How to use the Backlog refinement template

Start a board from it
Use this template opens a new Freero board with the Backlog refinement template on it (sign up free first). On a board you already have, open Templates in the toolbar and search for “Backlog refinement”.
Follow the instruction on the board
“Work right to left: finish nearly-ready items first. Anything stuck in “Too big” for two sessions gets split or dropped.”
Fill in each part
- Ready means The team’s bar before an item can be planned.
- Backlog refinement Columns: Raw ideas · Needs detail · Too big · Ready
Bring your team and your agents
Invite people to the board or share a link, and work on it together live. The timer is in the top bar, private mode and voting in the board menu, and Claude or ChatGPT can join through Freero’s MCP server.

Work on it with an AI agent

Connect an assistant once and it works on the board with you, with your permissions: by default it reads and proposes, and people decide.

You ask: “Fill in the Backlog refinement board from these notes.”
What happens It reads the board, then proposes sticky notes for it. Nothing changes until someone on the board accepts them.
You ask: “Group what we wrote into themes and list the actions.”
What happens It proposes clusters with a title each and task cards for the actions, labelled with its name and yours.

User story mapping: A story map of activities, user tasks and release slices, estimated and sent to Jira, Linear or GitHub.

Story splitting
Break a story that’s too big into smaller ones that each still deliver something, using a few reliable ways to split.
User story map
The user journey as a backbone of activities, with stories sliced into releases.
Relative sizing
Sort stories into size columns against one reference story instead of arguing hours.
Kanban board
To do, Doing and Done columns with task cards and a work-in-progress limit.
Sprint planning
Sprint goal, team capacity, the ready backlog, what you commit to, and the risks.
Rules and examples
Before building a story, agree its rules and a concrete example for each, and collect the questions nobody can answer yet.