Refinement, ready and done

01The problem

The kiosk app team's first three sprints went smoothly: 3 bugs in total. In sprints 4 to 6 they found 13. Sprint 5 finished 3 points short of its commitment. In the retrospective, the developers say the same thing in different ways: "We started stories before we understood them," "Nobody told us transfers can arrive the next day," and "We called things done when they weren't tested on a real phone."

None of that is a coding problem. It's what happens when stories reach a sprint before they're ready, and leave it before they're really done. Both are things a BA can fix.

02The concept

Backlog refinement

A regular session (often an hour or two a week) where the product owner, BA and developers look at the next items in the backlog and make them ready: clarify, split, add acceptance criteria and estimate. Aim to keep about two sprints' worth of work refined ahead.

The three amigos

Before a story is ready, three perspectives look at it together for 15 minutes:

• Business (BA or product owner): what's needed and why.
• Development: how it could be built, and what's hard.
• Testing: how it could break, and how to prove it works.

Most misunderstandings ("transfers can arrive the next day") surface in that conversation, when they cost nothing to fix.

Definition of ready (DoR)

The checklist a story must pass before the team takes it into a sprint, for example:

• written as a user story, with a clear user and benefit;
• acceptance criteria agreed, including at least one unhappy path;
• small enough to finish in a few days;
• estimated by the team;
• dependencies known (data, other teams, decisions);
• open questions answered.

Definition of done (DoD)

The checklist every item must pass before it counts as done, for example:

• meets all its acceptance criteria;
• tested on the oldest phone the pilot kiosks use;
• reviewed by a second developer;
• no known bugs of high severity;
• included in the build that will go to the pilot.

Points only count towards velocity when an item meets the definition of done. "Done except testing" is not done.

03Example

A story before and after a three-amigos conversation:

Before: As a kiosk owner, I want to pay by bank transfer, so that I don't need cash on delivery.

After: the same story, plus:

• Given a transfer with the correct reference, when the bank confirms it, then the order shows "Paid" within 1 hour.
• Given a transfer that arrives the next working day, when the delivery is due, then the driver sees "Payment pending" and can still deliver for customers marked as trusted.
• Given a transfer for the wrong amount, when it's received, then accounts are alerted and the kiosk owner gets an SMS.
• Question answered: who marks a customer as trusted? The sales rep, approved by the area manager.

The second and third criteria came from the tester asking "what if the money is late or wrong?". Each one would have been a bug in sprint 5.

04Walkthrough

1. In backlog.csv, count the bugs by sprint. When did quality start to slip?
2. Write the team's definition of ready and definition of done (the task below).
3. Take one remaining MVP story, such as "Part-payment on delivery", and run a three-amigos conversation on paper: what would the developer and tester ask?
4. Plan the refinement rhythm: when, who attends, and how far ahead the backlog should be ready.

05Practice

06Check your understanding