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Product Management vocabulary · Agile Delivery

Backlog refinement

Meaning in product management, with examples

nounCommon term

In product management, backlog refinement means: Regular work in which the product owner and the team review upcoming backlog items, clarify them, split large ones and estimate them so they are ready for a sprint.

In Turkish: backlog iyileştirme, iş listesi düzenleme

How it is used

Often a weekly one-hour meeting. It used to be called backlog grooming; refinement is now the preferred word. A good refinement session ends with the top of the backlog ready, so sprint planning goes quickly.

Example sentences

  1. Let's discuss the search stories in backlog refinement on Thursday.

  2. We skipped backlog refinement last week, and sprint planning took three hours.

Common collocations

  • backlog refinement session
  • hold backlog refinement
  • refinement meeting
  • backlog grooming
  • backlogAn ordered list of all the work a product team might do, such as features, improvements and bug fixes, with the most important items at the top.
  • user storyA short description of a feature written from the user's point of view, usually in the form “As a [type of user], I want [goal] so that [benefit].”
  • story pointsA unit that agile teams use to estimate the relative size of a user story, combining effort, complexity and uncertainty instead of counting hours.
  • sprintA fixed, short period, usually one to four weeks, in which a team builds and finishes an agreed set of work before planning the next one.
  • product ownerIn Scrum, the person accountable for the product backlog: deciding its order, making items clear and making sure the team works on the most valuable things.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Agile Delivery

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