Product Backlog Prioritisation for Developers
In Scrum methodology, the product backlog is an ordered list of all the work needed for development of the product. It comprises of user stories, bugs, technical work and knowledge acquisition. The items in the product backlog are driven from the product roadmap, where the Product roadmap is a strategic plan that shows the evolution of the product on different release phases. The product roadmap is written by the product owner with the collaboration of the stakeholders. The items in the roadmap show the long-term vision for the product. The items in the product backlog are workable features and are detailed in comparison to the abstract goals defined in the product roadmap.
Both the product owner and the development team work on the definition of the items and their details in the product backlog. The Development team estimates how much work is needed for each item in the product backlog and the prioritized items in the backlog are scheduled to be worked on iteratively within each sprint. Based on their capacity, the development team decides when and how each item is delivered. But the Organization and prioritization of the backlog items are done by the product owner. For this purpose, the product owner receives feedback from development team and customers on each backlog item. The product owner can change the priorities at any point of the project and is responsible for the backlog. The feedback received from the stakeholders are reflected in the reprioritized backlog before each sprint planning session. During the planning session, the items of the product backlog are revisited and refined both by the development team and the product owner.
Project planning
In project planning, the product owner is required to prioritize the backlog items to fulfill the requirements of the stakeholders and deliver value to the customers. Without prioritization, the development team may work on items that deliver limited or no value to the product. The scrum master coaches the team on the importance of prioritization and the application of different prioritization metrics.
59 Seconds Agile – Prioritising the Product Backlog
There are different criteria for ordering and prioritizing the backlog items such as value, risk, uncertainty, and dependency. Value or business value reflects the importance of the features required by the customer. The more valuable items are prioritized first in the backlog. The items that do not bring any business value to the product, are either removed from the product backlog or deferred to later stages. Another important metric for prioritization is risk. A risk is correlated with uncertainty. The more uncertainty, the riskier the project or task is. By implementing the riskier items first in the product backlog, the developers reduce the uncertainty and ambiguity from the product. This leads to a higher quality product.
Releasability is another criterion for product backlog prioritization. Releasability means being able to release product increments early and frequently. Each release should include a functionality desired by the customer. Releasing the product increment early will help the development team to get feedback from the customers and understand how to continue implementation in future while allowing the stakeholders to benefit from the added value of the product earlier. Another prioritization criterion is the dependency. Dependencies can be between requirements or between several teams working on the same product. The dependencies should be resolved by the scrum team. If it is not the case, they affect the product backlog prioritization. The items which other items depend on should be implemented first.
There are different prioritization methods for ordering backlog items such as MoSCoW, paired-comparison and the 100-point method.
Prev <— Continue Reading —> Next
Our Favourite Agile Books
The History of Agile For Developers
Prior to the 1990’s software development was very slow, often taking years to complete development and release the product to market. The industry was following a very formal methodology for products and software development…
What is Agile to the Developer?
While traditional project management is still widely used, the benefits of an Agile approach to running a project are becoming more and more recognized. Where Agile has a distinct advantage over classic project management is the development of new products…
Why Use Agile as a Developer?
When determining if a move to Agile is right, a PESTLE can be used to simplify what factors should be considered. While Agile is sometimes thought of as a software development project management method, it isn’t just for these types of technology-centric companies…
The Agile Manifesto For Developers
Agile is a quick, simple, lightweight and effective way of managing projects. In traditional project management models…
The Agile Principles For Developers
When the Agile Manifesto was drawn up in 2001, it embodied four values and twelve principles that signaled a new approach to…
The Agile Fundamentals For Developers
Thinking of becoming a Scrum Master? Or are you already one, but you’re still new to the job? No matter what level of experience…
The Declaration of Interdependence For Developers
The Declaration of Interdependence establishes that all members, stakeholders, and customers are interdependent and…
The Agile Frameworks For Developers
There are many different Agile frameworks – all of them share the same philosophy and are built around the Agile Manifesto and Principles. But they vastly differ in their approaches, values, and structure. …
The Scrum Framework For Developers
The Agile Scrum framework is designed to deliver products and projects of any size. This includes projects, programs, and portfolios. Scrum provides guidelines on delivery techniques, events, and roles. Many of the same ceremonies are held within both a standard Agile scrum project and an Agile Scrum…
The Scrum Roles For Developers
Scrum is a useful tool for the creation, maintenance, plan, and execution of diverse products and services. The tool consists of…
The Scrum Team Size For Developers
The basics of Scrum can be easy but implementing them and succeeding with Scrum can be infinitely harder. Scrum …
The Agile Project Vision For Developers
At the heart of any great product is a great vision. It describes the primary goal or goals of a product and creates a focus that…
Forming the Scrum Team For Developers
Scrum is a framework that encourages delivery of potentially shippable product increments every 2-6 weeks. The work is…
Developing Epics For Developers
The term ‘epic’ in agile refers to a large user story that has not yet been defined in detail. Typically, an epic will cover a single…
The Agile Product Backlog For Developers
A Product Backlog is an organized collection of the existing User Stories (aka Wants and Needs) for an explicit business endeavor. Think of a shopping catalog of User Stories, ordered by urgency, that can be perused and selected from to determine what will be worked on during the current…
Release Planning For Developers
Although flexibility and adaptability are part and parcel of an agile methodology, this does not mean that no planning is required when…
Creating User Stories For Developers
User Stories are an integral part of the agile development process. They are an important agile technique that is used to frame…
Estimating User Stories For Developers
One of the principles of self-managing teams in Agile Scrum is working collaboratively with the Product Owner to effectively deliver…
Creating Tasks For Developers
According to The Agile Manifesto: “The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.” As a…
Estimating Agile Tasks For Developers
In Scrum, a list of user stories is produced and put together to form a product backlog, and each of these user stories will need to…
Creating the Sprint Backlog For Developers
The Sprint Backlog is defined as a group of user stories that are grouped together during the Sprint Planning Meeting. This…
Creating the Deliverables For Developers
Agile Scrum provides the framework for delivery of the vision of an organization. Execution of the vision includes processes, ceremonies and project deliverables that are also known as artifacts…
The Daily Stand-Up For Developers
The daily scrum is an opportunity for developers or anyone committed to working in the sprint to talk to each other to make sure the…
Product Backlog Prioritisation For Developers
The product backlog is a key element of Agile software development. It facilitates a development environment that creates valuable features and products for stakeholders…
The Sprint Review Meeting For Developers
The Sprint Review meeting comes at the end of the sprint and the goal of this meeting is to have key people in the room to be able …
Demonstrating and Validating the Sprint For Developers
As organizations migrate to Agile principles, there may be questions about how the organization can prove that there is value…
The Sprint Retrospective For Developers
A very simple step by step guide to help you choose the appropriate product development methodology from…
Releasing the Product For Developers
One of the most important milestones any project will ever have is finally releasing their product and putting it out there. It’s the…
Regression Testing For Developers
In companies using agile development, it is common to introduce changes in a product incrementally. Along with the new changes, unexpected issues may arise, testing whether the existing functionality is broken or not becomes very important…
Product Owners
Find out more about the Agile and the Product Owner Role
Developers
Find out more about the Agile and the Developer Role
More Articles
