Sheila's Blog

You need a Product Vision and a Product Backlog to drive a project.  The Product Backlog is a high level list of prioritized requirements with a rough size and complexity estimate for each of the requirements.  The Product Owner is responsible for maintaining the list, but can get as much feedback as they like from customers or team members.  Priority is set by the Product Owner, size/complexity is set by the team.  The Product Owner uses the backlog to manage the release plan and it’s used by the team as input for the Sprint Planning Meeting.

The priority is set by the Product Owner and should take into account the risks or advantages of leaving the requirement to later.  Usually high risk items will be addressed first.  It’s important to know what decisions you can defer and what ones should be done now.  A factor in deciding this is how difficult it would be to change a decision later.  Good design should keep your options open so you can respond quickly to changes rather than predicting the future.

Each requirement or user story needs to be defined well enough that a complexity estimate can be put on it.  The Product Backlog items are business requirements only, not the tasks required to achieve them.  The items at the top of the list tend to get more defined as time goes on.  It must be updated/groomed regularly.  The Product Owner will often request an Estimation Meeting with the team so that items can be discussed, updated and broken down into small enough stories that can be estimated by the team.  Items will be further defined at the planning meeting to identify tasks necessary to complete them.

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