Understand how the product backlog is created and maintained
The product backlog enables two key functions:
1) empowers the business to plan and prioritize the “benefits” to be delivered by the team and
2) empowers the team to plan and sequence the work to deliver those “benefits” in the most efficient way
The product backlog (or “backlog”) is the requirements for a system, expressed as a prioritized list of product backlog Items. These included both functional and non-functional customer requirements, as well as technical team-generated requirements. While there are multiple inputs to the product backlog, it is the sole responsibility of the product owner to prioritize the product backlog.
During a Sprint planning meeting, backlog items are moved from the product backlog into a sprint, based on the product owner’s priorities. – www.scrumalliance.org
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Agile Principle 2 Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage. |
Product backlog always lists items adding value for the customer. It includes functional requirements and non-functional requirements. It can also include items required by the team, but only the ones that will eventually bring value to the customer, e.g. taking into use a continuous integration server in order to guarantee the continuous end product quality.
- Product backlog cannot include concrete low level tasks and requests for building the intermediate artifacts…
- Product backlog utilizes the simplest and the most effective way for prioritizing requests – a list…
- The higher the items are located on the product backlog, the more detailed they are…
- When there are several interdependent teams in the company or department, typically they all have a single product backlog and pull their work from it.
- Product backlog does not typically include the detailed requirement information…
–Artem Marchenko, agilesoftwaredevelopment.com blog
Product Owner “owns” the product backlog
The product backlog is the primary planning tool in SCRUM and evolves over time as the requirements emerge. The product owner has sole responsibility for maintaining the product backlog. The product backlog is the input to Project Planning and Sprint Planning stages of the SCRUM process.
Collaboration Improves the game
The best requirements come from the strangest places. Go out of your way to bring team members and customers into brainstorming sessions to generate requirements. Ideally, requirements should be captured as User Stories.
Meetings that use the product backlog include:
- Story Writing Workshop – often used to generate the initial product backlog, or update a stale backlog
- Story Sizing Meeting – required to enable the team to track its Velocity
- Project Planning Meeting – often used to generate a sprint plan for purposes of predicting which “benefits” will be completed when
The INVEST-ment Test
The business should be able to invest in each item in the product backlog. If the requirements are written in such a way that the business cannot understand, negotiate or otherwise prioritize the requirements then frankly the requirement does not belong in the product backlog.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
Image may be NSFW.Clik here to view.
