REFINEMENT -1- From Idea to User Story

Summary: Covering the Refinement process in which the Product Owner (PO) clarifies backlog items before preparing them for planning, together with the TIMEBOX concept and the principles of managing time efficiently, this post describes the first stage on the way from idea to user story.

Product Owner (PO) — as the name suggests, Product Ownership is a critical responsibility. What does someone who takes ownership do? They take very good care of it. They think about its future, polish it, keep it clean.

They have 2 key responsibilities: 1- Prioritization, 2- Increasing and optimizing value.

The Product Backlog is like the PO’s child… They care for it, play with it, tend to it, look at it, then look again… 😉

Before the backlog items (PBIs) are discussed in Planning, the PO is hard at work making sure they are spotless, clear and understandable. Take a look:

SPRINT/Iteration Planning

Because the Planning meeting is about to begin, the team will ask a lot of questions, understand the work, estimate the cost against the value, and decide whether the work fits into the Sprint/Iteration.

The more mature the user stories (User Story) the PO brings to the table are, and the more clearly they are communicated along with the expectations (INVEST & SMART), the more productive the meeting will be.

By the way, how much time do you spend as a team on each backlog item, on average?

Uh-oh, the meeting has started, we’ve already spent half an hour on item 1 and the heated debate is still going.. Oops… We had 12 more items waiting. 😉

TIMEBOX

The TIMEBOX concept in Scrum was introduced to manage exactly this. How much value can you fit into a given block of time, dear human? Because nothing more precious than “Time” has yet been found in human life.

That’s why I’m very afraid of stealing other people’s time.

When 2 hours have passed and you hit an “oh, and there are these too” moment, what do you do?

Stop? Or carry on?

The straight answer: (Hard, but) Stop. Don’t do it! (Another learning moment has arrived.)

You couldn’t finish the important topics within the expected TIMEBOX. Admit it, you fell! There’s no shame in that.

So why? And what can we do about it? Enter the Retro. No, no, don’t wait for the Retro two weeks from now. Talk about it right there and then while it’s fresh, or tomorrow in the daily.. just don’t let it cool off too long.

Don’t push everything to the Retro!

“Agility” is our thing precisely in the hard moments, not the easy ones. We need to be “agile” in everything. Try, fail, make mistakes, we say.

Even when we fall, even when we get it wrong, we need to fall in an agile way. So it doesn’t hurt too much.

That’s why it always comes back to having an “Agile Mindset” first.

Caution! Slippery Floor!

If topics drag on, planning sessions take hours, dailies run past 15 minutes, and meetings pile up one after another for no good reason — caution, slippery floor! You could fall at any moment!

This may be a sign that PREPARATION and REFINEMENT are not being done — in fact, it’s pretty much certain 😉

Coming into planning, the Product Owner (PO) dresses the items they care for like their own children in the User Stories that suit them best, just as they would dress their child in their finest outfit.

A size the team can understand and work on within a Sprint is enough to get started. It arrives about 60-70% ready… (coarse-grained PBI)

Looking at nicely dressed Backlog items, the team’s hearts soften, faces light up, and with the purest of feelings they start thinking about HOW the outing will go and how to make these children happy. In the end, that outfit becomes most valuable. Other children wear it too…

We call the PO’s work of maturing, cleaning up and shaping these backlog items into coarse-grained form “Refinement“. For this, “Refinement” meetings are held before Planning and the process is completed with the right people.

If you’d like to take a look at the first part of this process, how a User Story takes shape from an Idea to a Backlog item (PBI), the flow below may help you.

This is stage 1 of the Refinement step. Think about it a little; more to follow …

(IDEA to User Story Flow Chart)

Ref: https://www.van-rooden.nl/blog/2016/02/24/product-backlog-refinement-explained-13/

Enterprise Agile Coach

Erkan Sarıkaya

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the two key responsibilities of the Product Owner (PO)?

According to the post, the PO’s two core responsibilities are: 1) Prioritization, 2) Increasing/optimizing value.

What is a TIMEBOX?

TIMEBOX is a concept used in Scrum to manage how much valuable work you can fit into a given block of time.

What is Refinement?

It is the PO’s work of maturing, clarifying and shaping backlog items (PBIs) into coarse-grained form; this process is completed through “Refinement” meetings held before Planning.

Related Posts

• Refinement -2- Maturing the Backlog
• Prioritization! According to Whom? Based on What?
• Why Story Point? (SP)

Author: Erkan Sarıkaya — Enterprise Agile Coach, founder of GONEX. He writes on enterprise agile transformation, Scrum and agile leadership coaching. You can learn more on the About Us page and read his other posts.