A DEEP Backlog is a Healthy Backlog

The product owner then organizes each of the user stories into a single list for the development team. The product owner may choose to deliver a complete epic first . Or, it may be more important to the program to test booking a discounted flight which requires stories from several epics .

Stories should capture the essence of the requirement and should not represent a contract on how to solve it. Stories serve as a reminder for a conversation where the features and details are discussed among product owner and the development team members. Product backlog items are prioritized in linearly ordered based upon DIVE criteria.

More Frequent Product Improvements

Thorough estimation should be focused on high-priority items that will be tackled soon. As you refine your backlog and add more details to top-priority items, you can improve your estimation. A good option is using story points to zoom in on the details. They can help you accurately and practically reflect the reality of an item from the customer’s perspective. We’ll cover all of these attributes in detail, including how you can ensure your product backlog is in good health.

During Product Backlog refinement, items are reviewed and revised. Refinement usually consumes no more than 10% of the capacity of the Development Team. However, Product Backlog items can be updated at any time by the Product Owner or at the Product Owner’s discretion. While you want to encourage cross-functional collaboration, you need to ensure you don’t bring in too many ideas and opinions.

Scrum Master

Prioritized.The product backlog should be sorted with the most valuable items at the top and the least valuable at the bottom. This ensures that the team is always ready to work on the most important item next and team is able to maximize the value of the product or system being developed. All good Scrum teams need a good product backlog, but how do we know if ours is up to the task? This article offers a deep dive into how to create and manage a backlog with various techniques used to maintain Product Backlog effectively and appropriately. Savvy product owners rigorously groom their program’s product backlog, making it a reliable and sharable outline of the work items for a project.

If this turns out to be difficult for the, then the Scrum Master should advise. The product backlog items are detailed appropriately if higher-priority items are described in more detail than lower-priority ones. “The lower the priority, the less detail, until you techniques and practices for product backlog can barely make out the backlog item,” write Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle in their book Agile Software Development with Scrum. Following this guideline keeps the backlog concise and ensures that the items likely to be implemented in the next sprint are ready.

Define Ready for Sprint Backlog Items

Upcoming backlog items should be detailed appropriately, so they can be better understood by the development team. The closer an item is to being completed, the more detail it should have. The product owner is in charge of ordering and prioritizing backlog items, placing high-priority items at the top. They are also responsible for backlog refinement, which ensures all backlog items are organized, have appropriate details, and are ready for any upcoming sprint planning. Doing so helps your team go into sprint planning sessions fully equipped to be productive. Backlog grooming meetings may also be helpful at the end of the sprint, mid-sprint or on an ad-hoc basis when your team needs to regroup.

• Upcoming backlog items should be detailed appropriately, so they can be better understood by the development team.
• The high priority items in the Product Backlog are fine grained and have more details as well as accurate estimates because of more information and greater details of those items.
• Such terms include user stories, bugs, features, splitting user stories, backlog refinement, backlog grooming, backlog, sprint, estimates, points, Scrum, Scrum master and agile.
• To keep a backlog up-to-date and in its most effective form, it needs to be continuously refined and adapted.
• Any larger stories near the top should be broken down into smaller, more manageable tasks.

Backlog grooming meetings provide an opportunity for your team to come together, choose relevant priorities for your end users and customers, then get your team ready to act on them. After your meeting, make sure prioritized backlog work is actionable by communicating the next steps and providing clarity to your team. First, send follow-up notes clarifying and documenting important decisions surrounding your backlog. Also, reach out to team members to answer questions that went unanswered during your meeting. Finally, arrange follow-up sessions to debate or infuse expertise into backlog items further as needed. Keeping them at this length helps to ensure everyone stays focused on and enthusiastic about the meeting content.

Product Owner

They can be used as very useful acronyms to help us remember the key characteristics. In this blog, I will explain how to manage a DEEP product backlog well by INVESTing wisely and DIVing carefully. As Pichler advises, we should summon the courage to tell how lengthy and overly detailed product backlogs can make our work harder rather than easier if presented with one.

A DEEP product backlog clearly helps us to zero in on user stories that are most important or most valuable. With it, we can be sure that we are prioritizing the right stories. We can sidestep the risk of our backlog becoming a stumbling block rather than a stepping stone. Sometimes, product managers or owners may be handed a pre-prepared product backlog that is probably supposed to make their work easier. The lists are typically too long and excessively or needlessly detailed.

DEEP agile backlogs

This estimation unit should account for complexity, uncertainty, risk, and effort. There are a lot of generally accepted methods for estimates, such as story points, ideal days, and t-shirt sizes. When selecting an agile estimation technique, the development team should pick one that resonates with them. Stories that will not be developed for awhile should be described with less detail.

We may make clearer how such backlogs can hurt our ability to deliver a winning product. It’s best to put aside an excessively detailed product backlog handed down to us and https://www.globalcloudteam.com/ develop a fresh one from the roadmap based on the DEEP principles. Is your product backlog so overgrown that it’s starting to become a hindrance rather than an advantage?

User Stories – Investing in the Three C’s

We should never see the backlog as something we set and forget. As we progress and get new information, there will be a need to make some alterations or modifications. Items may need to be added, re-prioritized, or removed altogether.