Refinements

Owned by Grzegorz Koper
Last updated: Apr 13, 2023
3 min read

Refinement meetings are very important in the Agile software development. During this type of the meeting all team members are discussing the tasks for the next sprints, defining the scope and complexity. In order to help define and lead the meeting, a “Refinements” section in the Jira software projects is provided by the Agile Toolbox plugin.

Users can do a quick task estimation on each Jira issue: https://liquitim.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/PPD/pages/303988782

Refinements section displays all prepared (not active) sprints and backlog issues. These issues often are not ready to put them in the sprint because are not well defined or not estimated, but needs to be developed in the future.

Every user who has a permission to the board can create a refinement by pressing “New refinement” button (2)

 

By default, each new refinement has an “Undefined” name. The name can be changed just by clicking on the name ( 3).

Each issue in the spring or in the backlog can be added to the refinement. By pressing “…” button (4) the list of created refinements is displayed. The user can choose to which refinement the issue should be added by pressing his name (5)

 

Each issue in the refinement has some additional information related to the voting displayed:

  • How many users (votes) has voted on this issue (6)

  • Is the voting room configured for this issue ( for example chosen available story points ) (7)

 

There are also additional actions available

  • Configure room button - Displays a modal dialog with the room configuration ( 8 ) details here

  • Delete button - Removes the issue from the refinement ( 9 )

Configuration button will be enabled only when the room is not configured or the user who has configured the room has checked the checkbox allowing to change the configuration or take over the room by someone else

When the refinement will be ready to process, every team member ( or Jira user who has permission to this board) can open the refinement view ( by pressing “Open” button) and start voting on each issue.

The voting process can be performed on a meeting ( online) or offline. Offline voting is very helpful for the teams with the members in a different time zones

 

Refinement view displays all configured issues. It is very important to be able to see the issue details in order to discuss or modify the description by adding more details. To display the issue user can press on the issue key ( issue will be opened in the separate tab) or by pressing on the icon ( 10 ) → a modal editable dialog will be displayed similar to the picture below

Modal dialog is very convenient because the user doesn’t need to leave the refinement page or switch between tabs in the browser

 

When all question regarding the issue has been answered and the user is ready to estimate then a configured planning poker room can be opened by pressing the icon ( 11) . It is possible to open many rooms on the same screen is speed up the estimations. Details of the voting process are described here