Backlog Strategy

Outcomes

This exercise provides an opportunity to increase your awareness of the challenges and dynamics present in a product or project, and how you can implement a strategy to aid the successful delivery.

The exercise provides several scenarios and accompanying product backlogs with items that are used to create a story map, which is then enhanced and arranged with respect to defined archetypes in order to provide a better outcome. The latter part of the workshop finishes with a brief simulation to test the new approaches and a debrief to reflect on the observations of the exercise.

Timings

• Allow 90 mins for this exercise.

Equipment

• user story templates
• header templates
• sprint goal templates
• archetypes templates
• strategy canvasses
• scissors
• post-it notes
• sharpies or similar
• 5 x dice per team
• flip chart paper and markers

Tasks Part 1: Setting Up The Story Map

1. As a team choose which scenario you would like to tackle
2. Read the scenario and the user stories to get familiar with them
3. Arrange the user stories, and header templates to form a story map and release plan over several sprints, (check out the diagram of the story map.)

Tasks Part 2: Thinking Holistically

1. Work through the Strategy Canvas to identify:
   • Your observations of the story map
   • Where you think the value in the work is?
   • Where are the challenges and risks in the work?
   • Are there any dynamics that you can identify that give rise to the challenges and risks?
   • Which of the archetypes do you think are appropriate for the scenario and the corresponding Product Backlog?
   • How do you think you might implement those archetypes in the Product Backlog?
2. Adjust your story map and release plan to implement your chosen archetypes recomposing the content of the sprints to get the best possible outcome

Tasks Part 3: The Simulation

1. Throw the dice to simulate a team’s velocity for 1 sprint i.e. 5 x dice = 5 days effort = 1 sprint velocity
2. Mark off those items that were completed in the story map for that sprint
3. Refine and adjust the story map to reconfigure the release plan with respect to the archetype and items that were not completed in the sprint.
4. Repeat throwing the dice and adjusting for the next 5 sprints

Tasks Part 4: The Debrief

1. Finally on a sheet of flip chart paper write down what you observed from the exercise and share back with the other teams

Kano Analysis

	The minimum expectation of the customer. “If I don’t get this, then I’m going to buy your competitor’s solution instead.”
	The added value to the customer. “The more of these types of features, then the more value I get.”
	The unexpected value to the customer. “I didn’t expect to get this, but now that I have it, I am more likely to buy your product over a competitor’s.”

See Also

• Sprint Planning & Product Backlog Refinement
• Product Backlog Refinement
• Story Mapping
• Product Owner
• Purpose & Strategy
• Evolutionary Strategy
• Release Strategy
• Strategic Awareness
• Backlog Strategy Archetypes