Presentation to my webinar on Product Backlog Refinement sessions facilitation.

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How to Facilitate Product
Backlog Refinement Sessions
Agile Practice

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Introduction
Svetlana Mukhina
ICAgile ICP, ICP-ATF, ICP-BVA, PSM I
Agile and Career Coach at Luxoft Agile Practice
Experience: 12+ years in IT, Project and department management,
Computer Linguistics, Technical Writing, Quality Assurance
Interests: Project management, Agile transformation, Career and
performance coaching, Psychology
Hobbies: Horse riding, music, poker, travelling

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Product Backlog Refinement Process
What
PBR is the process through which product backlog items are
reviewed by the Scrum team and revised, providing more detail and
ensuring that there is greater clarity in the requirements for that
item: acceptance criteria, diagrams (architectural, process flow, UI
designs, etc.), example data, test cases.
Who
All members of the Scrum team should be involved in product
backlog refinement. This ensures that the whole team understands
what is required from each product backlog item that may be taken
into a sprint.
When
PBR should be an ongoing process. However, some teams find it
useful to have a planned mid-sprint session that allows for product
backlog items that are candidates for the next sprint to be
discussed.

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Why to Do Product Backlog Refinement
A product backlog refinement session provides value in a number of ways:
 It ensures that the team start to look ahead at upcoming PBIs, reviewing and revising their content;
 It allows for any queries over PBI content to be raised and answered at an early stage;
 It assists the team's understanding of product backlog requirements, allowing for the item to be sized
more accurately because refinement may remove some of the unknowns;
 It may reduce the length of sprint planning sessions, as the team will have had the opportunity to
query/clarify product backlog item requirements prior to the session;
 Tasks associated with the delivery of product backlog items can be recorded;
 As refinement takes place, unnecessary product backlog items can be removed/deprioritized;

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Event Agenda
• What PBIs we are going to be discussed;
• Who (apart from usual participants) we need to be present on PBR;
• What is expected from the participants;
• What questions from the previous PBR are answered and not-answered;
• What commitments were on participants from the previous webinar e.g. technical investigation;
• When and where the event takes place;
• Will there be break(s) during the event.

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Required Participants
• Scrum Team:
• Development team;
• Product (proxy) owner;
• Scrum Master;
• Delivery managers;
• Domain experts;
• Third-party teams representatives:
data team, integration team, build
engineers, etc.
• Business people

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Time-Box
• Start and finish in time;
• Limit time for each requirement discussion;
• Setup ground rules for cases when necessary requirements
are not investigated during defined time;
• Extra time;
• Additional PBR session;
• Timing visualization, e.g. large clock or cooking clock

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Environment
• Prepare:
• Conference room;
• Video and audio bridge;
• Screen sharing (webex);
• Stationary;
• Make sure;
• Conference room is available in time;
• All equipment is up and running;

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Warm-up
• How I spent the weekend
• Name and description
• Saying “thank you”
• My Thing
• Association game. Management 3.0 cards

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Refinement of Product Backlog
• Presentation of PBIs
• Prioritization of PBIs
• Prioritization matrix
• Kano model
• Discussion of PBIs
• World Café
• Knowledge sharing
• Update of Product Backlog
• Adding PBIs
• Deleting PBIs
• Changing PBIs
• Summarization
• Mind mapping

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Prioritization Matrix

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KANO Model

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World Café

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Estimation Process
Affinity estimation
Planning poker

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Minutes of Meeting
• What PBIs were reviewed during PBR;
• What PBIs description was changed;
• What are the pending questions
• Who these questions address to;
• When these questions should be answered;
• What PBIs were finalized;
• What PBIs are missing details;
• What details are missed
• What assumptions we basing implementation approach on;
• What risks we know;
• Risk mitigation plan

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Follow-up Activities
• Conversations
• Calls
• Meetings
• Requirements update
• Preparation of additional documents
• Following of agreements

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