TL; DR: Product Backlog Refinement First Principles
The Product Backlog refinement is a continuous process to create actionable Product Backlogs, enabling a Scrum Team to run Sprint Plannings at a moment’s notice. Consequently, refinement is about creating alignment among all team members about the Why, the What, the How, and probably even the Who regarding the upcoming work for the Scrum team’s Product Goal. As a result, Product Backlog refinement is a critical success factor as it drastically increases the team’s capability to deliver valuable Increments regularly.
The following 14 first principles describe in broad strokes the foundation of a successful approach to refinement.
TL; DR: 27 Product Backlog and Refinement Anti-Patterns
Scrum is a tactical framework to build products, provided you identify what is worth making in advance. But even after a successful product discovery phase, you may struggle to create the right thing in the right way if your Product Backlog is not up to the job—garbage in, garbage out. The following article points to 27 common Product Backlog anti-patterns – including the Product Backlog refinement process – limiting your Scrum team’s success.
TL; DR: The Oversized Product Backlog Problem — When Noise Interferes with Signal
There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Given that Scrum is a framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. Neglecting the critical Scrum artifact for continuous value creation is one of the common Scrum anti-patterns. If your Scrum Team strives to make your customers’ lives easier Sprint after Sprint, beware of the oversized Product Backlog.
📺 Join me and explore the consequences of inadequate Product Backlog management in less than three minutes.
Update: I am running a poll on LinkedIn—join the voting: “What reasons have you observed why Scrum Teams stuff their Product Backlogs — a very costly pattern that diminishes ROI and value creation?”
There are plenty of failure possibilities with Scrum. Given that Scrum is a framework with a reasonable yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone. However, creating Product Increments that “over-deliver” in scope or quality — also known as gold-plating — with regard to the previous refinement agreement demonstrates that the Developers need to acquire a more entrepreneurial mindset and embrace their responsibility.
Join me and explore the reasons and the consequences of this Sprint anti-pattern in 109 seconds.
There are plenty of Product Owner failures. Given that Scrum is a framework with a precise and concise yet short “manual,” this effect should not surprise anyone.
Explore with me three widespread examples of how Product Owners fail their team in three short video clips, totaling 6 minutes and 9 seconds.
A few weeks, Scrum.org hosted a webinar on Product Backlog anti-patterns with me, which left several questions unanswered as we ran out of time. Hence please find following my answers to the additional 18 questions I could not answer during the webinar Product Backlog anti-patterns Q&A session.
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