Episode 108 – The Grooming Habit

Everyone loves retrospectives. This is where we get to improve. Everyone loves demos… Because this is where we get to show off our finished work to the customer in waiting.

But nobody ever mentions backlog grooming as their favourite scrum ceremony. But I think it should be.

Often done poorly, grooming is the refining work that allows a backlog to remain current, relevant…and agile

Proper grooming can eliminate waste by keeping low priority items low

Proper grooming allows us to maximize the time for development, testing and other meaningful work – rather than asking for clarifications mid-sprint, or building the wrong thing

Most important, a good backlog grooming habit frees the team and PO to brainstorm and get the kitchen sink out there…knowing that the good ideas will stick and recur, and the bad ones will eventually fall off