The product backlog is a dynamic, ordered list of everything that might be needed in a product. Task 1, “Refine Product Backlog,” focuses on the agile practitioner’s role in ensuring that the backlog is continuously shaped, prioritized, and prepared for delivery through regular collaboration and refinement.
Backlog refinement helps agile teams improve flow, reduce uncertainty, and increase predictability by ensuring work items are clear, appropriately sized, and prioritized for value. This activity is not confined to a specific ceremony but is a continuous process involving the entire team — especially the product owner, stakeholders, and development team.
The PMI Agile Practice Guide highlights backlog refinement as a key practice in agile product development, especially in Section 5.3 (Product Backlog Management) and throughout the guidance on planning and delivery cadence.
Enabler 1: Clarify the Backlog Items
Clarity in the product backlog ensures that team members understand what each item means and what outcome it is expected to deliver. Clarifying backlog items involves refining vague ideas into actionable product backlog entries with clearly defined intent, acceptance criteria, and business context.
To support this, agile teams use techniques such as user story writing, acceptance test-driven development (ATDD), and INVEST criteria (Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable). For example, a vague backlog item like “improve login” would be clarified into specific user stories such as “As a user, I want to log in using my Google account so that I can access the platform without creating a new password.”
Leaders must ensure that clarification is a shared activity — not just a product owner task — so that all voices are included, and the team collectively understands scope and intent.
Failing to clarify backlog items early enough can lead to delays during sprints, rework, or delivery of features that don’t meet expectations.
Enabler 2: Prioritize the Backlog Items With the Customer/Stakeholder
Prioritization ensures that the team is always working on the most valuable and impactful items. Agile teams prioritize backlog items in collaboration with stakeholders, using decision-making techniques that consider business value, risk, dependencies, and urgency.
Popular prioritization methods include MoSCoW (Must, Should, Could, Won’t), Kano analysis, and Weighted Shortest Job First (WSJF). These techniques help teams balance customer needs with technical constraints and deliver incrementally with confidence.
For example, when building a feature-rich application, the team may prioritize a functional but minimal feature set to release early and gather feedback, deferring “nice-to-have” capabilities to later sprints.
Pitfalls include allowing one stakeholder to dominate prioritization or skipping stakeholder involvement entirely. Effective prioritization is transparent, inclusive, and constantly re-evaluated as conditions change.
Enabler 3: Decompose the Backlog Items as Needed
Large backlog items, often called epics, must be broken down into smaller, manageable items so that they can be delivered within a single iteration. Decomposition allows teams to maintain consistent velocity, reduces estimation uncertainty, and increases flexibility in delivery.
Decomposition can occur through story slicing, task breakdown, or splitting based on acceptance criteria or workflow stages. For example, an epic like “Implement checkout flow” might be decomposed into individual stories for entering shipping info, selecting payment method, and confirming order.
This work is typically done during backlog refinement sessions, where the team collaboratively reviews upcoming work and slices it according to dependencies, value, and readiness.
Not decomposing backlog items adequately can lead to unpredictable sprint outcomes, blocked stories, and difficulty in achieving the Definition of Done. Agile leaders support decomposition by encouraging shared understanding and minimizing work-in-progress (WIP).
Enabler 4: Use Tools and Techniques to Collectively Size Work
Sizing helps teams estimate the relative effort, complexity, or risk of backlog items. Agile teams typically use collaborative sizing techniques that rely on relative estimation, where work is compared to a reference item.
Common techniques include Planning Poker, T-shirt sizing, and Affinity Estimation. These techniques encourage team discussion, uncover hidden work, and align understanding of scope before planning begins.
For example, during a backlog grooming session, the team may use Planning Poker to estimate a new story against a known benchmark story that was previously sized as “5 points.” The group discusses, debates, and reaches consensus, leading to a shared mental model.
Collaborative sizing not only improves estimation accuracy but also promotes team ownership. Rushing the process or letting one person dominate the session can lead to unreliable estimates and uneven team engagement.
The goal is not to achieve precision but to gain enough shared insight to plan work realistically and sustainably.
Summary Points
- Continuous backlog refinement ensures that the team always has well-understood, high-priority work ready for development.
- Clarifying items involves making intent and acceptance criteria explicit.
- Prioritization must involve stakeholders and reflect both business and delivery perspectives.
- Decomposition transforms large epics into small, testable, and shippable items.
- Collaborative sizing increases estimation reliability and team alignment.
- Agile teams use refinement to maintain flow, improve predictability, and maximize value delivery.
Test Your Knowledge
To complete this task, take a micro-exam to assess your understanding.
You can start the exam by using the floating window on the right side of your desktop screen or the grey bar at the top of your mobile screen.
Alternatively, you can access the exam via the My Exams page: 👉 KnowledgeMap.pm/exams
Look for the exam with the same number and name as the current PMI-ACP ECO Task.
After completing the exam, review your overall score for the task on the Knowledge Map: 👉 KnowledgeMap.pm/map
To be fully prepared for the actual exam, your score should fall within the green zone or higher, which indicates a minimum of 70%. However, aiming for at least 75% is recommended to strengthen your knowledge, boost your confidence, and improve your chances of success.