The Product Backlog

• Engineering and product owner focused, but has value for everyone.
• This is review if you've done Scrum elsewhere.
• Very unusual for us to NOT have adopted the backlog organizationally. Not quite fly by the seat of your pants, but close.
• Inarguably, most important artifact in Scrum.
• Mystery Men have been using a backlog with great success.
• Outline:
  • Introduce (or reintroduce) the product backlog
  • Show its benefits
  • Help get you started on your own backlog

The Players

• Product Owner
• Developers
• QA
• Management
• Customers

• PO: Owns and maintains the Backlog, the person most responsible for understanding the needs of the business. Gathers input, takes feedback and is lobbied by many people, is ultimately teh one that makes the call and what gets built.
• Dev, QA: Our bible
• Management: Complete understanding of what the engineering group is working on, what has been delivered, and a fair expectation of when future tasks will be completed.
• Customers: external and internal

Make It Successful

Pay attention. This is important.

• Single source of truth
• Available, accessible
• Living, breathing document

• Single copy and single source of truth. It's the bible. Must feel confident that what we are looking at is accurate and current.
• Available any time and to everyone. Place high value on collaboration and transparency.
• Contantly groomed

Grooming

The ongoing process of maintaining the backlog.

• Involves all parties
• Preplanning
• Ad hoc planning
• Planning

• Includes adding, reviewing and discussing new tasks, adding or updating points to tasks, re-ranking, etc.
• An ongoing endeavor. (The "living, breathing" part of the definition of a backlog.)
• If the backlog is properly maintained (groomed), you should be able to walk into planning, choose the next n points, and be done.

The Benefits

• Transparency -> Accountability
• Confidence
• Ability to respond to change
• Planning -> Forcasting
• Expectations

• Transparency: No surprises, everyone is held accountable
• Confidence: We've looked ahead and have done our due diligence on upcoming tasks
• Adaptation: By looking ahead, we can more easily adapt to changes in priority
• Planning: We can more accurately predict our timelines and resource constraints
• Expectations: We can properly set expectations and deliver what we promise

Your Current System

• Valuable as a report, not a backlog
• Vague
• Not pointed
• Limited timeframe

• Some value, but it's a report, not a backlog.
• Prioritized (somewhat), not ranked
• Communicated via email, planning, preplanning.
• Significant: No way to project when something can be delivered. Example: 2/1 delivery date of CM

Mystery Men Backlog 2.0

• Excel: Hard for Katharine to edit during grooming sessions
• Trello: Hard to read, not printable
• Sprint Planner: Uses Trello API to reformat data
  • Added benefit of being able to reformat the data any way necessary.

Get Started

One Backlog Per Product/Application

• Spreadsheet: Google Docs
• Current sprint
• Wishlist
• Next two sprints
• Groom
• Everything else
• Groom frequently and diligently
• Initial effort eases, then it's easy

• Tim owns and updates the backlogs, but others can help get them started.
• Remember that the lower in your backlog, the more fuzzy estimates and stories will be. It doesn't have to be perfect except for the top of the backlog.

Thanks