Detailing requirements

Hi Daniel,
Once you have your initial set of requirements, I have found it useful to have a workshop with the Product Owner and the Development Team to groom the backlog in to a reasonable state.You need to have a compelling vision to focus the team on what you are aiming to deliver - it helps bring everyone together to build a coherent product.
Ensure that the INVEST (Independant, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimateable, Small, Testable) are met, making it clearer what is required to get that PBI to Done..
It is very helpful to have a couple of Sprints worth of Product Backlog Items (PBIs) ready to be taken in to the next Sprint. This gives flexibility in Sprint Planning.
After the initial workshop, you should spend around 10% of your Sprint capacity for the Product Owner working with the Development Team to maintain the Product Backlog in a healthy state. This will be adding new PBIs, reordering, breaking down big PBIs in to smaller PBIs, estimating etc.
The Product Owner will be adding and reviewing changes before any formal sessions. They also need to be working with any stakeholders and customers to reflect their desires to make sure that the most valuable (to the business and the customer) are at the top of the backlog and get done first.
They will need to set aside time on top of their other duties to focus on this, as it is a critical aspect to getting the best possible product released.

Regards
Simon

Daniel,

If I've understood your question correctly...

I generally coach teams to take a couple of days before starting their first sprint to:
a) Get the sprint to start on the day of the week they initially want, and
b) Bulid up and groom the product backlog, and
c) Do a retrospective. You heard it -- a retro before you begin. I find it very valuable to record the results of that retro and then refer back that a few sprints later after some improvements have been made. Helps to see how far you've come.

As to how to get the PO ahead of your dev team, I recommend weekly, full Scrum Team backlog grooming. I have a series of articles on my web site that detail the ins and outs Backlog Grooming.

Good to start here:
http://www.scrumcrazy.com/What+does+Product+Backlog+Grooming+Look+Like%…

Thanks,
Charles Bradley and Simon.

Hugs,
Daniel

You're welcome. I'm happy to help! Feel free to contact me off-line for your requirements questions. You can contact me by putting Charles before @ScrumCrazy.com