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?’
References
- Coaching Agile Teams by Lyssa Adkins
- Fixing Your Scrum by Ryan Ripley and Todd Miller
- The Principles of Product Development Flow by Donald G. Reinertsen
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