There one is a fun exercise I enjoy working through, especially in a newly formed team or project.
“How do we prioritise what is important and thus needs to be at the top of our backlog?”
The number one thing to remember here: Stakeholder Engagement.
You NEED to get everyone who cares (even a little bit) onboard here. Failure to do so might lead to pains down the road. (“What about this feature I think is very important… where is it? ~Forgotten Stakeholder)
Ordering your Backlog
This is a surprisingly fun exercise that really gets people thinking, engages all stakeholders and will give you a rough starting point for a backlog….
Corral all of your stakeholders, make sure you book in time enough for this session based on number of backlog items you have. This might take several hours.
- Player 1 takes stack of stories and chooses which one is most important.
- Player 2 takes stack, chooses one and places it on table, either more important or next important.
- Player 3 takes stack and a. Can rearrange one item to new position on table. Or b. Choose story and place it where they deem important.
- Player 4 takes stack and repeats this step.
- Continue passing stack around team until no stories remain.
- One last round where each team member can rearrange order of importance of ONE story.
Benefits of this Method
This method gets everyone involved, which is important for engagement and ongoing morale, esp for the quiet ones of the group as it gives everyone equal opportunity to promote their opinions. Especially good if you have an alpha type involved.
It also brings up a myriad of conversations about features that we as individuals might have never thought about or considered.
Points to assist in facilitating.
- Beware of conversation or discussion taking away from the exercise, if you need to interrupt, do so. If you need a quick fire round to speed things up, do so.
- Make sure you plan enough time. This depends of size of story stack but I almost always find 1 hour is never enough.
- Make sure you invite important stakeholders in from outside the delivery team. They need to be involved of your product will fail.
Outcomes
At the end of this you should have multiple valuable outcomes.
A rough backlog, in order of importance.
Better engaged team members that valued their opinions being heard.
Better engaged stakeholders that valued being involved in important ceremonies.
And with some luck your team will be another step to working together as one coherent performing delivery team.
Next Steps
The Product owner, in conjunction with the appropriate analysts and key stakeholders needs to review this backlog and validate the value of each story and how it should remain in its place.
Do NOT shuffle the order of this backlog yet. Define the value, understand they why and how.
If you feel this order should be shuffled make sure you communicate this with the whole team involved. Tell them what you are shuffling around and why.
If you don’t do this, they will look at the backlog, see it shuffled, wonder why, reconsider the importance of their own opinions and also start questioning the integrity and trust of the product owners or senior stakeholders, completely undoing all of the hard work you set out to achieve in the first place.
Good luck.