short time frames. Backlog refinement can help you achieve this by ordering product backlog items by value and relevance. 

Summary 

As with any element of an Agile project, the product backlog must keep up with evolving requirements. Without regular backlog refinement, you lose sight of your priorities, waste resources on irrelevant work, disempower your team, and disappoint your stakeholders.

Engage in proper backlog refinement practices to ensure that your product backlog sets proper guidelines for upcoming work. Good backlog refinement sizes tasks appropriately, sets clear standards for readiness, and defines priorities. 

Shortcut’s backlog customization tools can help you keep your product backlog organized and up-to-date. It lets you connect backlog items to Stories, teams, projects, and more — keeping product backlog items easy to locate. 

Refer to the Shortcut pricing page for more information.