backlog

Two agile teammates using a kanban board with sticky notes Is the Problem with Your Agile Tool, or How You’re Using It?

While using index cards and a wall can function just fine as a kanban or Scrum board, issue-tracking tools such as Jira can make it easier to manage a backlog, especially with a distributed team. But these tools are more complex to use and can add their own overhead to the process. You need to keep things simple.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk
Scrum team member taking a card from the product backlog The Difference between Priority and Order in Your Agile Work

The Scrum Guide talks about an ordered backlog, not a prioritized one. While order and priority are related, they are not the same, and understanding the difference and why people focus on one over the other can help your team be more effective at delivering business value.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk
Agile team members refining the product backlog Refine Your Product Backlog Continuously to Improve Flow

One way to address poorly defined product backlog items is to spend time refining the items as you go. Refining the backlog continuously helps the team deliver consistently and can lead to shorter planning meetings at the start of the sprint. It can even help improve reliability, velocity, and the quality of work.

Steve Berczuk's picture
Steve Berczuk
User stories Use Continuous Backlog Grooming to Refine Agile Requirements

Continuous backlog grooming means systematically refining your user stories: breaking up larger stories, obtaining detailed requirements, writing the requirements in terms of acceptance criteria and acceptance tests, and sharing and refining these details with the team. Acceptance test-driven development can help.

Susan Brockley's picture
Susan Brockley