backlog blunders
TRANSCRIPT
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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
� 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
� 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
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Thank You!!