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Overview
Planning a sprint can be chaotic when you deal with many workitem types and have no clear view of past velocity or team capacity. As a product owner or scrum master, you risk either over-committing or under-using the team.
Backlog Refinement helps you prepare work before it reaches a sprint. You review and estimate cards, mark the ready ones as groomed, and then allocate them to sprints. Summary counts and points update as you work, so you can see when a card needs a second look.
Backlog Refinement has two tabs, and the number beside each tab name is the number of cards in it. Cards appear here only if their form has the Backlog Refinement State field. A new card starts in the Backlog state.
Earlier, Backlog Refinement had three tabs: Backlog, Groomed Backlog, and Sprint Planning. Backlog and Groomed cards now share one list, so you no longer move cards between two tabs.
Navigation
From the top menu of the project, expand Agile Planning and select Backlog Refinement.
Sections of Backlog Refinement
The two tabs follow the path a card takes from a rough idea to a planned sprint.
- Refinement Backlog holds the cards in the Backlog and Groomed states. Group and filter them, check the summary, and mark cards as groomed when they are ready. To learn more, see Understanding the Refinement Backlog and Groomed Backlog in Backlog Refinement.
- Sprint Planning holds the cards that are ready for a sprint and the sprint lanes. Drag a card to a sprint to plan it. To learn more, see Planning Your Sprint in Backlog Refinement.
Cards you create from Backlog Refinement go to the Refinement Backlog. A card that already has a sprint goes to Sprint Planning.