TL; DR: Ideas on How to Improve Your Product Backlog Management Techniques Scrum is a simple, yet sufficient framework to build emerging products, provided you identify in advance what is worth building. But even after a successful product discovery phase, you may struggle to make the right thing...

An organization’s ability to rapidly and deliberately respond to changing demand, while controlling risk helps ascertain its Agility.

Last week, I had a long discussion with my friends about how to scale up the Scrum Team from the startup product. That was an interesting topic and we had many things to discuss. Some of my friends raised some interesting questions.

The purpose of Scrum is to create a potentially releasable Done Product Increment, in order to realize business value. Many teams struggle in improving their Definition of Done. The technique described here allows for greater transparency on what the Definition of Done is, and what the next steps ar...

Download this datasheet to learn more about the Professional Scrum with User Experience (PSU) class.

Scrum is intended as a simple, yet sufficient framework for complex product delivery. Scrum is not a one-size-fits-all solution, a silver bullet or a complete methodology.

In this little blog I share some tips for multi-team Product Backlog refinement. What is Product Backlog Refinement? Product Backlog Refinement (PBR) is an activity that Scrum Teams regularly do to clarify potential upcoming Product Backlog Items (PBI). In single team Scrum, typically the Scru...

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Chuck Suscheck discusses some ideas that he has learned when building software over the years on how to make decisions on prioritization, especially as they impact architecture and design. (3:21 minutes)

In this episode of Ask a Professional Scrum Trainer, PST Chad Beier hosted an interactive Q&A session on how to rationalize your demand (where the work comes from) and your delivery (the people doing the work) to inform your decisions on how to organize your teams and backlogs.

When I work with my clients on Scrum in a Marketing context the discussion about the Marketing Backlog and how to move from a big bang marketing campaign to a more iterative approach via smaller slices of stories is naturally a key area we focus on. 

In this post, we explain one of the more complicated Liberating Structures called Ecocycle Planning. It helps to bring clarity in your activities as an individual or as a group of people and to identify where your energy and time you should go.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Wilbert Seele discusses why working with the Scrum Team to decide which method for capturing requirements is the right way to decide. No one method is a must and since it is all about communication, the team should be involved to pick what will ...

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainers Ravi Vajaria and Russell Miller discuss a few ideas about how distributed Scrum Teams can be more productive.  These are just a few tips and you can find many more on the Scrum.org website. (2:15 minutes)

A goal, a forecast of functionality, plus the plan to deliver it. the Why, the What and the How. Sprint Goal + Sprint Backlog. How do these relate, plus a practical example.

This is the fourth in a series of posts exploring Scrum Mastery. In our first post, we introduced the four dimensions of Scrum Mastery:  Team Identity, Team Process, Product Value, and the Organization.  In this post, we will explore the product value dimension.

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Daniel Ziegler discusses the Sprint Review and how the Product Owner works with stakeholders and the Development Team on managing and reviewing requirements, Product Backlog Items and their completion. He describes how there is no official "sign...

Does your Finance Department discourage Agile software development because it would all be charged to operational expense?

This presentation by Professional Scrum Trainer, Chuck Suscheck describes the discovery techniques of BDD and exemplifies an end-to-end automated business scenario so that you can see the direct tie between business needs and software execution possible with BDD.

In this post, we bust a myth that is at the heart of why refinement feels like a chore to many Scrum Teams: the belief that ‘Product Backlog refinement’ should be done as one or more required ‘meetings’ that must be attended by everyone in the team. We also offer some alternative approaches that fit...

Based on the feedback that I have received from my blog about the most popular blog articles, I have decided to do the same for the Scrum.org video series.  Over the past few years, we have generated more than 160 videos to help people learn more about Scrum. Updated June 26, 2024

In this Scrum Tapas video, Professional Scrum Trainer Rich Visotcky describes the Product Backlog and the need to ensure that it is transparent to the entire Scrum Team. Rich talks about why everyone on the Scrum Team needs to understand what it is comprised of, the order or priority of Product Bac...

Do your team members have a tendency to pick up the next task to work on in case they get stuck with current task because they are measured for ‘utilization’? Such multitasking isn’t just bad, but also has harmful effects and causes stress on the person as proven by a study at Stanford University.

This short video provides a review of the Scrum Framework.  Scrum is defined by its creators in the Scrum Guide which is the body of knowledge of Scrum. 2:22 Minutes

In this session, we provide an overview of the Scrum framework, discuss how Scrum enables agility and ways that empiricism can empower the teams that use it.

As a Product Owner, there is nothing more frustrating than having to use valuable development time to deal with technical debt. Like death and taxes, it’s just never a good time when those lurking defects decide to unravel.

I would like to discuss Scrum and XP because I often get a question "When should I use Scrum or XP?" from people in the community.

Simon Sinek in his book „Start With Why“ talks about the importance of knowing why we are doing things before we think about what and how to do it. I think it is a good idea for Scrum Teams also to start with why for their product development. An important point for Simon is „people don’t buy wha...

