Improve sprint planning with task re-evaluation

Task re-evaluation builds team alignment, reduces sprint planning time, and ensures sprints contain only high-priority work. This guide shows you how to automate backlog grooming and devote minimal time to re-evaluation.

Why re-evaluate tasks before sprint planning

Two years ago, we worked on the event promotion tool, Tendee, and continually received feature requests from our customers.

Back then, I was a customer manager. I would run to the developers saying: 'Super important! Very urgent! Just on fire!' They couldn't understand why we were creating the feature. And we, managers, thought: 'It is so easy and fast, why not? They always invent difficulties.'

Nadya, Product manager

The team didn't understand which tasks were more important. There was no shared vision of the goals. Long discussions didn't solve the problem. That's when we started prioritizing—first with Google Sheets, then with our tool, Ducalis. We evaluated all new tasks once a week.

Prioritization worked well. But after a month, a problem appeared—many tasks became outdated. Some were in progress, others were lying dead in the backlog. They were mixed with new issues, outweighing them by prioritization scores. The top priorities turned out to be irrelevant. Sprint planning took us a few hours.

So we decided to start re-evaluating—reset the old scores after a certain period and assess the tasks once again. We considered the new priorities during meetings, and the discussion became much more effective.

How task re-evaluation increases sprint planning efficiency

Re-evaluating the backlog beforehand solves several problems teams face during planning meetings.

Team awareness of goals

Anyone on the team can lose focus, wallow in their tasks, and miss new priorities. The result—working on tasks that are no longer relevant.

Backlog grooming before planning helps you understand what the team is doing, where it's heading, and how priorities have changed.

Recently, I suddenly had to re-evaluate 65 tasks (no worries, we needed that in our case). When I gradually re-read all the tasks reviewing their value, I got a satisfying feeling. I was getting the bigger picture of our course in my head. I could clearly see what the whole team and I personally are doing for the purpose.

Nadya, Product manager

Priority updates

Time is the team's most valuable resource. If you do trivial tasks, the resource is wasted. Re-evaluation helps you add only priority tasks to the sprint.

It becomes easy to close obsolete tasks that you didn't want to delete before. I used to think: 'Well, it won't bother if we store it in the backlog. Let's keep it. Just so we don't forget. I'm sure it'll come in handy.' No. It won't work this way. Mostly you will forget it. And it won't come in handy.

Nadya, Product manager

Even the most relevant and burning issue today may become less important in a month. And you can start implementing it. And what's worse, you can even forget what it was all about. We've had such tasks at the bottom of our backlog. Re-evaluation before sprint planning can handle such issues: clarify or delete.

You could hear a phrase like: 'Yes, I'm sure some customers already requested it, but I can't remember who and why.' We saw the pain and tried to refine the backlog: agreed to take care of our own tasks at least once a week. If possible, look after other people's tasks. Guess how we coped with that promise? We forgot.

Nadya, Product manager

Shorter discussions

After re-evaluation, we receive the updated issue list with priorities in descending order. We discuss only those at the top. The number of issues we can take to the sprint we've defined in advance.

Sprint discussions started taking no more than 30 minutes.

Set up the re-evaluation process

Start with setting up the task evaluation process if it's not set yet. Evaluation and re-evaluation should be a single ritual with clear rules.

1. Determine the re-evaluation period

How often you reassess depends on the project and work format. We use weekly sprints. With Tendee, we re-evaluated the issues once every 30 days.

The new tool, Ducalis, is developing much faster. We interact with our customers frequently and receive feedback and requests weekly. That's why we reduced the score expiration time to 21 days.

Automation

Ducalis discards the scores for each issue automatically at the time you set. No need to monitor the score expiration.

Tasks simply appear at the right moment on your evaluation grid. Re-evaluation is intertwined with evaluation as a whole. Old issues with discarded scores get on the same list with new ones.

2. Set the deadline

The priority list must be ready by the meeting time. There's no point in dragging the evaluation a week long. We chose Friday as our backlog grooming day since sprint planning always happens on Mondays.

3. Configure reminders

Set up reminders or assign a person responsible for pinging. Without reminders, someone will forget about the evaluation for sure.

Automation

Ducalis sends reminders automatically at the time you set.

We receive reminders in our Slack channels every Friday. They tell us how many issues each team member still has to prioritize.

A bonus—you receive appreciation if you've already evaluated everything by the ping time. You can customize the rewarding message. We like to change them weekly to surprise and entertain each other. We want them silly and funny, but you can set serious and meaningful ones.

"Molodetz" means "Well done!", "Attaboy/Attagirl".

Thus the evaluation became a game. Some people on the team always want to be praised, so they evaluate tasks on time.

Summary

Re-evaluation revives the backlog, clears it up from obsolete tasks, and makes sprint planning super-efficient.

When re-evaluation is your ritual:

• The team has a clear vision of relevant objectives
• Only essential tasks are on your to-do list
• You eliminate long planning discussions

Try a new way to improve sprint planning meetings now, before your objectives expire.