When should backlog items be refined at the Delivery Horizon?

The appropriate time for refining backlog items at the Delivery Horizon is when they are set to be placed into development in the near or immediate future. This timing is crucial because it ensures that the team is adequately prepared for upcoming work, allowing for a smooth transition when the items are ready to be developed. By focusing on items that are closest to being executed, teams can prioritize understanding the requirements, discussing any uncertainties, and ensuring that acceptance criteria are well-defined.

At this stage, refining items means clarifying any ambiguities and ensuring that the team has a shared understanding of what is needed. This proactive approach helps in reducing risks and enhances the likelihood of meeting deadlines, as it builds a clear roadmap of what is to come.

While it's important to leverage the availability of key business representatives for consultation and to hold backlog refinement meetings, those factors are not as directly tied to the immediate readiness for development as knowing that an item will soon be in the active development pipeline. Furthermore, meeting the INVEST criteria for backlog items, which emphasizes the independence, negotiability, value, estimability, size, and testability of each item, is part of the preparation process but does not dictate the timing of when items should be refined just before development.