Agile Marketing fundamentals III: Product Backlog

 

Product Backlog

Product backlog is the prioritized list of features used for product development.

Product backlog goals:

1. Creation of user stories.

2. Flexibility to adapt to new needs and realities.

3. Collaborated platform for product release.

Product backlog items:

1. Features

• These new features emerge from the sales team, operation employees, 

  customers, intermediaries, customer service team and so on.

• Prioritizing new features have hurdles such as keeping existing customers

   happy, creating the lead for future sales, and striving 

  hard to attain company vision.

• The onus is on the product manager to resolve any 

  issues pertaining to prioritization. 

2. Technical debt

• Reducing maintenance costs.

• Making infrastructure change in case of manufacturing concerns and 

  architectural changes in case of information technology companies.

• These are called technical debt due to its impact on the long term goals.

3. Bugs/ customer problems

• These are identified by the customer while using the product.

4. Research

• Company has a little information about new features.

• Research results in better user stories or spikes.

Product backlog team

1. Team member: works on the user stories created by the agile team.

2. Product owner:inspecting progression of new features and refining.

3. Project manager: Product development and the progres.

4. Stakeholders: working on the schedule and looking for the final product. 

Initiatives

These are a set of epic is aiming towards attaining the goal specified. It works based 

on cross functional teams and sometimes on matrix structures.

Example; Develop a new smart phone with foldable design, AI tools, and 5G technology.

Epics

The method of dividing the large work into small tasks.: 

Example : collection of stories is called epics.

1. Smartphone foldable design.

2. Smartphones built  with the feature of AI based marketing tools.

3. Smartphone with 5G feature.

Stories

These are called ‘user stories'. It is the requirement plan from the customer's perspective. 

Examples:

1. Google meet need attendance feature built in rather than as add on.

2. Smartphones built  with the feature of AI based marketing tools.

3. Foldable helmets for ladies.

4. Additive manufacturing for  casting.

Two Rs of the product backlog

Road map development

Product backlog refinement

1. The Sprint team prepares the detailed estimate description.

2. Sprint team assures the ‘ready’ position

3. Ready position can be achieved before the sprint meeting or it may be just in time.

4. Refinement activities begin before the sprint meeting and continue later.

5. Refinement can be done by the product owner or development team.

Advantages of product backlogs

1. It guides the team towards attaining the goal.

2. Unlike the waterfall model agile team can begin working on ideas rather 

   than product backlog.

3. Team can remove product backlog items at any time of the process.

4. It reduces the time and avoids unnecessary discussion on the product.

Disadvantages of product backlog

1. Many time product backlog is not enough. Customer interactions provides more information.

2. There is no guarantee of product delivery.

3. Product backlog can stop the process at any stage.

Product Backlog development

	User stories	Story points	Priority
High priority	The smartphone is having 5G feature so that i can browse faster	4	1
	The smartphone is in the regional languages	3	2
	The smart phone can be folded	3	3
Low priority	The smartphone is having CDP for AI tools	4	4

 

Product backlog prioritization

1. This is the responsibility of the product owner.

2. High prioritization items have the options for refinement and have a 

   high value to the organization.

3. Middle prioritization items will become candidates for prioritization.

4. Low prioritization items can be ignored till it archives the candidate of middle prioritization. 

Product backlog techniques

1. DIVE

1. Dependencies

2. Insure against risk.

3. Value

4. Estimated effort.

2. DEEP

• Detailed approporities 

• Estimated

• Emergent

• Prioritized

3. INVEST

• Independent

• Negotiable

• Valuable

• Estimable

• Testable

 Grooming

Three principal activities of the product backlog are called grooming. 

1. Creating and refining product backlogs.

2. Estimating product backlogs

3. Prioritizing product backlogs.

 Grooming is the responsibility of the product owner.

Analytic product backlog items

Backlog item	Description
Hypothesis	A good user story
Data story	The data to be collected
Change	The data change requested by the end user
Technical improvement	Technology, machinery improvement
Knowledge acquisition	Data discovery and prototype development

References

1. VII, P. (2016). Agile Product Management: Product Backlog: 

   21 Tips To Capture and Manage Requirements with Scrum. (n.p.): 

   CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

2. Rubin, K. S. (2012). Essential Scrum: 

   A Practical Guide to the Most Popular Agile Process. United Kingdom: Addison-Wesley.

3. Alt-Simmons, R. (2015). 

   Agile by Design: An Implementation Guide to Analytic Lifecycle Management. 

   United Kingdom: Wiley.

4. Sutherland, J., Coplien, J. O. (2019). 

   A Scrum Book: The Spirit of the Game. (n.p.): Pragmatic Bookshelf.

5. Single Reference Guide for Scrum Certification:

    Professional Scrum Master I (PSM I) and Professional Scrum Product Owner I (PSPO I)

    Certification. (2020). (n.p.): Vishal Malhotra.

6. Mir, R. C. (2020).

    Iterative Business Model Canvas Development - From Vision to Product Backlog: 

   Agile Development of Products and Business Models. Germany: BoD - Books on Demand.

7. Jocham, R., McGreal, D. (2018). The Professional 

   Product Owner: Leveraging Scrum as a Competitive Advantage. 

   United Kingdom: Pearson Education.