Run collaborative backlog refinement sessions. Review stories, clarify scope, estimate work, and get items ready for sprint planning in a structured, collaborative workspace.
Made for Backlog Refinement
Backlog refinement works best when the whole team can see the work, discuss it together, and make decisions in real time. Instead of one person screen sharing and everyone else passively listening, Spreo gives the team a shared workspace where backlog items can be reviewed, discussed, and broken down collaboratively, with everything captured and synced back to Jira.
Instead of one person presenting backlog items while the rest of the team listens, everyone can interact with items on a shared board, add questions, and take part in the discussion.
Stories that are too large or unclear can be broken down visually by moving cards and notes around the board, making it easier to split work into smaller, clear tasks.
Backlog items can be pulled from Jira, updated during the session, and synced back automatically, so there is no need to manually update Jira after the meeting.
Team members can add questions and concerns directly next to backlog items, so important details are not lost in a verbal discussion.
Backlog refinement is the session where the team reviews upcoming backlog items to make sure they are clear, properly scoped, and ready for sprint planning. The Product Owner typically presents stories, the team asks questions, discusses acceptance criteria, and works through any uncertainty or missing information.
During the session, items may be estimated, split into smaller pieces, clarified, or flagged as not ready. The goal of backlog refinement is to make sure that by the time sprint planning starts, the team is working with well understood, properly sized, and ready to deliver backlog items.
The team pulls backlog items directly from Jira onto the board, so everyone can see and interact with the stories being reviewed.
Backlog items can be dragged into zones such as Ready, Needs Discussion, and Too Big / Break Down, helping the team quickly see which items are prepared and which need more work.
As each item is reviewed, team members add questions, concerns, or notes as sticky notes around the Jira card so feedback is captured during the discussion.
Stories that are too large can be broken down visually on the board, and new Jira issues can be created from sticky notes created during the session.
The team can add estimates during refinement using story points or T-shirt sizing, with estimates syncing back to Jira.
Timers help keep discussions focused so the team can review all planned items within the session.
Backlog refinement is one of several agile meetings teams run regularly. Explore other agile sessions you can run in Spreo.
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What the teams who use Spreo every week say about it
Siobhan He
Product Manager, EZ Ops
We use Spreo for our retrospectives, but also for loads of other meetings. The team loves it! They are having a lot of fun with the planning poker and personalizing the retro boards.
The emoji stickies are a particularly big hit, as is the confetti tool.
We have used it a couple times for brainstorming and team building as well, and it worked really really well!
Manon Pavie
Product Owner, DINUM
As a Product Owner currently developing a tool for the French government, I have been and continue to be a strong advocate of Spreo. Its features are both innovative and genuinely user-centred, with a level of design quality that is consistently impressive. The support chat has also proved to be exceptionally responsive. I will continue to rely on Spreo for Scrum management and design thinking, and I even use several boards to organise my personal projects.
Marteijn Mout
Senior Scrum Master, Jumbo Tech Campus
For my teams’ retrospectives I have been using Spreo for nearly 1 year and am very satisfied with this collaborative web app 👍
But now with their new upgrade to v2 it goes next level! So many new template options (eg ice breakers, Poker planning, T-shirt sizing, WoW). And also useful advanced facilitator controls within the boards plus optimized usability… big applause 👏
Jason Martin
Agile Coach, Meltwater
Spreo improves the way I work.
There are constant requests to ‘facilitate a meeting for a topic’ and it doesn’t matter what is asked for, I know I can build a board for that. If you want to have a very structured, formally-designed meeting, Spreo has tools for that. Or if you want to have a bit of a free for all, figure it out as you go meeting, there are tools for that too.
Marianne Béglin
Product Owner, Enginn Technologies
Our team at Enginn Technologies is working on a AI voice acting app for video games. Spreo is the bomb for making fun retrospectives in an office or remote setting.
It’s just beautiful and convenient, with a few quirky and unique features that keep our meetings from getting boring (like the wake up slap)!
Samantha Corbett
Product Manager, Meltwater
Spreo makes it possible for our 500+ engineers to work remotely. It embedded into our teams without any prompting or training.
Spreo is completely free for 30 days, so why not sign up to try it out and do your part for collaboration!
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