The following entry is from the reality experience that I'm doing in the team project that is running with Agile.
For one Agile team, Backlog Grooming is one of the most important meeting that we should have. With that meeting, we can be able to understand what is our next plan for the product in the future, what should we do for that plan, discuss about the require works from the Backlog for the future plan, and make sure that those works are ready to bring up during the Spring Planning meeting.
One of the beautiful thing about Backlog Grooming is:
- We can make sure the priority of the user stories.
- We can control our backlog jobs better. So, it won't become a black hole.
But, there are some cases that many teams usually meet is that they usually start the discussion, the backlog check during the Backlog Grooming instead. For this one, it might be taking a lot of time of others as well, not a good practice from my perspective.
How to run the Backlog Grooming effectively?
Before the date for the Backlog Groomming, Team Lead and Project Manager will sit down together to overview the current works from the team project. After that, we will look up into the Backlog section from the management board to check again with:
- The current user stories need to focus on and prioritize it.
- If the works for the requires user stories are already defined from the Backlog.
After the meeting is done, Project Manager will prepare a document for Backlog Grooming note, in this document, will be contained with:
- Bullets of user stories that the team will be working on, likely focusing for the next sprint.
- List out the user stories by priority and then linking the user story ticket along with it.
Then, this document will be sent out to the team members. So that they can take a look on it to have an overview, an idea for their future works or have any questions as well for the future's works.
After everything is done, the team will start the Backlog Grooming as fast as possible since every members are already awared about the document which is provided before the meeting date. And, it also save everyone time as well.
