How to Facilitate Product Backlog Refinement Sessions
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This document provides guidance on facilitating effective Product Backlog Refinement sessions. It discusses that PBR is a process where the Scrum team reviews and revises product backlog items to provide more detail and clarity. It recommends having all Scrum team members participate. An agenda, required participants, time-boxing, environment setup, warmup activities, and techniques for prioritization and discussion are presented to help structure effective PBR sessions. Minutes and follow-up tasks are also important elements.
How to Facilitate Product Backlog Refinement Sessions
- 1. www.luxoft.com How to Facilitate Product Backlog Refinement Sessions Agile Practice
- 2. www.luxoft.com 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
- 3. www.luxoft.com 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.
- 4. www.luxoft.com 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;
- 5. www.luxoft.com 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.
- 6. www.luxoft.com 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
- 7. www.luxoft.com 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
- 8. www.luxoft.com 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;
- 9. www.luxoft.com Warm-up • How I spent the weekend • Name and description • Saying “thank you” • My Thing • Association game. Management 3.0 cards
- 10. www.luxoft.com 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
- 15. www.luxoft.com 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
- 16. www.luxoft.com Follow-up Activities • Conversations • Calls • Meetings • Requirements update • Preparation of additional documents • Following of agreements
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