Lean from the Trenches

Why We Moved Backlog Grooming Out of the Sprint Planning Meeting

After doing a few sprint planning meetings, we noticed that backlog grooming took quite long, and sometimes the sprint planning meeting felt hurried as a result. We wanted to keep the meeting timeboxed and focused.

So, recently we’ve started doing backlog grooming separately, before the sprint planning meeting. Typically, a few days before the sprint planning meeting, one of the requirements analysts will have an informal conversation with a developer and a tester to discuss an upcoming feature. As a result of the conversation, that feature would be broken down, estimated, and given an acceptance test.

We still do some grooming during the sprint planning meeting, but we prefer ...