HOW TO MAKE TEAMS SEE VALUE IN THE BACKLOG REFINEMENT MEETING

😓 Problem

Project managers would love to be able to include the whole team in the prioritization process, as well as their input on priorities. However, meetings tend to be long because, often, the team or a person in particular will end up spending too much time on one topic.

The most common problems of backlog refinement meetings are:

• Overpromotion of an idea because of someone’s obsession with it.
• The unfair win of the loudest person in the room; simply because they’re loud!
• The tendency of a lot of introverts to keep their creativity to themselves.
• The probability of people opting for someone else’s opinion, rather than their own. Why? Because talking can be exhausting.

It would be great if we could structure the backlog refinement meeting so it turns into a pleasant, efficient session. So how do you make teams see the value in prioritizing together?

🤔 Why do backlog refinement meetings with your team?

By now, we know that organizations without a strong diversity inclusion culture invite lower productivity + higher absenteeism and turnovers; in other terms, higher costs.  

Aligning teams on the work, and including them in the prioritization process simply builds better teams; everyone gets to voice their opinion which means that the planning is closer to reality.

🤓 How Foxly can help with your backlog refinement meetings

Everyone's vote on priorities matters. With Foxly, you can turn prioritization sessions into a way for all stakeholders to collaborate and contribute, not to mention have fun in the process as they come together.

Foxly has a feature called Priority planning poker, which is essential for bigger teams. It can be used as a solution to:

• lengthy prioritization sessions that make you want to die;
• disagreement that has no end in sight;
• or difficulty hearing everyone when so many people are involved.

The process

If you get yourself into a situation where you’re including 4 people or more in a backlog refinement meeting, Priority planning poker is the answer.

1. It’s fair: everyone gets to vote on metrics while the average is taken as the result.

2. You can choose the metrics to prioritize with each team; for example, when prioritizing with devs for example, you can remove impact given it’s something you’d want to discuss with stakeholders instead. With devs, you can keep Confidence and Effort.

3. Once you start the session, others can still join.

4. Foxly allows you to view the issue currently being prioritized and when clicking on ‘view details’, you’ll get additional info from Foxly.

5. Outliers (results that fall outside the norm) can be discussed, then kept or the vote can be taken again.

6. Once you’re done with the voting, click on ‘finish’; every time you accept the results, priority scoring is automatically calculated in Foxly. It also means that when you feel people are getting tired, you can leave the session unfinished and come back to it later.