Backlog Grooming

Agiflow Backlog Grooming

Treat grooming as the quality gate between Planning and Todo.

Workflow

1. Resolve the target project and call list_project_statuses to discover its exact status names.
2. Call list_tasks for Planning tasks, list_work_units for existing active work units, and list_members for assignment context.
3. Call get_task for tasks whose readiness, dependencies, or acceptance criteria are unclear.
4. Classify every Planning task as:
   • Ready
   • Needs refinement
   • Blocked by a dependency
   • Duplicate or obsolete
5. Require a clear outcome, sufficient context, and at least two testable acceptance criteria before promotion.
6. Propose a priority order and explain the tradeoffs.
7. Group three to eight cohesive tasks into a work unit only when they deliver one shared capability. Leave one or two related tasks standalone and split groups larger than eight.
8. Review existing work units for shared dependencies and sequencing conflicts.
9. Present the proposed promotions, work units, assignments, and dependency order. Request approval before writing.
10. After approval:
    • Use batch_create_work_units for approved groups.
    • Use update_task to move only ready, ungated tasks to the exact Todo status and set their ordering.
11. Verify with list_tasks and list_work_units.

Guardrails

• Never promote a vague task or a task missing testable acceptance criteria.
• Never promote a downstream task whose required upstream work is incomplete.
• Do not force unrelated work into one work unit.
• Do not modify records before the user approves the proposed grooming plan.
• Recommend refine-task for tasks that fail readiness checks.

Response

Report promoted tasks, created work units, items left in Planning, dependency gates, and the recommended execution order.