Backlog Grooming

What is backlog grooming?

Backlog grooming, also known as backlog refinement or backlog maintenance, is the ongoing process of reviewing, refining and prioritizing items in the product backlog to ensure that it remains well-organized, up-to-date, and ready for your team to tackle.

The product backlog is a dynamic and prioritized list of ideas, features, enhancements, bug fixes, and other items representing the work that could be done on a product. 

That ‘could’ is an important distinction. A product backlog will include some ideas in their earliest stages (as well as ideas further up the list that are more thoroughly thought out and spec’d). These early-stage ideas might appear to have strategic alignment on the first assessment, hence they’re kept in the backlog.

But when they move through discovery, they’re found to be too much effort for not enough value, or not the best solution to solve the particular customer problem. It’s at that point that they will be removed from the product backlog through the process of backlog grooming. 

Therefore, the product backlog should always be a repository for the ideas worth exploring – those that could be done – and through ongoing refinement, those closer to the top will become the ideas that will be worked on.

Refining and triaging your backlog

Backlog grooming is the practice of regularly triaging this backlog, revising and updating to ensure that it aligns with the product vision and reflects the current priorities of the product team and stakeholders. A Product Manager can do this independently, or a backlog refinement meeting can be scheduled to make this more collaborative.

Once you have a well-groomed backlog, you can use this to inform your development backlog (also called a sprint backlog), pushing through ideas once they’re validated, spec’d, and ready for the tech team. This gives your development team a concise and well-considered plan to approach their next sprint.

On a side note, this is exactly what ProdPad enables Product teams to do – keeping their product backlog separate from the development backlog. This creates a space for strategic thinking and effective backlog refinement for the Product Manager, and ensures a clutter-free, organized backlog of fully spec’d tasks for the engineering team. 

What’s the difference between backlog grooming and backlog refinement?

Backlog grooming and backlog refinement are terms often used interchangeably, and their meanings generally overlap. In general, both terms refer to the ongoing process of managing and refining the product backlog.

However, the Agile Alliance has suggested a transition away from using the term ‘grooming’ due to the negative connotations associated with the word in recent years. Here at ProdPad, we prefer to use the term ‘refinement’, but many people still use the original term.

Why is backlog grooming important?

It might not be the most exciting job on a Product Manager’s list, but refining your product backlog is a crucial aspect of the role. It’s where you take the strategy and vision work you’ve done, and apply it to the actual product ideas you have in your pile. 

Regular and disciplined backlog grooming will ensure that you have:

• Enhanced visibility and transparency: Grooming your backlog, and moving valuable ideas onto your roadmap, provides visibility into the upcoming work, making it easier for the team and stakeholders to understand what features are in the pipeline and the time frame for addressing them.
• Adaptability to change: As market conditions, user requirements, and business priorities evolve, backlog refinement allows the product backlog to adapt accordingly. It ensures that the team is always working on the most valuable and relevant features.
• Continuous improvement: Regularly reviewing and refining the backlog encourages a culture of continuous improvement. Teams can learn from past experiences, make adjustments, and optimize their approach to delivering value.

Who is responsible for backlog refinement?

While the product owner or product manager usually takes the lead in prioritizing and grooming the backlog, input from the entire team is essential to ensure a well-rounded perspective on technical feasibility, dependencies, and alignment with the product vision.

Typically, it is only when items on the product backlog pass over to the development backlog that Scrum masters and development teams contribute to the refinement and grooming.

How do you groom your backlog?

Grooming a backlog is a structured and collaborative process that involves several key steps. It’s something that you’ll need to do again and again to ensure your product backlog remains relevant, well-defined, and aligned.

Roman Pichler, author of Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products That Customers Love, and Mike Cohn, CEO of Mountain Goat Software, proposed the concept of a ‘DEEP’ backlog:

• Detailed appropriately – Functional specs, requirements, and user stories on the product backlog that will be done soon need to be sufficiently well understood so that they can be completed in the coming sprint. Anything that won’t be worked on for a while should be described in less detail.
• Emergent – A product backlog is not static. It will change over time. As more is learned, user stories on the product backlog will be added, removed, or reprioritized.
• Prioritized – The product backlog should be sorted with the most valuable items at the top and the least valuable at the bottom. By always working in priority order, the team is able to maximize the value of the product or system being developed.
• Estimated – The product backlog is more than a list of all work to be done – it is also a useful planning tool. Because items further down the backlog are not as well understood (yet), the estimates associated with them will be less precise than estimates given items at the top. Estimation is normally the final step before an item passes from the product backlog to the development backlog.

How to refine your backlog

With aiming for a ‘DEEP’ backlog in mind, here’s a detailed guide on the steps you’ll need to take to groom your backlog effectively:

1. Prioritize – The Product Owner or Product Manager often takes the lead in prioritizing backlog items based on business value, customer feedback, and strategic goals. Consider stakeholders’ input to ensure alignment with broader organizational objectives.
2. Align with the roadmap: Ensure that the items in the product backlog align with the long-term product roadmap and strategic goals. Connect items in your backlog to their related initiatives on your roadmap that you’ll be working on Now, Next, and Later.
3. Refine items– Properly scope and spec out the items on your backlog. Review, refine, and break them down into smaller, actionable tasks during grooming sessions. Add or clarify details, requirements, related user stories, and acceptance criteria to enhance the team’s understanding of each item.
4. Estimate effort – The development team estimates the effort required to complete each backlog item. Estimation helps create a shared understanding of the complexity and workload associated with each item.
5. Manage dependencies – Identify and manage dependencies between backlog items. Discuss how these dependencies might impact the order in which you tackle tasks. Managing dependencies proactively ensures a logical and efficient sequence of work.
6. Define acceptance criteria – Define and refine acceptance criteria to ensure that the expected outcomes are well understood.
7. Assess risks – Identify and assess any potential risks associated with backlog items. This includes technical challenges, external dependencies, or uncertainties.
8. Continuously collaborate – Backlog refinement is a collaborative effort that involves ongoing communication and discussion. Regular sessions ensure that the entire team is on the same page.
9. Remove obsolete items – Items that are no longer relevant or aligned with your current goals need to be identified and removed from the backlog. This ensures that it remains focused on delivering value and doesn’t become cluttered with outdated tasks.
10. Regularly review and adjust – Backlog grooming is not a one-time activity. It should be conducted regularly, usually before sprint planning meetings, to keep the backlog up-to-date. The team continuously reviews and adjusts priorities based on changing business conditions, feedback, and project dynamics.
11. Document – Important decisions, changes, and details discussed during grooming sessions are documented for future reference. Documentation aids in maintaining a historical record of the backlog evolution and provides insights for future planning and analysis.
12. Incorporate stakeholder feedback – Incorporate feedback from stakeholders, customers, or end-users during grooming sessions. This ensures that the backlog aligns with the evolving needs and expectations of the intended audience.
13. Continuous discovery – Keep testing your assumptions. This is what allows you to continually refine your backlog by removing things items don’t hit their desired outcomes.

By following these steps, you can ensure that you have a well-groomed backlog, enabling a smoother, more predictable development process.

How often should you groom your backlog?

Product backlog grooming is done by the Product Manager at their own cadence. Often they are looking at backlog items that are some way from being ready for the sprint planning. They assess ideas from their earliest stages onwards, and make the calls on whether they are valuable and strategically aligned.

Common industry practice suggests that your product backlog grooming session should take place two to three days before the end of each sprint. However, exactly how often works for you will depend on how your team and business operate.