Like a garden growing wild when left unattended for too long, the product backlog becomes unwieldy when it’s neglected. The backlog needs regular attention and care; it needs to be carefully managed, or groomed. Grooming the product backlog is an ongoing process that ensures that the product backlog is DEEP. It comprises the steps listed below. These are not necessarily carried out in the order stated.
Although the product owner is responsible for making sure that the product backlog is in good shape, grooming is teamwork in Scrum. Items are discovered and described, prioritized, decomposed, and refined by the entire Scrum team – Scrum allocates up to 10% of the team’s availability for grooming activities. Don’t forget to involve stakeholders including customers, users, marketing, service and sales as appropriate.
Grooming the product backlog collaboratively creates a dialogue within the Scrum team and between the team and the stakeholders. It removes the divide between “the business” and “the techies.” It eliminates wasteful handoffs, and avoids miscommunication and misalignment. Requirements are no longer handed off to the team; the team members co-author them. This increases the clarity of the requirements, leverages the Scrum team’s collective knowledge and creativity, and creates buy-in and joint ownership.
When do the grooming activities take place? Some teams like to do a bit of grooming after their Daily Scrum. Others prefer weekly grooming sessions or a longer grooming workshop toward the end of the sprint. Grooming activities also take place in the sprint review meeting when the Scrum team and the stakeholders discuss the way forward; new backlog items are identified and old ones are removed.
Make sure you establish a grooming process so that the activities are carried out reliably, for instance, by starting with weekly grooming workshops. A well-groomed backlog is a prerequisite for a successful sprint planning meeting. The backlog now contains the right items and its high-priority items are ready for consumption in the upcoming sprint.
Find out more about product backlog grooming in my book Agile Product Management with Scrum: Creating Products that Customers Love, or attend one of my product backlog grooming workshops.
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