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How to Facilitate Product Backlog Refinement SessionsAgile Practice

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Introduction

Svetlana Mukhina

ICAgile ICP, ICP-ATF, ICP-BVA, PSM I

Agile and Career Coach at Luxoft Agile Practice

Experience: 12+ years in IT, Project and department

management, Computer Linguistics, Technical Writing, Quality

Assurance

Interests: Project management, Agile transformation, Career

and performance coaching, Psychology

Hobbies: Horse riding, music, poker, travelling

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Product Backlog Refinement Process

What PBR is the process through which product backlog items are reviewed by the Scrum team and revised, providing more detail and ensuring that there is greater clarity in the requirements for that item: acceptance criteria, diagrams (architectural, process flow, UI designs, etc.), example data, test cases.

Who All members of the Scrum team should be involved in product backlog refinement. This ensures that the whole team understands what is required from each product backlog item that may be taken into a sprint.

When PBR should be an ongoing process. However, some teams find it useful to have a planned mid-sprint session that allows for product backlog items that are candidates for the next sprint to be discussed.

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Why to Do Product Backlog Refinement

A product backlog refinement session provides value in a number of ways:

It ensures that the team start to look ahead at upcoming PBIs, reviewing and revising their

content;

It allows for any queries over PBI content to be raised and answered at an early stage;

It assists the team's understanding of product backlog requirements, allowing for the item to

be sized more accurately because refinement may remove some of the unknowns;

It may reduce the length of sprint planning sessions, as the team will have had the

opportunity to query/clarify product backlog item requirements prior to the session;

Tasks associated with the delivery of product backlog items can be recorded;

As refinement takes place, unnecessary product backlog items can be removed/deprioritized;

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Event Agenda

• What PBIs we are going to be discussed;

• Who (apart from usual participants) we need to be present on PBR;• What is expected from the participants;

• What questions from the previous PBR are answered and not-answered;

• What commitments were on participants from the previous webinar e.g. technical investigation;

• When and where the event takes place; • Will there be break(s) during the event.

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Required Participants

• Scrum Team:

• Development team;

• Product (proxy) owner;

• Scrum Master;

• Delivery managers;

• Domain experts;

• Third-party teams

representatives: data team,

integration team, build engineers,

etc.

• Business people

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Time-Box

• Start and finish in time;

• Limit time for each requirement discussion;

• Setup ground rules for cases when necessary

requirements are not investigated during defined

time;

• Extra time;

• Additional PBR session;

• Timing visualization, e.g. large clock or cooking clock

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Environment

• Prepare:

• Conference room;

• Video and audio bridge;

• Screen sharing (webex);

• Stationary;

• Make sure;

• Conference room is available in time;

• All equipment is up and running;

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Warm-up

• How I spent the weekend

• Name and description

• Saying “thank you”

• My Thing

• Association game. Management 3.0

cards

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Refinement of Product Backlog

• Presentation of PBIs

• Prioritization of PBIs • Prioritization matrix• Kano model

• Discussion of PBIs • World Café• Knowledge sharing

• Update of Product Backlog• Adding PBIs • Deleting PBIs• Changing PBIs

• Summarization • Mind mapping

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Prioritization Matrix

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KANO Model

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World Café

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Estimation Process

Affinity estimation

Planning poker

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Minutes of Meeting

• What PBIs were reviewed during PBR;

• What PBIs description was changed;

• What are the pending questions

• Who these questions address to;

• When these questions should be answered;

• What PBIs were finalized;

• What PBIs are missing details;

• What details are missed

• What assumptions we basing implementation approach on;

• What risks we know;

• Risk mitigation plan

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Follow-up Activities

• Conversations

• Calls

• Meetings

• Requirements update

• Preparation of additional documents

• Following of agreements

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