Backlog grooming: How to effectively manage your product backlog

What is product backlog grooming?

Backlog grooming, also called backlog refinement, is an ongoing, coordinated effort to ensure that the contents of your product backlog are a good match for your team, given their current workload. 

If creating a backlog is like writing a to-do list, then grooming is like reviewing, editing, and rearranging it.  

Modern scrum product teams run through backlog refinement at least once during every sprint. This helps them stay aligned as a team and work more efficiently.

Backlog refinement usually includes the following:

• Adding, removing, or revising user stories to be clearer and better aligned with user needs 

• Prioritizing and re-ordering user stories based upon those changes 

• Splitting user stories to fit the scope of an upcoming sprint

• Tidying the backlog to ensure it is a current, dynamic document 

• Showcasing a product’s purpose and goals so that all relevant stakeholders stay aligned 

Why is backlog refinement so important? 

Backlog grooming ensures teams are using up-to-date information to set priorities—especially when it comes to team sprints. At its core, it’s a type of task management for an agile workflow. 

Backlog refinement is usually handled within workflow-management software like Airtable. When done well, the simple act of updating and refining your backlog prevents your product and scrum team from wasting time. 

For example, imagine if you tried to work through sprints without doing backlog refinement first. You would run the risk of having your team working on outdated tasks, handling them in the wrong order, or coming to a standstill when they need more clarity. 

How is backlog grooming different from sprint planning?

Backlog grooming and sprint planning are parts of an agile approach, but aren't exactly the same. They typically involve the same people (product owners, product managers, and developers). 

Sprints are a term in agile methodology meaning short periods—usually one to two weeks—when a team completes a set amount of work. Sprint planning is a collaborative meeting, run by the product owner and team, to decide which backlog items go into the next sprint.

If your backlog is updated, your team will have a solid foundation for sprint planning.  

Who's in charge of backlog refinement?

No single person is responsible for backlog refinement. It's an ongoing activity that everyone from the product owner, product manager, and development team can—and should—do at any time. 

However, a backlog-refinement meeting is a different matter. This specific meeting tends to happen two to three days before the end of a sprint, and is run by a project manager, product managers, or scrum leader.

No matter who’s leading, running an effective backlog grooming session means:

• Making sure all relevant team members can attend

• Creating and executing a meeting agenda

• Keeping the meeting on track and as short as possible

• Encouraging everyone to participate

• Reviewing all backlog items and relevant metrics

• Writing and revising user stories

• Updating priorities and estimates

• Tracking action items and sending follow-ups 

Who should attend backlog-refinement meetings? 

Attendees at backlog-refinement meetings typically include team members who have critical details about user stories, estimates, and items to prioritize. Those can include:

• Product owner(s)

• Scrum master

• Development team

Because collaboration is so vital to effective backlog management, you need to implement processes and tools that keep everyone on the same page about progress. Using software that reflects changes in real-time, like Airtable, is considered a best practice among successful product teams.

Backlog refinement best practices and helpful tools 

At the top of the list for backlog grooming best practices? Regularity. 

An important first step is to set a regular cadence for backlog grooming. Making this a collaborative effort with your whole product team. Hold a grooming session at least once per sprint (in preparation for the next sprint) and pull in everyone involved in the product's development. 

There are more ways to help your team make the best of backlog management. Roman Pichler's DEEP acronym offers an engaging summary:

• Detailed appropriately: give your product backlog's higher-priority items more detail than the lower-priority ones 

• Estimated: the product owner should ensure all items in the backlog have some estimate the time (or effort) required, whether that’s story points or days

• Emergent: a product backlog is never static; expect to add, remove, or modify items on the backlog based on emerging feedback from customers and users 

• Prioritized: put the most important items at the top and do those things first

Oh, and one more recommendation: use the right tools for the job. 

Just as there are tools to help with high-level project management, there are also excellent tools for your product and backlog management. A relational database like Airtable helps you manage your product development workflow, keep your backlog items and data up-to-date, and provide your stakeholders with custom views to suit their needs.

Better backlog refinement with Airtable

Every sprint brings a new set of challenges for a product team. While rising to those challenges is part of what makes product management fun, it's also hard work bringing a product vision to life. 

Backlog refinement is one of those small rituals along the way that pays dividends in the end. It lets your team work quickly and efficiently and brings managers peace of mind. 

Now that you know more about backlog grooming, it’s time to check if your current tool stack makes backlog management easier. If it doesn't measure up, check out Airtable. With Airtable, you can create the perfect agile workflow for your backlog, or plan sprints, standups, and more, in a single relational database. Kick things off with our product templates, or learn how to design a backlog within your existing roadmap.