Let's take a step back and describe the backlog that exists in every product before we go into the backlog grooming ritual. Simply said, it's a set of features and functions that your product requires to fulfil its mission. As the number of consumers that use your product grows, those features accumulate. As a result, it's a "living" list that must be maintained on a regular basis to avoid exploding.
The process of going through the backlog items and maintaining a list of new additions, bug fixes, and enhancements is known as backlog grooming (or refinement). It comprises, among other things:
Grooming the backlog is best done as part of a SCRUM team meeting. A good mix of development leads, engineers, quality assurance, and the product owner should be present. The PO should be present at all times during backlog grooming; after all, they have the final say on the product's direction. Engineers, both frontend and backend, must be present since they provide the technical insights required to enhance issues that must be prioritised.
It's usually held near the end of a sprint to make sure the backlog is ready for the next. A good Product Owner, on the other hand, does not wait for the grooming meeting to arrive before grooming the product backlog to keep it up to date and make their team's lives simpler. After all, they're the ideal individuals to determine what's still important in terms of the product's direction.
Grooming the backlog should take no more than 1.5 hours. If you're doing sprint cycles every four weeks, you might require three hours overall. Make sure to build an openness with your team so that you can stop a topic from going off on a tangent or veering away from the main point.
Because the PO and the team are active participants in the discussion, the Scrum Master can facilitate the backlog grooming meeting. If a Scrum Master is not available or the team has reached a specific degree of maturity, the PO might direct the meeting with the support of a development lead or team member.
The backlog grooming meeting should be regarded as sacred since it guarantees that your stories are up to date, that duplicates are removed, that missing requirements are identified, that queries are answered promptly, and that you are prepared for the next sprint. It assists you in increasing efficiency by eliminating pointless talks and spending time in meetings when you could be building something instead.
Longer does not always imply better. Don't be alarmed if you have a minor backlog. It most likely indicates that you are focusing on the most important things and maintaining a high degree of concentration. It also implies that if you allow it to grow unchecked, objects would never see the light of day. So why not close an issue now rather than months later?
If you utilise JIRA correctly, it may be a really useful tool. Making sure that statuses are always updated and that comment to represent the current state of affairs is provided can assist everyone, but especially your team, in being more efficient. They'll be able to pick up where someone else left off and save you time by not having to research something you already know the solution to.
When you're in the backlog view, a decent summary can help you remember what the problem is about so you don't have to go through each issue one by one. It also allows you to quickly review and see if the tale you were discussing yesterday was actually written or if it is still on your to-do list.
Regardless of who your user is, it's critical that you include a user story, create clear acceptance criteria, connect relevant drawings, explain potential translations, and keep track of everything. All of this aids in smoother product development, more efficiency, and the ability to trace what you've already worked on/tested and the results a few months down the road.
Epics are a concept that has been misapplied numerous times. An epic is a vast body of work that can be divided into several smaller pieces and produced in multiple sprints. They should not be utilised as coloured labels to organise the backlog or introduce a new filtering method. If you want to improve your estimation of the development work required for your product, having 2–3 reference stories with high, medium, and low estimation assigned to them is a smart approach to start. If you're having trouble estimating a new narrative and aren't sure, consider whether it's more complicated than one of your reference stories.
Whether it's bugs, small jobs, stories, or spikes, it's critical to estimate them because if you don't, you can find up spending half of your sprint investigating or trying to solve a bug. Because you didn't assign an estimation, you won't be able to display what you worked on in your reports afterwards.
Create some sprints with a prospective aim instead of your current, running sprint and the complete backlog underneath it. Your quarterly roadmap plan might help you come up with goals. In this manner, you can begin allocating early tickets to those sprints and roughly estimate whether you are committing to more deliverables than your team is capable of handling.
When someone approaches a PO with a suggestion or the team with an improvement, there's always the temptation to remark, "I'll file a ticket." This provides the stakeholder with the false impression that it will be completed soon, and it gives you the pleasure of buying some time. Instead, consider whether this is something that will be done soon and provide direct feedback and reasoning, such as "It is not part of our direction for the next couple of months" or explain why you do not believe it should be pursued.
Your to-do list isn't a wish list for someday. If you've been putting off prioritizing a ticket for a while and it's been there for more than 6 months, there's a strong chance it'll stay there for another year. So why don't you close it now and save yourself the trouble of having to go through this again in a few months?