Personal HygieneTHE IMPORTANCE OF GOOD GROOMING HABITS

Backlog grooming meeting a.k.a. Backlog refinement a.k.a. Backlog estimation a.k.a. Story time

Backlog grooming meeting What – Time-boxed meeting to review candidate stories for upcoming sprints

Why – Help the Product Owner get the Backlog ready for the next sprint planning meeting

When – 1-2 times per sprint (about 1 hour per sprint-week total) Who – Product Owner, Scrum Master, Dev, Test, UX, SMEs (if needed), i.e. the whole team

INVEST

IndependentNegotiableValuableEstimableSmallTestable

Planning PokerModified Fibonacci

Planning PokerT-Shirt Sizes

Too much grooming

What makes for good grooming?

Good grooming is about understanding what you are going to do and how you are going to do it.

It is not about estimating.

What makes for good grooming? A consistent vision

◦ How does this story align with the roadmap objectives? Strategic objectives?

◦ Does it stand alone?◦ What is the priority of the story?

Team Engagement◦ Everyone participates in the discussion◦ Everyone estimates

Honesty◦ What are the open issues/known unknowns?◦ What are the risks?

Flexibility◦ Stories will change, get added, get removed, get

pushed

Safety◦ There are no stupid questions◦ Estimates are not commitments

TRUST

I love it when a plan comes together

Be Prepared!

Pre-groomingGROOMING BEFORE THE GROOM

The Pre-Grooming Team

Product OwnerWhat do I really want?

EngineeringHow can we break things down?

How big is this?

QA/TestHow complex is this to test?

How big is this?

Subject Matter ExpertsHelp clarify what the customer wants

When it is not important to make a decision, it is important not to make a decision

YAGNI

Y’Ain’t Gonna Need It

Maximize the work not done

Please excuse the long letter, I didn’t have time to make it short.

– Blaise Pascal

Not every story needs to get to the full group

Not every story is ready to get to the full group

Definition of Ready Why – What are the stakeholders or the business trying to achieve? What is their goal or outcome? What is the business context?

What – What is the outcome vision? What is the end result of the user story?

How – What is the strategy to implement the user story? Is the story small enough (i.e., story points versus team velocity)?

Definition of Ready Acceptance criteria Out-of-scope criteria UX (wireframes, comps, description – whatever your team needs for the story)

Appropriate size Identify open issues

Definition of Ready Depends on how close you are to working on a story Roadmap – high level hand-wavy

Current sprint◦ Agreed upon level of acceptance criteria

◦ Does dev feel like they have enough detail to build it◦ Does test feel like they have enough detail to test it◦ Is the UX defined well enough to build

◦ Is it granular enough◦ Is it tied to the roadmap, or is it a one-off◦ What type of story is it? Maintenance? Feature? Bug?

Upcoming sprint◦ Somewhere in the middle

Definition of Ready Not necessarily 100%...close enough to be confident in committing to the story in a sprint

Reduce the number of necessary conversations during the sprint What is your team comfortable with committing to?

Definition of Ready – Why should I care?

Avoids wasting time, both when a story is started and after a few days' work (if more information is needed to complete the story, the work on it stops).

Helps the team identify when a team member becomes overwhelmed.

Reduces requirements churn in development.

Keeps the team members accountable to each other.

Breaking down stories Stories should be able to be completed within a few minutes or hours

Fewer acceptance criteria per story

Development is easier because the stories are narrowly focused

Testing is easier because there is less to test

Easier to identify bottlenecks in your system

Much higher overall team utilization

Easier to identify what not to do

only have meaningful conversations

Other Techniques

Personas Help you understand user segments

User-centric design

Discovered, not fabricated

Personas ≠ Roles◦ 1+ persona per role◦ 1+ role per persona

Affinity Estimation Get through a lot of stories quickly

Works well for mature teams

Good initial estimate, not so good for accuracy

The BenefitsOF GROOMING WELL

The benefits of good grooming Less need for upfront spec work

Faster time-to-market

Stable velocity

Predictability

Transparency

Improved team morale

Better cohesion

Meaningful change management

http://scrumtrainingseries.com/BacklogRefinementMeeting/BacklogRefinementMeeting.htm

Ian Garrisonian.garrison@equifax.comhttp://itsnotrocketscience.me