¿Cómo se puede preparar un Product Backlog para la Planificación de Sprints?

Prepare a Product Backlog for Sprint Planning by collaborating with the Product Owner to refine and prioritize user stories based on business value and dependencies. Ensure that user stories are well-defined, appropriately sized, and meet the acceptance criteria. The goal is to have a backlog ready for the team to discuss, estimate, and commit to during the Sprint Planning meeting.

When working on a new or existing product, I find that it's important to ensure that you understand the overall scope and vision for the product. This means you'll want to meet with product owners and other stakeholders to establish a scope so that you can prioritize and estimate which stories are most important and vital to obtaining a minimum viable product.

In my experience this is actually where you can really get into the nitty gritty of the business requirements. Many times it is possible to break down one user story into multiple user stories in order to have the development team efficiently and collaboratively implement a feature. This is also a good time for gaining clarification of acceptance criteria.

Ideally, items in the backlog are independent and therefore can be prioritised purely on value. I would argue that the whole team is responsible for refining the backlog but the PO is accountable. Estimating (beyond "too big") items in the backlog is typically a waste of time.

Setting a sprint goal is often overlooked; however, that goal can be a powerful motivator for the team. Both the team and the product owner should be involved in setting the sprint goal. I've found having a thumbs up / thumbs down vote on accepting the goal is a great way to get buy in. During sprint demo, the goal should be reviewed.

The sprint goal should be aligned with the product vision. Any "stakeholders" (a terribly misunderstood and badly defined term), should also understand the product vision. Teams who need to pivot each sprint based on stakeholders latest "needs" are less productive.

Estimating the time for each task is somewhat ironically, a waste of time. Estimating how the team will collaborate to make a done increment (complete a task) is extremely valuable.

The product backlog does not exist for stakeholders. It exists for the development team to have more visibility into upcoming ideas that contribute to the product and create value for customers and the company.

In fast-paced organisations it is important have a mechanism to frequently collect inputs from upstream and downstream teams and add them to the product backlog. That way the backlog can be dynamic but sprints can continue to be predictable

Adjustments should be made based on data gathered, preferably not opinions. Data gathered could include performance metrics, A/B test results and product metrics.

Another tool that we use is pre-grooming. Since backlog can be dynamic - some of the team members take ownership of next set of priorities. These owners gather all the info on the backlog item. They ensure that the item is not blocked. These backlog items are now cleared for sprint planning and can be picked up for next sprint.