The Scrum Guide describes Product Backlog Refinement as “the act of adding detail, estimates, and order to items in the Product Backlog.” New and even experienced agile teams often underestimate the importance of well-groomed stories and find the process of reviewing numerous stories, breaking them down, and estimating the work chaotic and cumbersome. As this happens, teams push problems downstream into sprint planning meetings—or worse, into the sprint. Becky Moshenek shares how, working with the Product Owner, they create stories for backlog items to be reviewed. The stories include a link to the actual item, tasks outlining how and what to review, and a deadline for a future refinement meeting. These become refinement stories that are assigned to team members and brought into a sprint for an allotted ten percent of their time. Coordinating the team’s effort around backlog refinement in this way has cut meeting times, increased team involvement, produced more polished items, and made for a happier team.

1. AW7
Concurrent Session
11/11/15 1:30pm
“Product Backlog Refinement: Grooming Your
User Stories”
Presented by:
Becky Moshenek
ANCILE Solutions
Brought to you by:
340 Corporate Way, Suite 300, Orange Park, FL 32073
888-268-8770 · 904-278-0524 · info@techwell.com · www.techwell.com

2. Becky Moshenek
ANCILE Solutions
Becky Moshenek is a certified ScrumMaster for ANCILE, a provider of best-in-class learning and
performance support software. She currently works on ANCILE’s largest and most complex product which
is used by Fortune 100 companies for their enterprise-wide training and productivity software. As ANCILE
progresses from waterfall to agile, Becky provides support for the quality assurance and development
teams. She has more than fifteen years of professional experience with the software development
lifecycle, working with both large government infrastructures and smaller start-up projects. Becky also runs
a local gym franchise in South Carolina with her husband, Michael.

3. 9/16/2015
1
Becky Moshenek
Backlog Refinement –
Grooming Your User Stories

4. 9/16/2015
2
How long can
this meeting go
on?
I only
looked at
Story #1
I’m
unfamiliar
with the
code.
Let’s just estimate
it at 8pts. and
move on.
I only looked at
Story #1 and #2
as well.
Why don’t they
understand the
Acceptance
Criteria
I’m new, I
better just
keep quiet.
I could meet
with some
folks one-on –
one.
We could pair
some new
people with
more
experienced
people.
Each time we
discuss the
item it will
become better
refined.
Let’s create Refinement
Stories!

5. 9/16/2015
3

6. 9/16/2015
4

7. 9/16/2015
5

8. 9/16/2015
6

9. 9/16/2015
7
Hope the pairs
are working
closely
together.
Hope the PO
is not
overwhelmed.

10. 9/16/2015
8

11. 9/16/2015
9

12. 9/16/2015
10

13. 9/16/2015
11
Q & A
Becky Moshenek
Scrum Master
ANCILE Solutions, Inc.
Becky.Moshenek@ancile.com