Most engineering teams struggle with backlog grooming because they focus on estimating story points and debating technical implementation details rather than defining user value and thin slices. In this episode, David Dieruf and Wael Rabadi discuss why traditional backlog grooming often becomes a solutioning session—and how to shift toward grooming that enables rapid iteration, effective testing, and better product outcomes.
What You'll Learn:
- Why story points create false precision and slow teams down
- How to identify true thin slices that deliver vertical value
- The difference between grooming (defining what) and solutioning (planning how)
- Practical techniques for journey-based testing
- How to maintain ubiquitous language across product and engineering
- Why premature technical planning hurts iteration speed
Key Insight: The best backlog grooming sessions ask "What does the user need to accomplish?" not "How should we build this?" Save the technical planning for after you've clearly defined the user value you're delivering.
Hosted by engineering leaders David Dieruf and Wael Rabadi, co-founders of Kisasa.
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