Backlog Grooming - Agile Coach (2019)

In this video, you’ll learn how to how to groom your backlog along with tips from the Jira product team for how to have a successful sprint planning meeting.

The backlog grooming meeting is something many developers will cringe at because it involves holding a meeting before the meeting. But good news: developers may be excused from it!

0:43 Learn how Atlassian plans its backlog grooming

Make sure to watch our whole series to see how backlog grooming and sprint planning come together to make scrum work. Don’t forget to subscribe to our channels for the latest videos.

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[temisansagay]

It's so unfortunate what the world has come to. All she did was to share the Sprint Planning techniques that work for them at Atlassian. All that's left is for you to pick your "meat" and discard the "bones" in the video - which by the way is entirely subjective. Placing condescending comments just to prove your intellectual superiority is totally off-point, and unnecessary, especially where one of the big focus points of scrum is RESPECT. And to those saying they wasted minutes of their lives watching this, shame on you all. How about commending the effort of others? If you knew it all, you wouldn't be scouring YouTube looking for answers.

[NdubisiOnuora]

The details are extremely light here for what a backlog grooming meeting is. Can you give an example and walk us through how to conduct the meeting with some FAQs and gotchas?

[thought-provoker]

How does the Product Owner and/or Scrum Master know what or when things are "enough"?


Isn't the entire point of refinement so that developers have time to ask the questions which take time to research so that the plan can focus on how to create the solution, rather than defining the problem?


Refinement isn't even a "meeting" in Scrum - it's an ongoing activity that can take as much as 10% of the time (i.e. up to 4h per week) where developers familiarize themselves with upcoming problem statements and do a bit of goalpost research so that they actually know what they're talking about during Planning.


Source? Scrum Guide.



Oh, and most of all - the Product Owner isn't a relabelled business analyst, but rather the person making business relevant decisions.
Analysis, in a Scrum context, is a team skill. Even though the role is called, "Developer", the responsibility of bringing backlog items into a state where developers are comfortable with it can be delegated from the Product Owner to the team - and that's a good thing, because it means that the decision to determine what's needed rests with the same people who actually have outcome responsibility later.

[WD.]

So if I’m an APM, why am I having to run backlog refinement meetings instead of PO?

[gautamdeusa]

A bit unrelated question: If PO is not writing the user stories, who is responsible for actually writing the stories on Backlog? Business analyst or Scrum Master? Thanks in advance.

[MarceloLopezJr]

Not sure where to start to ....nevermind...I do know.

It's called...No.

It's pretty clear that Atlassian has missed not only the purpose, spirit and practicality of Backlog Refinement, but the reasoning behind it.

And "excusing" developers from this is like excusing developers from learning more about the product or contributing to the possible betterment of the Product Owners decision making. This...is how Sprint Planning events become day long events.

Never mind that the Scrum Master isn't formally responsible for refining the backlog. Unless we're taking about helping the PO find better backlog management techniques.... But that's not the breadth of refinement either.

[donahn]

This is really not SCRUM or Agile... and I agree to Greg H. comments.

[nntun]

..wow!..software developers were not nasty in the good old days..where did they pick that up... :)..??..if you feel you need to be in the premeeting just voice up..thats all..relaxxxx..

[katerinastasik]

thanks for wasting 2 minutes of my life

[marcosmelhuish]

Hmmm check out 1:03 I think the subtitle needs "refinement" I think the word "toss" needs to be replaced with "task" 
As a viewer of the backlog grooming
I want the word toss replaced with task in the subtitle
So I can stop chuckling to myself like a big kid😊