Your backlog should be a source of clarity, not chaos. With the right approach, you can eliminate churn, save time, and create a steady, sustainable workflow for your team.
Backlog refinement is essential for Agile teams, but it’s easy to fall into the trap of overloading the backlog with too much detail—or not enough. In this episode, we tackle one of the most common and painful mistakes teams make: detailing work too early or too late. Discover how to keep refinement manageable and effective by structuring your backlog with just the right level of detail, using the PO Board model for clarity and flow. Plus, actionable tips to eliminate churn and restore calm to your backlog refinement process.
Go Deeper
If you want to take a deeper dive into this topic, check out our online, self-guided course: 80-20 Product Backlog Refinement. In this course, we’ll walk you step-by-step through techniques like the PO Board model and story splitting to help you master Backlog refinement and get better results with less stress.
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Episode transcription
Peter Green
Welcome back to The Humanizing Work Show.
It’s Aug 2, 2018, and I’m on a Zoom call with my longtime friend Dave Story. I had worked with Dave to help his teams at Adobe, later at Tableau, and now we’re talking about doing the same thing at his new company, Orbital Insight, where Dave has joined as the Chief Product Officer and the Chief Technology Officer.
As Dave and I chat about the current challenges and goals for this engagement, he mentions that Orbital teams seem to particularly struggle with backlog refinement. So, I use my favorite coaching phrase “tell me more,” and Dave delivered!
As he put it, “I’ve seen way more grumbling about refinement here than anywhere else I’ve worked.Teams seem to have gravitated to one of two extremes. Some are spending hours every sprint in long grooming sessions, basically doing detailed requirements a Sprint or two out. Those teams all say they feel like they’re wasting way too much time and that they’re not really agile, by any definition. Then at the other extreme, we have some teams that are walking into Sprint Planning with maybe a few high level, vague user stories, then spending the rest of the day figuring out what to actually work on during the next two weeks. Neither of these twoextremes are good, obviously.”
Richard Lawrence
Backlog refinement is a critical practice for Agile teams. When your backlog is in good shape, everything downstream—from planning to delivery—gets better. When it’s not, Product Owners burn out, teams feel frustrated, and you don’t see the results that should follow from an agile approach.
Peter Green
That’s right. Orbital was suffering from a pretty common backlog refinement challenge, what we call the Detail Trap, where they had too much detail too soon, or too little detail too late. Over the next few months, we worked with the teams at Orbital to help them overcome the detail trap using a few simple techniques. And, in this episode, we’ll share how you can do the same to help your team.
Before we jump in, though, a quick reminder that: The Humanizing Work Show is a free resource brought to you by the Humanizing Work Company, where we help organizations improve leadership, product management, and collaboration. Visit humanizingwork.com to schedule a conversation about improving results at your organization. And if you’re watching on YouTube, don’t forget to like, subscribe, and drop a comment. Listening on the podcast? Leave us a five-star review to help others discover the show. Thanks for your support!
Richard
OK, let’s start with why this mistake—detailing too early or too late—in the backlog is so painful. If you spend hours breaking down larger items in your backlog into detailed User Stories months before they’ll be built, by the time those items make it to the top of the backlog—if they make it there at all—they’re either no longer relevant or they require so much rework that your initial effort was a waste of time. No one wants that.
But, on the flip side, if you delay adding detail until Sprint Planning, you end up scrambling to fill gaps, which means your team starts the Sprint without clarity. Both scenarios cause churn, frustration, and lost productivity.
Peter
This often happens because teams oscillate between those two extremes: overplanning and under planning. They overcompensate for past mistakes without finding that healthy middle ground. It’s no wonder Product Owners often feel like they’re on a hamster wheel—spinning but never getting ahead.
Richard
The solution lies in structuring your Backlog so it tells you when—and how much—detail to add. Enter what we call the PO Board. Picture your Backlog divided into three sections:
- On the right, there’s The Top of the Backlog: User Stories ready for the next 1-2 Sprints. These items should be detailed enough to plan and start work. By the way, not necessarily so detailed that you don’t have to collaborate. But enough to pull into a sprint.
- Next column over to the left, The Middle of the Backlog: Minimum Marketable Features (MMFs) you’ll likely build in the next quarter. These have broader descriptions and haven’t yet been broken down into user stories.
- And then, to the left of that, The Bottom of the Backlog: A cloud of options, with the most likely options at the top. These are high-level ideas and potential features that may—or may not—ever get built.
This structure works like a Kanban system. There’s Work In Progress (or WIP) limits at each level of granularity. For example, if your team works in two-week Sprints, you only need about 12-20 User Stories at the top of your Backlog. Once that section is full, stop breaking things down into that level of detail.
Peter
The beauty of this approach, which we went into more detail on in episode 45, is that it prevents you from getting too much detail too soon. It also ensures you’re never caught off guard when it’s time to plan the next Sprint.
Richard
I developed the PO Board model years ago when I was working with a Product Owner, Angela, who was drowning in Backlog refinement work while struggling to find time to collaborate with her two teams in the current sprint. Her Backlog spanned years, with hundreds of detailed items many of which would never see the light of day.
Implementing the PO Board model, we limited the top of her Backlog to just two Sprints of User Stories. The middle of the backlog was just the next quarter, and everything else was rolled up into higher-level features or ideas.
The result? Angela went from working 60+ hours a week to a manageable schedule, found time to collaborate with her team, and her team delivered better results with far less stress.
There was also an unexpected side benefit. Once she structured the backlog this way, she was able to focus conversations with her senior stakeholders on just the middle and bottom of the backlog, which reduced micromanagement and churn at the top of the backlog. Those conversations became much more strategic and more effective.
Peter
So, let’s summarize the key principles that make this work:
- Refine progressively: Add detail as items move up the Backlog. Work from right to left on your PO board every day. Stop when you run out of time. You’ll get further left less often, but those items change more slowly, so it’s fine.
- Use Work in Progress Limits, or WIP limits: Stop adding detail once a section is full.
- Focus on flow: Treat refinement as a daily activity, not some marathon meeting.
- Involve the right people: Not all refinement needs the full team present. So avoid the easy but wasteful route of making it a recurring meeting for the full team.
Richard
All right, refinement is the Product Owner’s job, but it’s not a job you do solo. Collaboration with the stakeholders or with the team—whether in pairs, small groups, or the whole team when necessary—is crucial.
Peter
So, if your Backlog feels chaotic or unmanageable, try the PO Board model. Start by dividing your Backlog into sections with clear limits. Then refine progressively, focusing only on what’s needed for the next Sprint or two.
Richard
Your Backlog should be a source of clarity, not chaos. With the right approach, you can eliminate churn, save time, and create a steady, sustainable workflow for your team.
Peter
If you want to take a deeper dive into this topic, check out our online, self-guided course: 80-20 Product Backlog Refinement. In this course, we walk you step-by-step through techniques like the PO Board model and story splitting to help you master Backlog refinement and get better results with less stress. You can find more about the 80/20 course at learning.humanizingwork.com.
Richard
Thanks for joining us on this week’s Humanizing Work Show! Don’t forget to subscribe, like, or leave a review. And if your organization needs help improving your results, visit humanizingwork.com and schedule a conversation with us. See you next time!
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