Managing Products with Agility [P2]: Managing Products with Agility / Product Backlog Management - The Art of Product Backlog Refinement Flashcards
What does the Scrum Guide say about product backlog refinement?
- act of adding detail, estimates, and order to items in the Product Backlog
- doesn’t prescribe how you do it
Why doesn’t the Scrum Guide tell you how much refinement you should do for your Product Backlog?
- Refinement is an ongoing process
- never stops because requirements and opportunities never stop changing
- Detailing everything up front would create waste and also delay the delivery of value
How does a team go about finding the best product backlog refinement approach for them?
- need to evolve it over time to fit new situations
- Self-organization and empiricism —> Apply theGoldilocks Principleto help a team experiment and find what works best for them through inspection and adaptation
Explain the Goldilocks Principle in Product Backlog refinement
- about finding what is “just right” for your team
- goal is to balance gaining enough benefits from the activity while minimizing the potential waste
What are the 6 benefits of Product Backlog refinement?
- Increase transparency - “single source of truth”
- Clarifyvalue - When you clarify the details around value, the outcomes you are trying to achieve with the Product Backlog Item (PBI) are more clear → helpsthe Development Team build the right thing
- Break things into consumable pieces
- Reduce dependencies - Dependencies oftenturn into impedimentsand can grind a team to a halt
- Forecasting
- Incorporate learning → Empiricism is about incorporating the learning you gain as youbuild the product, as youbetter understandhow to realizethe product vision, as you see changes happening inyour environment.
Explain how we can apply the Goldilocks principle for achieving (1) Increase transparency
Goldilocks Questions
- How well do stakeholders and the Scrum Team understand what is planned for the product?
- How frequently are the interested stakeholders surprised by what was delivered?
Explain how we can apply the Goldilocks principle for achieving (2) Clarify Value
Goldilocks Questions
- How often do you discover during a Sprint that there is not a shared understanding of the business need or what you are building to meet it?
- How frequently do you discover in a Sprint Review or after a release that a PBI does not meet the user or business need?
Explain how we can apply the Goldilocks principle for achieving (3) Break Things into Consumable Pieces
Goldilocks Questions
- How oftenare you not delivering a “Done” Increment? How often are you not meetinga Sprint Goal?
- When isthis attributed to discovering mid-Sprint that PBIs are much bigger than you thought or not sliced thin enough?
Explain how we can apply the Goldilocks principle for achieving (4) Reduce Dependencies
Goldilocks Questions
- How often do you discover dependencies during a Sprint that jeopardize the Sprint Goal?
- How long do PBIs in a Sprint stay “blocked” by dependencies?
- When doyou have to re-order the Product Backlog to account for dependencies?And how much of an impact does this have on the Product Owner’s ability to optimize value?
Explain how we can apply the Goldilocks principle for achieving (5) Forecasting
Goldilocks Questions
- How much lead time is necessary for users, customers, and other stakeholders to implement a new feature or function?What is the impact if they have less lead time?
- How much detail do users, customers, and other stakeholders need in release forecasts?What is the impact if they have less detail?
Explain how we can apply the Goldilocks principle for achieving (6) Incorporate Learning
Goldilocks Questions
- How are you adapting the Product Backlog to reflect new learning about the product’s evolving capabilities and how users are responding to the changes?
- What opportunities have been missed? What prevented you from responding sooner?
Does Scrum forbid upfront planning?
- no
- Scrum simply says to consider your effort to do so, the potential waste, and the fact that you cannot perfectly predict the future in a complex domain no matter how much analysis you do
With the information gained from exploring 1-6 benefits of refinement, the Scrum Team can now consider which 5 questions with the balance of benefits and waste in mind.
- How frequently do youwant to do refinement? And how much time do youwantto spend detailing the Product Backlog?
- Who do you want to be involved in refinement?What knowledge and perspectives are needed?How will you enable shared understanding?
- How much ofyour Product Backlog do you want to be “Ready” before a Sprint?What does “Ready” mean to you?
- How do you want to communicate important details about PBIs? What methods are working well and what methods are not?
- How will you ensure you can see the whole and not get bogged down in details?
