Backlog Refinement in Scrum, http://ScrumTrainingSeries.com/ Module 2

How Agile teams do continuous refinement of their Product Backlogs.  This covers User Stories, effort estimation (story points), splitting epics, etc.

Most Product Backlog Items (PBIs) initially need refinement because they are too large and poorly understood. Teams have found it useful to take a little time out of Sprint Execution — every Sprint — to help prepare the Product Backlog for the next Sprint Planning Meeting.

In the Backlog Refinement Meeting, the team estimates the amount of effort they would expend to complete items in the Product Backlog and provides other technical information to help the Product Owner prioritize them. (The team should collaborate together to produce one jointly-owned estimate for an item.) Large vague items are split and clarified, considering both business and technical concerns. Sometimes a subset of the team, in conjunction with the Product Owner and other stakeholders, will compose and split Product Backlog Items before involving the entire team in estimation.

A skilled Scrum Master can help the team identify thin vertical slices of work that still have business value, while promoting a rigorous definition of “done” that includes proper testing and refactoring.

It is common to write Product Backlog Items in User Story form. In this approach, oversized PBIs are called epics. Traditional development breaks features into horizontal tasks (resembling waterfall phases) that cannot be prioritized independently and lack business value from the customer’s perspective. This habit is hard to break.