To know what backlog grooming is, let’s understand what is backlog first. A product backlog is a list of existing and new features, bug fixes, infrastructure changes, and other activities that a team needs to deliver to achieve the desired output.

Backlog grooming or backlog refinement means when the items on the product backlog are reviewed and prioritized so that the highest priority items are ready for delivery. The term “backlog grooming” was described by Kane Mar in the year 2008. The backlog grooming is scheduled regularly and includes the following tasks:

• Checking on user stories that are old and irrelevant
• Prioritizing user stories and giving them estimates
• Giving new estimates to items due to new priorities
• Splitting user stories based on priorities and assigning low priority user stories for the next iteration.

Conducted by – The backlog grooming is collectively carried out by the product owners, project managers, scrum masters, and the development team who discuss and create real-time estimates.

When to Schedule? – The backlog grooming is conducted two days before the end of the on-going sprint. This helps the team to plan for the activities for the upcoming sprint. Out of the total project time, it is recommended to assign 10% of the time to backlog grooming activities for successful project delivery.

Building Jira Backlog Using Work Breakdown Structure

We can use to Jira tool to build the product backlog and into that, we can explore the Work breakdown Structure (WBS) for backlog grooming sessions. The WBS helps to break larger projects into smaller and manageable items. The Work Breakdown structure is not a native functionality of Jira but we can use them via Atlassian apps which come with Work breakdown Structure Gantt-Chart. The following are the important steps to follow for the backlog grooming sessions:

• Step 1 Develop Roadmap

• Step 2 Review the Roadmap

• Step 3 Product Backlog Grooming

• Step 4 Sprint Planning and Implementation

• Step 5 Prioritise Issues

1. Show the priorities tab on the left menu
2. It shows the description for each priority
3. This showed by whom an issue is used by
4. This shows the “add priority” tab.

So a backlog groomings helos to create a product backlog with the most relevant and high priority tasks. This backlog is designed keeping in mind that it aligns well with the project goals set at the conception stage.
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