Learn how to use Quely to run highly structured and efficient backlog refinement sessions directly inside Jira. This guide covers setting up a session, facilitating focused, AI-powered discussions, capturing accurate estimates, and ensuring all updates are automatically reflected in Jira for better sprint planning, improved forecasting, and better team alignment.

Quely brings all your essential tools and insights into one collaborative space, making backlog refinement a seamless process.

Setting Up Your Backlog Refinement Session

1. Create a new Quely session from the Quely Jira plugin or your Jira board.
2. Select backlog items you want to refine and add them as agenda Items. You can choose specific user stories, tasks, bugs, or other Jira issues.
3. Follow the steps in How to Plan a Quely Session
4. Import necessary components for your refinement workflow: Consider including:

• Highlights – to automatically capture key takeaways, decisions, and potential new items during discussions.
• Doc – for documenting detailed requirements, acceptance criteria, or updated user stories collaboratively.
• Diagram – if visual collaboration (e.g., mapping workflows, system architecture, or data flows) is needed for complex items.
• Estimation – to enable structured story point or time estimation.

5. Share the session link with your team (e.g., via Slack, Teams, or email) for live or asynchronous collaboration.

Running Your Backlog Refinement Session

Quely facilitates a focused and efficient refinement process for each backlog item.

• One Jira issue at a time: Quely displays one Jira ticket at a time to help your team stay focused and avoid context switching, ensuring deep understanding and thorough discussion for each item. Learn more about agenda items.

• Manage time effectively: Use the built-in session timer to keep discussions on schedule for each backlog item and avoid long debates, promoting efficiency.

• Leverage AI-generated prompts: Quely’s AI automatically generates discussion points and clarifying questions for each ticket. This helps your team spark deeper thinking, surface hidden blockers, uncover new requirements, and ensure a comprehensive understanding of the backlog item. Learn about AI discussion points.
• Chat Interface: Participants can chat and add comments in every session. All messages are organized in the central "Chats" tab, and detailed discussions, replies, and file attachments can happen in sidebar threads.

• Collaborate and document with integrated components: Team members can provide their thoughts, flag dependencies, and suggest refinements directly within the session, whether participating live or asynchronously, using Quely’s powerful components:

• Doc Component: Use the Doc component to collaboratively draft detailed descriptions, acceptance criteria, or even propose changes to the user story. This allows for structured documentation that goes beyond simple chat comments.
• Diagram Component: For complex backlog items, use the Diagram component to visually map out user flows, system interactions, or data structures. This visual aid helps clarify requirements and identify potential issues that text alone might miss.
• Estimate when ready using the estimation component: When appropriate, use Quely’s AI-assisted estimation features to assign story points or time estimates. This reduces bias and improves forecasting accuracy by leveraging collective intelligence and data.

After Your Refinement Session

• Review AI-generated Highlights: The Highlight Component provides a session summary, highlighting key takeaways, decisions made, blockers identified, and next steps. This AI-powered feature helps track "Potential new items" and finalized "Takeaways" that can be directly linked to your Jira issues.

• Document and update: Document refined requirements or new proposals in the Quely Doc component.
• Automatic Jira updates: Quely ensures that all estimates, new items, and refinements made during the session are automatically reflected in your Jira backlog items, ensuring up-to-date information for sprint planning and team alignment.

Quely's Tool Integration: Better Backlog Refinement

Quely's growing capability to integrate with **over 500 tools **makes collecting feedback much easier and more powerful. It helps Quely pull in all kinds of items accross teams. This wide range of connections helps Quely become a main place for all kinds of feedback, moving beyond just using one tool.

• Get Data from Everywhere: Quely doesn't just work with Jira. It can get important information and start feedback sessions from many other places. This includes tasks from other project apps (like Asana, Trello), customer talks from sales tools (like Salesforce, HubSpot), code changes from developer tools (like GitHub, GitLab), or even data from marketing tools. This means you can gather feedback about any part of your company's work.
• All in One Place: By connecting with different tools, Quely brings together feedback that might otherwise be scattered across different teams or systems. This gives you a clear, complete look at all ideas and input about a specific product, project, or process.
• Turn Ideas into Action in Other Tools: "Potential New Items" from Quely can be automatically sent as tasks, issues, or comments to other connected tools, not just Jira. This makes it easier to turn feedback into things you can act on.
• Improved Communication and Clearer Information: Beyond just Slack and Teams, summaries of feedback, important decisions saved in the "Doc" component, or diagrams of new plans from the "Diagrams" component can be automatically shared to other communication channels, knowledge bases (like Confluence, SharePoint). This makes sure everyone in the company knows what's happening.

Best Practices for Refinement Sessions✅

• Always add a manageable number of backlog items to each session to maintain focus.
• Encourage participants to review AI discussion prompts before providing their input to ensure thoughtful contributions.
• Timebox discussion for each item using the session timer to keep momentum high and sessions efficient.
• Regularly review session Highlights to track decision history, identified blockers, and potential new items, ensuring all outcomes are addressed.
• Leverage Quely’s AI prompts to push beyond surface-level responses, fostering deeper discussion and uncovering hidden requirements.

Related Articles 📚

• Creating Your First Quely Session
• Using the Session Picker
• AI-Generated Discussion Points and Questions

Updated on: 29/07/2025