grooming the product backlog - roman pichler · grooming the product backlog grooming the product...

Grooming the Product Backlog

Roman Pichler

© 2006-2009 Pichler Consulting Ltd 2

About me Roman Pichler Consultant and Author Agile Product Management

Tel.: +44 (0) 7974 203772 [email protected] www.romanpichler.com

Upcoming Book: Agile Product Management. Addison-Wesley. 2009

My book on Scrum:

The Product Backlog •  List of requirements and deliverables

–  Often derived from the product vision –  Anyone can contribute but the Product Owner

controls the product backlog

•  The product backlog is DEEP –  Detailed appropriately –  Emergent –  Estimated –  Prioritised


The Backlog is like a Garden


Gardens need Attention and Care


The Groomed Backlog Product Backlog

Fine-grained, detailed requirements ready for consumption in the next sprint, e.g., small user stories

Medium-grained requirements, e.g., larger user stories

Coarse-grained requirements, e.g., epics

Prio

rity

High

Low


Stocking the Backlog


Two Approaches • Top-down

– Using the product vision to populate the initial backlog

– My favourite approach for new product development projects

• Bottom-up – Using existing requirements to fill the

backlog – Works well for product updates


Grooming the Backlog


Grooming the Product Backlog Grooming the product backlog is an ongoing process comprising of the following steps:

•  New requirements are discovered and described

•  The product backlog is prioritised

•  The high-priority requirements are prepared for the upcoming sprint planning meeting

•  Requirements are estimated


Grooming the Product Backlog •  The Product Owner is responsible for making sure

that the grooming activities are carried out


•  Grooming is a collaborative process. ScrumMaster and team participate in the grooming activities

•  Scrum allocates up to 10% of the team’s availability for grooming activities

Requirements Workshops


Requirements Workshops •  Requirements workshops are structured work

meetings and facilitate collaborative backlog grooming

•  They serve to stock the product backlog, to decompose and refine existing requirements, to discover and describe new requirements, and to prioritise the backlog

•  Product Owner, ScrumMaster and team attend the workshop and involve customers, users and stakeholders such as representatives from marketing, sales or service as needed


Requirements Workshops •  Hold one or more workshops to get the product

backlog in ready for the first sprint planning meeting

•  Schedule a requirements workshop in every sprint to prepare the product backlog for the next sprint planning meeting

•  The workshop should take place towards the end of the sprint when most of the work on the sprint goal has been completed – a few days prior to the sprint planning meeting


Prioritisation


Prioritising the Product Backlog •  Prioritising the product backlog

–  States which requirements are part of the release and which are not

–  Creates an order of importance amongst the items: The highest priority items are detailed and delivered first

•  Prioritisation progressively freezes the product backlog contents. This entails making decisions about –  The precise semantics of the requirement –  The technologies, architecture and design

options to deliver the requirement


Prioritisation Factors •  The last responsible moment

–  Is the point in time when not making the decision negatively impacts the project

–  Delays decisions until they have to be made –  Provides us with more time to generate

information, evaluate options, and gather feedback from customers resulting in better decisions

–  Does not mean to procrastinate decisions or being indecisive!


Prioritisation Factors •  Functional completeness

–  Aims to make a feature or theme releasable, for instance, as part of an alpha and beta

–  Helps to plan and track the project progress –  Addressing risks and achieving functional completeness

are sometimes conflicting factors

•  Risk and uncertainty –  Requirements exhibiting uncertainty or risk or should be

high priority and implemented early on –  By doing so, we generate the relevant knowledge early

on in the project so we can make the right decisions –  Fail early: If we have to fail, we want to fail as early as

possible


Prioritisation Factors •  The bare necessities

–  Prerequisites to effective development such as infrastructure, collocation

•  Dependencies –  If dependencies cannot be resolved, they can

influence the prioritisation of backlog items: Dependent requirements may be implemented in the same sprint


Getting Ready for Sprint Planning


Sprint Planning Prep •  Once the product backlog has been

prioritised, we are ready to prepare the high-priority requirements that are likely to be worked on in the next sprint

•  We prepare just enough items just in time, typically a few days before the relevant sprint planning meeting in a requirements workshop


Properties of High-priority Items •  Clear

–  Describe requirements collaboratively, Product Owner, team, customers, users, stakeholders

•  Testable –  Ensure that the requirement can be validated.

Employ acceptance criteria, for instance.

•  Feasible –  The item can be fully transformed into a

product increment in one sprint. Take into account dependencies to other items, both functional and non-functional requirements


How Many and How Detailed? •  Depends on the team’s velocity and the sprint

length •  Prepare a few extra requirements

–  To allow the team to select those requirements that will result in the best possible product increment

–  To feed the team with more work when the team’s progress in the sprint is faster than anticipated

•  Small requirements tend to be beneficial –  Improves the team’s progress tracking within the sprint and its

self-organisation –  Minimises the work-in-process and the risk of partially done

and defective work at the end of the sprint


Famous Last Words Gardening requires lots of water – most of it in the form of perspiration. Lou Erickson

There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments. Janet Kilburn Phillips



Thank you for your attention!

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