Refine a ticket

[SallyMcGrath]

As a developer, you want to refine tickets so that anyone in your team can pick up and deliver any feature in your application.

Given a ticket in the backlog
When I refine the ticket
Then it is ready to be worked on

I expect a refined ticket to have

• a user story
• G/W/T
• testable criteria

✅ Checklist

So a refined ticket has all the information anyone might need to complete a feature. This is usually:

• A user story
• Specification by example (Given/When/Then)
• Acceptance criteria or assertions

🖼️ Refining Tickets Workflow

• 🔥 How important is this task? Prioritise 🤔
• 🐋 How long will this take? Estimate ⚖️
• 📆 Does this task have a deadline? Schedule 📆
• 🗃️ What type of work is this? Sort 📐
• 😶‍🌫️ What would someone else need to know to complete this task? Explain 🎨 (or Ask)

A ticket is fully refined when anyone in your team could pick it up. If you can validate a ticket in the Backlog as Ready, move it to Ready now.

Only tickets In Progress can belong to any particular team member, so don't claim tickets now.

🎫 Refine some tickets

Read over your team backlog. Validate the tickets against the checklist given above. If there are any tickets that are Ready, promote them from the Backlog.

Now select a ticket from the Backlog to refine. Use the refining tickets workflow. Don't promote your own ticket to Ready - leave that to a team-mate to validate.

You can do this asynchronously or in a call with your team. Whichever helps you to make progress.