Scrum Refinements

by Amina Hasimbegovic

Ideas
- Separation between functional and technical refinement
  - PO leads functional refinement
  - Requirements Engineer might be valuable counterpart for the PO at the functional refinement
- Do refinement (details) more on-demand
  - Daily Blocker-Meeting for on-demand detail refinements
- Epic owner – responsible for making sure the topic is moved forward
- Technical refinement on-demand when starting working on the story (in-progress status)
  - Mention technical obstacles during the (functional) refinement meeting
Challenges
- Missing some aspects
- Sometimes too much detail
- Stories too large
  - Breaking down into smaller ones
- Refining stories too early
  - Next time discussing the topic might lead to different approach
- When functional requirements and technical aspects are discussed in one meeting, too much time is spent per story
  - Technical refinement is prepared before, and suggestion discussed during the meeting
  - Doing the preparation with (senior) developers might be helpful to include more perspectives
- Too verbose functional requirements might be lead to many (technically) "false" assumptions
- Contexts switches when refinements for future tasks
- Too much Work In Progress items at the same time

Example development & test process: