Too much refinement wastes time

Too much refinement wastes time. Too little refinement leads to chaos. The key is knowing where to draw the line.

Scrum teams often fall into one of two traps:

• Refining everything too soon – spending hours detailing work that might never happen.
• Not refining enough – arriving at Sprint Planning with backlog items that are vague, oversized, and full of unknowns.

The goal isn’t perfection—it’s readiness. Your backlog should be refined just enough that developers can confidently pull work into a Sprint without endless clarification.

It’s about finding the Goldilocks zone: Not too much, not too little. Just enough.

How do you know if you’ve found it? Your Sprint Planning should be focused on commitment, not discovery.