backlog blunders

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ATLANTA | BOSTON | CHICAGO | CINCINNATI | DALLAS | NEW YORK | PHOENIX | WASHINGTON D.C. Avoiding Common Pitfalls to Unleash Your Agile Team’s Productivity Backlog Blunders 08 September 2016 Joe Combs

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ATLANTA | BOSTON | CHICAGO | CINCINNATI | DALLAS | NEW YORK | PHOENIX | WASHINGTON D.C.

Avoiding Common Pitfalls to Unleash

Your Agile Team’s Productivity

Backlog Blunders

08 September 2016

Joe Combs

While agile projects are succeeding where waterfall projects fail, more than 50% of projects can still be classified as failing or challenged

The Standish Group

The Chaos Report - 2012

CHAOS Manifesto - 2013

2 A Challenging Environment

3 Backlog Blunders

� Features masquerading as stories

� Acceptance Criteria a tangled mess of untestable

or conflicting statements

� How is the backlog stored?

� Are there dependencies between stories?

� Too much detail?

Too little?

� Mockups help but

think of other ways to

capture the work

4 Format Matters

Priority: 1

Points: 5Story #: 70

Purchase Items

As a customer, I want to be able to see that the

quantity of items in my shopping cart increases

as I add an item, so that I know that I have

successfully added an item to the shopping cart

Acceptance Criteria

� The quantity of items in my cart should increase

� The amount in inventory should decrease

Statement Words:

<I>

<want to>

<so that>

Drives testing &

demos (PO

acceptance)

Format Matters5

� Meet INVEST criteria:

� Independent – can be worked in any order

�Negotiable – focus on meeting requirements vs. design

�Valuable – worth something, clear enough to prioritize

�Estimable – clear enough to estimate level of effort (‘points’)

�Small – only a portion of sprint required to complete

�Testable – acceptance criteria clear

6 Format Matters

� Everything can’t be High, MMF or whatever you call your

top, must-have priority

� Where do you draw the release line?

7 Perplexing Priority

� Estimates completed outside the team doing the

work

� Estimates set artificially high because “we don’t

know what we don’t know”

8 Estimate, Schmestimate

� Lack of Done Criteria means you can’t know when

to call a story done

� Done Criteria need to be defined

and owned by the team

9 Done Criteria

� What about Technical Debt?

� Defect mitigation?

� Estimates set artificially high because “we don’t

know what we don’t know”

10 What’s Missing?

� Meet DEEP criteria:

�Detailed appropriately – The higher it falls on the list, the

fewer the unknowns

�Emergent – never complete or frozen

�Estimated – no question marks, certainty of the estimate rises

as the detail level does

�Prioritized – the value of the item has been identified

11 What’s Missing?

� Agile means just in time requirements, right?

� How engaged is your Product Owner?

� Priority never changes despite feedback and

lessons learned

� Is it VISIBLE?

� Velocity? We don’t

fuss over that.

12 Backlog Refining

� This ceremony needs to find a place in your

operating cadence

13 Backlog Refining

2 -4 weeks

24 hours

Product Backlog of User Stories

as prioritized by Product Owner

Sprint Backlog

Backlog tasks

expanded

by team

Daily Scrum

Meeting

Source: Adapted from Agile Software

Development with Scrum by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle.

Demonstrable

New Functionality

14 Wrapping Up

� Keep stories well formatted with clear, concise acceptance criteria

� Be honest with priority

� Ditto for estimates

� Clearly define done and ready but be careful with the latter

� INVEST the time to go DEEP with your backlog

� Refine regularly

� Deceptively simple – you just have to get intentional about it!

15 Backlog Done Right

LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/jcombs

Twitter - @jgcombs

Blog – jgcombs.wordpress.com

SlideShare - http://www.slideshare.net/JoeCombs1

Thank You!!

Joe Combs

Backlog Blunders

SEI Cincinnati LLC

[email protected]

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513.459.1992