Backlog Grooming

Ken Schwaber generally advises that the team should dedicate five percent of its time (every Sprint) to preparing the backlog. This process is generally known as backlog “grooming”.

As a ScrumMaster, I always try to keep the team laser focused on the sprint. I recommend booking this backlog grooming session to include everyone from the team with the exception of the developers. At a minimum the product owner and ScrumMaster can hold this session; it's a great way to provide ongoing coaching to the product owner and nurture the relationship. Other roles (if they exist in the team) that I would include in backlog grooming are the lead architect/developer (one person representing the developers), the business analyst(s) and the tester(s).

Since I never book a meeting without an agenda, I would include the following items for backlog groomig:

• reviewing large stories and splitting them up into smaler stories that can fit a sprint
• creating new stories (this should not only hapen during the grooming session, it should be happening all the time)
• marking stories as "ready for sprint", these are already pointed and have final acceptance criteria defined
• if you are doing release planning; review the release burn down and decide if the team needs to have an additional story estimation session within this release

Since the key benefit of backlog grooming is preparing for sprint planning, I suggest scheduling it a couple of days before the sprint planning. This is set as a recurring meeting, just like the other ceremonies (daily scrum, sprint planning, sprint review and sprint retrospective). Although it's tempting to skip this eeting once in while, keep in mind that it's an investment towards the quality and effectiveness of your future sprint. If you o release planning (which I always recommend), this backlog grooming i also a great way to always keep the release in perspective.

If your sprint planning sessions seem to to take too long or there is constant arguing over semantics, then you should definitevely invest in backlog grooming.