"The most important metrics are: did we execute the way in which we said we would, and did we deliver the value to the business that we had promised?" - Jamie S. Miller In an earlier post we took a critical look at metrics and at how easily they can be abused. Pretty much anything can be meas...

Specify only the absolute “must dos” and “must not dos” for achieving a purpose. Ideal for creating a Definition of Done, a Minimal Viable Product or a Team Manifest.

Many Scrum Teams use User Stories as a technique for creating their Product Backlog Items (PBIs). But when the teams bring big stories to the Sprint, this causes lots of problems. The common recommendation is to slice stories so that the team can take 6-10 of them to the Sprint. Let's discuss in det...

As part of the Scrum Tapas video series, Professional Scrum Trainer Ralph Jocham describes the Backlog Refinement, provides tips for how to hold and improve refinement sessions. 5:25 Minutes

In this post, we'll bust the myth that Scrum requires work to be estimated in Story Points. Although it is a useful technique, and used by many Scrum Teams, it is by no means the only technique. Above all, remember the quote by Esther Derby: “Estimating is often helpful, estimates are often not.”

There is a frustrating misunderstanding of reality when one thinks that the Product Owner can reject a single story at the Sprint Review. This is the fallacy of the rejected backlog item and the misguided belief that this backlog item can just be left out of this delivery. That backlog item that was...

How to Teach a Scrum Team to Split Stories Many Scrum Teams have difficulties with splitting user stories. Often I hear people saying: "It's absolutely impossible to split this product backlog item.” In order to solve this issue, I recommend organizing a workshop on story splitting for the ent...

Tips for Agile Product Roadmaps & Product Roadmap Examples

Product Backlog Management As a Product Owner, you are responsible for Product Backlog Management, in order to maximize the value of the Product. The Product Backlog is the single source of truth which contains all the work to be done on the Product. As a Product Owner, you will have to make some c...

In this post, we'll the myth that the Product Backlog is ‘prioritized’. Although a seemingly trivial change of wording, the Product Backlog is ‘an ordered list’ instead.

"To ensure continuous improvement, [the Sprint Backlog] includes at least one high priority process improvement identified in the previous Retrospective meeting." - The Scrum Guide, November 2017 That old familiar feeling Have you ever had a sense of déja-vu in a Sprint Retrospective? You know...

In this post, we’ll bust the myth that a Product Backlog has to consist entirely out of User Stories. By describing the purpose and characteristics of the Product Backlog, we'll also busted the related myth; that User Stories are an inherent, necessary part of Scrum.

"Perfection has to do with the end product, but excellence has to do with the process." - Jerry Moran Scrum requires a Product Backlog and a Product Owner to account for the value of product increments. For as long as a product exists, a Product Backlog will exist to describe the work which o...

In this blog post, we will describe the myth that the Sprint Backlog is fixed during the Sprint. We'll bust this myth by offering the perspective from the Scrum Guide and describing the difference between forecast and commitment.

An estimate is our best guess for what can be achieved and by when. There are some situations when estimates are very important: Coordinate dependencies. It can be very useful to know when the team can proceed working on new design if the key expert is temporarily out of office. Align prior...

El Sprint Backlog suele generar bastantes dudas en cuanto a su gestión. En ocasiones se convierte en un arma arromadiza que los stakeholders, el Producto Owner o incluso el Scrum Master utilizan para controlar el equipo. ¿Es esta su función?

I work with a lot of companies that are learning to use Scrum as a tool for agility driver. Recently, I spotted a trend: if a Scrum Team cannot articulate their Sprint Goal, the problem quite often lies with the Product Backlog.

We find this a common thread amongst our customer teams, which can be attributed to a lack of backlog refinement.

"There are no shortcuts when it comes to getting out of debt" - Dave Ramsey Technical debt can be defined as the longer term consequences of poor design decisions. In a sense it’s like any other debt - there ought to be a clear understanding of why it is incurred, and how and when to pay it b...

I've recently been involved with several Scrum Teams that are struggling to have the right level of detail in their Product Backlog items. Some symptoms: difficulty during Sprint Planning sessions, a massive or very small Product Backlog, or a lack of understanding during a Sprint. All of the teams ...

A review of the Scrum Guide section in the Sprint Backlog to consider and debunk the myth that the Sprint Backlog is a fixed Commitment by the Development Team.

A Scrum myth that I have encountered: Not finishing all Sprint Backlog Items in a Sprint is perceived as a failure. I have seen organizations go as far as implementing performance indicators around Sprint Backlog completion percentage (yikes!).

Let’s start with a question. When is the Sprint Planning over? Usually, the first answer that comes to mind is “when the time-box expires”. It is a good answer. However, Sprint Planning is a maximal time-box. We can end the Sprint Planning earlier, can’t we? Yes, when we are done with planning, we c...