Grooming for fun and profit

Why Groom?

The goals of grooming are:

• Shared terminology and definitions between product owner and delivery team
• Decomposition of larger stories into smaller ones
• Relative sizing of stories
• Shared understanding of priority

What to Groom?

User stories answer three vital questions: Who? What? and Why?

They often take the form:

"As a (who), I need to (what) so that I can (why)."

Regardless of form, the answers to the three questions are critical to being successful.

Grooming Success

Ideal User Story

Zone of Confusion

Zone of Waste

Stories up here are too large, ambiguous or imprecise

Stories down here include technical components and valuable grooming time is spent making technical decisions

Let's get concrete

"As a client, I need to see appropriately styled elements so that my brand is properly represented."

Potential for confusion:

• What are the "elements" the product owner refers to?
• What constitutes a "styled" element?

Acceptance criteria or decomposing into multiple stories can help increase precision.  Grooming should result in clarity and agreement between the product owner and the delivery team.