Last time I wrote about sprint planning which is one of four formal events prescribed by Scrum.

In this post I explain what product backlog grooming is, when it is performed, and how it is done.

Backlog grooming is often performed throughout the sprint. Perhaps this is one reason why it’s not considered a formal event.

However, many teams do backlog grooming as an explicit meeting, and some people think it should be incorporated as a formal meeting in the guide, too.

The product backlog is the bucket from which you pull work. It’s a list of all items that potentially make it into the product. It’s the single source of requirements. That sounds easy enough. Perhaps it is, too. Yet sometimes it isn’t obvious what to put in the backlog, and how to select what items to work on next.

One challenge is to manage non-features such as technical items and bugs (in the rare case you have any, of course). People have different strategies to deal with the not-so-obvious stuff.