What technique is being employed when a business analysis practitioner is elaborating User Stories to prepare them for implementation?

Backlog refinement is the technique being employed when a business analysis practitioner is elaborating user stories to prepare them for implementation. This process involves reviewing and revising user stories to ensure they are well-defined, prioritized, and sufficiently understood by the team. By conducting backlog refinement, practitioners can break down larger stories into more manageable ones, clarify requirements, and estimate effort, which is crucial for planning and executing agile sprints effectively.

Refining the backlog also enables team members to ask questions, negotiate story details, and align on the scope, ultimately facilitating smoother implementation during sprint planning. This ongoing collaboration and clarification ensure that the user stories are ready for development, thereby increasing the chances of delivering value to stakeholders promptly.

While story decomposition and story elaboration may sound similar, they typically refer to different elements of the agile process. Story decomposition focuses on breaking down larger stories into smaller, actionable tasks rather than the entire process of refining and preparing stories for future sprints, which is the essence of backlog refinement.