Most Common Product Backlog Mistakes and How to Avoid Them
The product backlog is a key artifact for the Agile Team while practicing Scrum. It’s a container of ALL the to-do work items that an Agile Team has to iteratively implement to deliver prioritised business outcomes. A lot of software development teams struggle to maintain it effectively.
The product backlog includes the upcoming requirements for the product. New features, UI/UX problems, upgrades to new functionalities, infrastructure changes, bug fixes, feature requests, etc. are a part of the product backlog.
A product backlog contains a prioritized list of key functionalities that a product should have. It is also referred to as the to-do list for the product development team and an artifact in the software development framework.
Here are the common product backlog mistakes and the ways to avoid them:
Mistake 1: Redundancy of the product backlog
- One of the biggest mistakes that agile development teams can make is leaving the product backlog
- The product backlog needs to be updated on a regular basis.
- A redundant backlog that is not up-to-date will negatively impact the potential of the agile team to deliver top performance, which the Product Owner desires.
- A SAFe® agile certification training will teach you that the product backlog needs to be refined regularly to ensure the perfection of the product backlog.
- Scheduling backlog reviews on a regular basis will ensure that the product backlog reflects recent priorities.
Mistake 2: Complete dependency on the Product Owner to define everything in the product backlog
- The Product Owner is the individual responsible for defining and updating information in the product backlog.
- The Product Owner has in-depth market knowledge and a concrete understanding of what the end-users want.
- However, due to time constraints, the Product Owner is unable to define everything clearly in the product backlog.
- In some cases, it may also happen that the Product Owner does not have complete knowledge about the target market and the user community.
- For everything to be defined accurately in the product backlog, the agile team must collaborate and work with the Product Owner.
- Cross-functional teams must work with the Product Owner to prioritize tasks in the product backlog, to deliver maximum value to the customers.
Mistake 3: Allowing everyone to access the product backlog and add things to it
- If the Product Owner is not actively involved and dedicated to the project, giving everyone the authorization to add things to the product backlog is a huge mistake that will result in low data quality.
- New ideas and collaboration with stakeholders and customers can be done by the Product Owner, rather than giving them the authority to add things to the product backlog.
- Before any new user stories are added to the product backlog, it is essential to discuss and confirm the same with the Product Owner.
- Also, any new requirements, ideas and additions can be encouraged at a later stage of development.
Mistake 4: Constant re-prioritization of tasks/work
- Based on the new requirements from stakeholders and feedback from customers, it is good for the Product Owner to prioritize tasks.
- Constant re-prioritization of tasks once a team member starts working can affect the focus, concentration, morale, and flow of work.
- Hence, it is essential for Agile product development teams to communicate with the Product Owner to avoid making any changes, or if needed, make minor changes to the backlog once a team starts working on it.
Mistake 5: The product backlog is too vast
- The product backlog needs to be small and manageable.
- However, most often the product backlog is overstuffed with too many user stories (in some cases 10,000-20,000) making it next to impossible to understand for the Agile team.
- In such a vast product backlog, prioritization is out of the question
- Ideally, the product backlog needs to be concise and short.
- By having thousands of user stories, the development team will get confused and hardly notice any progress made by them in a project.
- In order to create a small and manageable backlog, the user stories that are never done or not to be done at present need to be removed.
- Also, sorting the user stories into themes can help do away with a lot of confusion.
- Low priority user stories can be kept separately.
- Focusing the product backlog on accomplishing specific product goals.
- Also, the tasks for which the Agile development team is not ready to pursue should not be a part of the product backlog.
Knowing about major product backlogs can help in being prepared to avoid those mistakes. The best online training company that offers online Agile training and certification course can help you learn all major product backlog mistakes along with multiple other important learning aspects.
Are you interested in knowing about the best practices for product backlog?
Enroll in a SAFe® agile certification training from AgilityPAD today.
