Northern SPIRIT

h1. Backlog Grooming

*Definition:* Grooming (or refinement) is a meeting of the Scrum team in which the product backlog items are discussed and the next sprint planning is prepared.

Product grooming is critical in product management because it means keeping the backlog up to date and getting backlog items ready for upcoming sprints.

*Rules:*

# The product owner and team representatives arrange it in the mid-sprint time. In this case, planning and refinement meetings alternate but happen on the same day each week. That provides an effective rhythm for the entire team.

# The grooming involves splitting big items into smaller ones, rewriting backlog items to be more expressive, deleting obsolete or no more need items, and so on.

# The product owner and management team must estimate the velocity of the Sprint (how much can and should be accomplished within the time box) based on team schedules and capacity. By creating this estimate at the beginning of each Sprint rather than universally during the design stage, they can take advantage of valuable insights coming out of the previous Sprint’s retrospective and review meetings. Ultimately, creating a new Sprint velocity that accomplishes the necessary objectives efficiently with the resources on hand.

*Advantages of Product Backlog Refinement*

* Removing uncertainty and unknown facts of user stories increase the product’s efficiency.

* Backlog grooming identifies the dependencies within the team and helps to foresee risks.

* Permanent grooming meetings save time for the development team for further discussion during the sprint cycle because they give clarity to developers and testers about the requirements.

* Successful grooming leads to effective sprint planning.

* The grooming process gives product owners, managers, or business analysts more chances to enhance the requirements with more information if it’s required.