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grooming illegal

Last post 06:40 pm November 7, 2022 by Claudia Rebeca Jimenez Perez
6 replies
10:10 am November 15, 2013

In my scrum team, we as a lot of other teams use grooming session to prepare the stories for the coming next sprints. Unfortunately recently it seems that some people thought we are doing something very wrong and illegal.
Grooming is defined by Justice in the Netherlands as digital child luring. A groomer is someone presenting him or herself as a nice guy or popular girl trying to get contact young girl on social media. The final goal is to persuade the girls to cybersex.
Well this kind of grooming is forbidden by the law...
So to be clear we as scrum teams we do not want to act illegal, and we want all our stakeholders to understand that we are only doing legal things. We decided to think of another name for our preparation actions and still be legal

We inspected and adapted several other names ( preparation, detailing...) but finally we choose for Zooming ( zooming in to a topic until it is enough to poker and done in one sprint.)

It this something other teams can use. Would it be an idea to change grooming in the scrum guide or add some alternatives?
PLease let me know


10:13 am November 15, 2013

The word "grooming" was replaced by "refining" in the latest sacrum Guide.

It does have a different meaning in the English language. Hopefully this will make more sense to the team.


10:36 am November 15, 2013

Approx 9:50 in this video by Jeff & Ken they briefly explain why this was changed in the Scrum Guide.

https://www.scrum.org/About/All-Articles/articleType/ArticleView/articl…


03:18 pm November 18, 2013

I groom my cat and my beard. Nothing illegal about that, although my wife claims I do both way too seldom. I groom the backlog with my team and they want to do that more often too. Nothing illegal about that either. It's just a word, let's not get crazy about the word just because some ... use it in an objectionable context. Nevertheless, since July it is "backlog refinement" in the Scrum Guide. One thing troubles me though - can I still "groom" my cat or should I "refine" it?


06:36 am November 19, 2013

Tomek's got it right. If he gets jailed for grooming his cat or his beard, I'll send him oranges. Until then, I for one am not going to fret about whether it's "backlog grooming" or "backlog refinement" in a team's calendar.


06:37 pm June 19, 2018

 Tomasz Wlodarek - Best response :)

It's just a word and as long as we know the intention. And yes you can still GROOM your beard and cat:P

Product Backlog refinement is the act of adding detail, estimates, and order to items in the Product Backlog.

When it was called grooming we were missing the ordering part. we used to do it in prioritization meeting to help the PO if it has been a while since the last ordering session. 


05:35 pm November 7, 2022

Refinement describes a more complete group of activities that should be done by the team. We should encourage and promote the official Scrum Guides changes, I have been sharing why the reason of the change in Scrum guide so more people understands the reason and start using "Backlog Refinement" 


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