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Product Backlog for Scrum introduction

Last post 02:55 pm August 9, 2018 by Natasha Jung
3 replies
12:57 pm August 8, 2018

Hello.

If you use SCRUM for the SCRUM introduction to a company what would be the best way to handle the Product Backlog? Instead of clear user stories, there are often more open questions like " how do we train the organisation?", "how will budget planning look like in the future?" ...

Could a product backlog also contain open questions?

Thanks a lot!


03:25 pm August 8, 2018

Could a product backlog also contain open questions?

Not really, because these sorts of problems could not then be sized. The principle of including a question on a backlog is fine, but there must be a criterion for its closure.

The best thing to do is to keep any question or hypothesis as small and tightly defined as possible so an expected outcome can be articulated. The best are usually framed as SMART objectives.

It sounds like you are at the starting point of trying to put together a transformation backlog. I’d recommend the “Scrumming Scrum” chapter of “Software in 30 Days”, also I have material at agilepatterns.org.


01:13 am August 9, 2018

To be honoust. I do not believe in approach implementing scrum in an organisation using scrum as the 'golden approach'. Of course it can be helpful. But I think the core is changing the culture of the company. This is not solved by using scrum or any other method for managing this. 

In my experience the best approach is to start more bottom up, low key. Find a team that is enthousiastic as being a first mover, a very good (or bad) example of how scrum way-of-working helps this team. From that point on, spread the word. 

Rolling this out further over tens or hundreds of teams, there are many books and studies about what to do and not to do in this matter ;)


06:09 am August 9, 2018

@Ian Mitchell: your answer goes along with my feeling as well. We are definitely at the beginning. For now, we added large open questions in order to cover every possible aspect we can think of. In the next step we will divide those questions into SMART - sentences/user stories. Also we haven't drafted a DoR yet, so there is still some way to go.  Thanks for the literature advice, I will definitely have a look at it.

 

@Marco Glorie: actually, we are starting bottom up. But there is a lot of uncertainty on the side of the management so using Scrum in our project in order for them to experience the framework is highly appraciated by them. The employees are really motivated but we have to ensure we do not loose the management.

 


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