How to Prioritise the Backlog

Priority Process (1)

• Firstly on business value
• Secondly with the team to include impediments
• This produces the most important thing to the business
• Business value over schedule driven decisions

Sequencing Risk Reduction (3, page 48)

• Sequence first the activities that remove the most risk for the least expense
• Look at it like buying information 
  • Example if you entered a lottery with a 1 in 1000 chance of winning your ticket would be worth $1
  • If someone told you one of the numbers out of the 10 number draw, that would increase your chances of winning and make the ticket worth $10 
  • It would therefore be worth spending $9 to get that information to increase your chance of success

Exercises for Backlog Prioritisation

Exercise to help prioritise the Product Backlog (2, page 55)

• Use the liberating structure, Min-Spec
• Display the Product Backlog in the room
• Use the question of ‘Which features in our product backlog are needed in order to have a successful product release?’
• Test the list generated against the question ‘If we delivered all of out must-do PBIs except this one, would we still have a successful product release?’

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References

1. Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins
2. Fixing Your Scrum by Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller
3. The Principles of Product Development Flow by Donald G. Reinertsen

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