For teams working with agile frameworks such as Scrum or Kanban, the product backlog is an essential component, as it provides a single source of focus for the work to be completed by the team. In this article I’ll discuss how to get started on creating one.
What is a Product Backlog?
The backlog is an everyday part of Agile teams. Teams spend hours refining the items in the backlog and ordering the items by business value. But what exactly is a backlog, and why should you and your team care?
A backlog is really a just a to do list for the team. I say ‘just’ a to-do list, but really isn’t a to-do list everything for a team? The team members are paid to do the work that is in that list (plus a few other admin tasks).
But how is a backlog different? The main difference is that the backlog is visible to all, the backlog is kept up to date, and the work in the backlog is maintained so that it is in order of business value. The teams take items from the top of the backlog to work on them, and when they finish that item, they move on to the next item at the top.
The backlog is kept in order so that when a team member is finished with one task they don’t have to start thinking about what to work on next, they don’t have to find their manager to find out – it is there in the backlog.
The product backlog is focussed on the product that the team (or teams) is working on.
The Backlog is Ordered by Business Value
Ordered by business value? The most important (valuable) tasks that need to be completed for the business or a team. A software team should be working on features that deliver the most value to the users of the product. A small business has a multitude of different tasks to be done, but each of them in some way are important and valuable to the business. At any particular point in time, you should know which are the most important or valuable to be completed – just like an ordered to-do list.
Making a team’s backlog visible helps in a few ways; everyone in the team can see what needs to be done, everyone knows what is being worked on, everyone can see the volume of work. They can see the priorities, they can see what items are valuable to the business and the customers.
Having it visible also helps inspire conversations about the items in the backlog – are they in the right order? Is this item really more valuable than the ones above it? They might be able to see inefficiencies in what the team is doing, or potential for more valuable work that should be done. In the end it only benefits the team and the business to deliver the valuable work, help the customers, and helps your business.
How do I Create a Product Backlog?
The foundation of the product backlog is the product roadmap. The product owner and stakeholders should have a vision for the product, and mapped this on the product roadmap. The first step should be creating the product roadmap. The second step is ordering these features by business value, and then in the third step the product owner and the team takes the features, and breaks each of the features into epics, and then breaks them down again into user stories.
Since the team will be working on these in order of business value, the product owner and the team don’t need to define all the stories for all the features before they start development. They should work on them in the order that the backlog is in, taking the highest priority item, breaking it down, and then the next. This process should be continued along with the development throughout the life of the product, NOT is one huge effort at the start.
To start you just need a wall, post-it notes and pens. Write your user stories and epics on individual post-it note and put them on the wall in order of business value and priority. At this point you might have trouble deciding the order – and that is a good thing, but you will be forced to choose, and talk about it with your team.
You can also use project management or Kanban/Scrum tools as well, such as Favro, Jira, Monday.com, Asana and trello.
Who Owns the Product Backlog?
The Product Owner owns the product backlog, and they are responsible for ensuring it is maintained and ordered by value, with the stories or tasks at the top of the backlog ready for the development team to work on.
Photo by İrfan Simsar.
