Product backlog refinement should make near-term items ready enough for an upcoming sprint—not eliminate every unknown or complete the design. In this webinar, Mike Cohn explains why refinement can feel heavy even when teams spend a lot of time on it, and offers a practical standard: an item should be clear, small, and understood well enough to fit into an upcoming sprint. He walks through five common traps: treating refinement only as a meeting, refining too much of the backlog, refining for certainty, turning refinement into design, and treating refinement as solely the product owner’s job. Mike shows how ongoing collaboration, just-in-time detail, shared ownership, and a focus on confidence rather than certainty lead to shorter sessions, fewer mid-sprint surprises, and better-prepared work.Watch 5 Ways Backlog Refinement Goes Wrong (and What to Do Instead) · Read transcript
In this webinar, Mike Cohn shares three practical techniques for writing better user stories with less time and frustration. He explains how periodic story-writing workshops help teams look beyond the next sprint, focus on a significant objective, involve the whole team, and organize the resulting stories with a story map. Mike also shows how to split large stories into smaller, testable steps that demonstrate real progress, even when each step is only potentially—not truly—releasable. Finally, he explains how to add just enough detail just in time, balancing unanswered questions against wasted up-front analysis. Together, these practices reduce time spent in backlog discussions, improve predictability, and help teams deliver valuable outcomes sooner.Watch Write Better User Stories in Less Time With Less Aggravation · Read transcript
