Talk given at the monthly Agile Cincy meeting 9/8/2016

1. ATLANTA | BOSTON | CHICAGO | CINCINNATI | DALLAS | NEW YORK | PHOENIX | WASHINGTON D.C.
Avoiding Common Pitfalls to Unleash
Your Agile Team’s Productivity
Backlog Blunders
08 September 2016
Joe Combs

2. While agile projects are succeeding where waterfall projects
fail, more than 50% of projects can still be classified as
failing or challenged
The Standish Group
The Chaos Report - 2012
CHAOS Manifesto - 2013
2 A Challenging Environment

3. 3 Backlog Blunders

4. Features masquerading as stories
Acceptance Criteria a tangled mess of untestable
or conflicting statements
How is the backlog stored?
Are there dependencies between stories?
Too much detail?
Too little?
Mockups help but
think of other ways to
capture the work
4 Format Matters

5. Priority: 1
Points: 5
Story #: 70
Purchase Items
As a customer, I want to be able to see that the
quantity of items in my shopping cart increases
as I add an item, so that I know that I have
successfully added an item to the shopping cart
Acceptance Criteria
The quantity of items in my cart should increase
The amount in inventory should decrease
Statement Words:
<I>
<want to>
<so that>
Drives testing &
demos (PO
acceptance)
Format Matters5

6. Meet INVEST criteria:
Independent – can be worked in any order
Negotiable – focus on meeting requirements vs. design
Valuable – worth something, clear enough to prioritize
Estimable – clear enough to estimate level of effort (‘points’)
Small – only a portion of sprint required to complete
Testable – acceptance criteria clear
6 Format Matters

7. Everything can’t be High, MMF or whatever you call your
top, must-have priority
Where do you draw the release line?
7 Perplexing Priority

8. Estimates completed outside the team doing the
work
Estimates set artificially high because “we don’t
know what we don’t know”
8 Estimate, Schmestimate

9. Lack of Done Criteria means you can’t know when
to call a story done
Done Criteria need to be defined
and owned by the team
9 Done Criteria

10. What about Technical Debt?
Defect mitigation?
Estimates set artificially high because “we don’t
know what we don’t know”
10 What’s Missing?

11. Meet DEEP criteria:
Detailed appropriately – The higher it falls on the list, the
fewer the unknowns
Emergent – never complete or frozen
Estimated – no question marks, certainty of the estimate rises
as the detail level does
Prioritized – the value of the item has been identified
11 What’s Missing?

12. Agile means just in time requirements, right?
How engaged is your Product Owner?
Priority never changes despite feedback and
lessons learned
Is it VISIBLE?
Velocity? We don’t
fuss over that.
12 Backlog Refining

13. This ceremony needs to find a place in your
operating cadence
13 Backlog Refining
2 -4 weeks
24 hours
Product Backlog of User Stories
as prioritized by Product Owner
Sprint Backlog
Backlog tasks
expanded
by team
Daily Scrum
Meeting
Source: Adapted from Agile Software
Development with Scrum by Ken
Schwaber and Mike Beedle.
Demonstrable
New Functionality

14. 14 Wrapping Up

15. Keep stories well formatted with clear, concise
acceptance criteria
Be honest with priority
Ditto for estimates
Clearly define done and ready but be careful with
the latter
INVEST the time to go DEEP with your backlog
Refine regularly
Deceptively simple – you just have to get
intentional about it!
15 Backlog Done Right

16. LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/jcombs
Twitter - @jgcombs
Blog – jgcombs.wordpress.com
SlideShare - http://www.slideshare.net/JoeCombs1
Thank You!!

17. Joe Combs
Backlog Blunders
SEI Cincinnati LLC
jcombs@sysev.com
17
513.459.1992