Question

Midway through an agile project, the product owner notices that many user stories near the top of the product backlog are large, vaguely defined, and lack acceptance criteria. During the next sprint planning, the team struggles to commit to work because the stories are not ready. What should the project manager (serving as an agile coach) encourage the team to do to address this situation?

Accepted Answer

Establish a regular backlog refinement (grooming) session where the product owner and team clarify, split, and add acceptance criteria to upcoming items

Answer

Have the product owner assign detailed specifications to each story and deliver them to the team before every sprint planning

Answer

Extend each sprint length so the team has more time to figure out the ambiguous stories during execution

Answer

Pull only the small, well-defined stories forward and defer all large stories to the final sprint of the project