backlog-refinement
Backlog Refinement Expert
Overview
Refinement is the most under-invested ritual in agile teams. Stories arrive at sprint planning oversized, ambiguous, or strategically disconnected, and the team spends planning meetings doing what should have happened the week before. This skill is the refinement playbook: grade stories against INVEST, split them vertically (so each slice ships value end-to-end), and keep a working Definition of Ready and Definition of Done that prevent half-baked work from entering or leaving a sprint.
The skill includes a Python scorer (refinement_scorer.py) that grades each story in a JSON backlog against the six INVEST criteria and outputs a readiness score (0-6) per story. Stories scoring 5-6 are sprint-ready; 3-4 need targeted refinement; below 3 go back to discovery.
This complements wwas/ (Why-What-Acceptance format) and job-stories/ (JTBD format). Either format produces stories; this skill grades them and gets them sprint-ready.
Core Capabilities
- INVEST grading — score each story across Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, Testable (0-6) and triage by score.
- Vertical story splitting — the 9 Lawrence recipes + SPIDR taxonomy; avoid horizontal (layer/team/sprint) splits.
- Definition of Ready / Done — input and output quality gates with enforceable templates.
- Refinement session structure — cadence, candidate volume, triage routing into discovery or planning.