Backlog refinement sessions require precise vocabulary — from grooming and prioritising items to breaking down epics and estimating effort. This exercise covers the natural collocations used by product owners, scrum masters, and development teams during backlog preparation.
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1 / 5
The product manager called a session to ___ the backlog ahead of the next quarterly planning.
Groom the backlog is the traditional Agile collocation for a backlog refinement session — 'grooming' implies reviewing, prioritising, and refining items to ensure they are ready for development. 'Review' is more general; 'sort' and 'clean' don't capture the estimation and prioritisation aspects of backlog work.
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The team agreed to ___ the large epic into smaller user stories before estimating effort.
Break down an epic into user stories is the standard backlog refinement collocation — epics are 'broken down' into deliverable increments. 'Split' is also used (split a story); 'divide' and 'separate' are less idiomatic in Agile vocabulary. 'Break down' emphasises decomposition into actionable pieces.
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Before sprint planning, the product owner should ___ backlog items according to business value and user impact.
Prioritise backlog items is the canonical product management collocation — the product owner's core responsibility is 'prioritising' the backlog using value-based frameworks. 'Rank' implies strict numerical ordering; 'order' and 'sort' don't carry the strategic judgement implied by 'prioritise'.
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The team uses three-point estimation to ___ effort for each backlog item during refinement.
Estimate effort is the standard Agile refinement collocation — story points and t-shirt sizes are all forms of effort estimation. 'Calculate' implies a precise mathematical answer; 'measure' implies observation of existing data; 'assess' is more qualitative. 'Estimate effort' is the universally understood Scrum term.
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The product manager asked the team to ___ the acceptance criteria on the payment integration story.
Refine the acceptance criteria is the precise backlog refinement collocation — criteria are 'refined' during grooming to make them precise and testable. 'Update' implies changing existing content; 'clarify' is good for verbal explanation; 'fix' implies they were wrong. 'Refine' captures iterative improvement.