Agile Network India | How to mess up a Product Backlog y Arunima Shekhar

1. How To Mess Up A Product
Backlog
April, 2021

2. Speaker Bio
2
Confidential
Arunima Shekhar
Product Manager
Srijan Technologies
Product Solutionist
- Co-Founder - Scrambled Works
- Product Manager - AskMeBazaar, SpiceLabs
- Subject Matter Expert (Amdocs Enabler) - IBM, Amdocs
Storyteller
- Founder - Tell-A-Tale.com
- Coach: Art of Story Writing
- Published Author of Fiction
15+ years of experience across software technology and product
management

3. Agenda
The Ideal Product Backlog
3
Confidential
What Messes Up A Product Backlog: Case Study - An Enterprise LMS
Giving The Edge To Your Product Backlog
● Defining business value of Epics
● Aligning product vision with backlog
● Change management - Avoiding a black hole
● Pitfalls faced
● Corrective actions

4. 4
Confidential
Which was the last product backlog where you felt the product backlog was too chaotic?
In retrospect, which aspect of it would you change?

5. 5
Confidential
Product Backlog At The Start Of Project
* Product Backlog from Sample Project
Neatly
organised Epics
User Stories in the right
format (who-what-why)
All tickets
prioritised
ORGANISED & CLEAN

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Confidential
Product Backlog During Development
New Epics which may consist of
stories unrelated to each other
Missing priorities
Inadequate information of
tasks and stories
Wrongly classified tickets

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Confidential
What Changes In Between?
Feedback / Changes
to Existing Features
Bugs New Features
Sprint

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Confidential
WHAT HOW

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Confidential
1. The Content Of The Product Backlog
Update Definition-of-Ready to include tasks and bugs. Tickets move to Ready only when
sufficient details are added.
How detailed
are the
acceptance
criteria?
Do tasks have
descriptions?
Do bugs have
steps to
reproduce?
Are there
sufficient
comments
added in
tickets?
Tickets assigned to a person without a comment from previous assignee are rejected.

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Confidential
If you were going to be stranded on a deserted island, and you were allowed to bring one of these 8 objects
with you, what would you choose?

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2. Prioritisation
List of priorities signed off before backlog grooming starts
Have priority
levels been
signed off with
key
stakeholders?
How have key
stakeholders
contributed to
prioritisation
exercise?
How frequently
did we do
prioritisation
exercise?
Did we take
into account all
dependencies
& risks during
prioritisation?
Priorities for tickets in Ready state revisited during backlog grooming session
Priorities for tickets that have dependencies or risks associated tracked separately via
RAID log

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3. Grooming Of The Product Backlog
Add a new state for Sign-Off in the workflow prior to Ready, which is owned by the
Product Owner
How did we
discuss the
product
backlog with
stakeholders?
How
participative
were the
attendees?
Was everyone
represented?
Break down the grooming discussions into smaller chunks of not more than 2 hours
Ask open ended questions

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As an Authenticated User, I should be able to view a list of all videos, so that I can browse for a video to watch
Scenario 1 - Video Listing
Pre-requisites:
- At least one video content exists in the CMS
- User has permissions to view the video listing page
Acceptance Criteria: Scenario 1
1. Authenticated Users navigate to the Videos listing page from the Header Menu. Listing page opens on same tab.
2. A loader icon (Ref: gif attached) should be seen when the page is loading
3. Videos are listed by order of recency of last update. A “See More” button is displayed after every 12 videos.
4. Every video card is listed with the following details -
- - Thumbnail image (Ref: video_library.pdf for display dimensions)
- - Title (maximum of 2 lines of display, followed by ellipses. Ref: mockup attached)
- - Date (Format MM/DD/YYYY)
- - Number of views (Count up to 3 digits, then move to “K” representation for thousands)
- - Duration (Format MM:SS)
5. Hovering on a thumbnail or title should show the video title in a hover box
6. Number of Views logic
- - Number of views is counted within Drupal
- - Clicking on a video play icon will be counted as 1 view
- - Number of views is not user specific, so multiple clicks by a user will be counted as multiple views
- - Views of video in Vimeo are treated as out of application and are not collated here
Scenario 2 - No videos exist
Pre-requisites:
- User has permissions to view the video listing page
States even seemingly
obvious details
Inputs from design
Inputs from
development
Inputs from
content team

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Guidelines To A “Good” Product Backlog
Detailed appropriately - High priority, high business value items should have more detailing
than low priority, low business value items
Estimated - Cost of implementation is known
Emergent - The backlog is created with dynamism in mind. It is easy to scale and easy to move
from idea to completed work.
Prioritised - Backlog is prioritised as per the business value derived from every item
Make It DEEP - Roman Pichler

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“Out on the edge you see all kinds of
things you can't see from the centre.”
- Kurt Vonnegut Jr

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Defining A Product Vision Statement
NEED
VISION
Development Guide
Value Proposition
What triggered the
product?
What is the end goal?
What strategy is being
used to develop it?
Why should business
invest into it?
ACTIVITY

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Defining A Product Vision Statement
Currently any employee
learning is done through
videos on Vimeo. Org L&D is
limited by the format of
content, and the engagement
it can offer with the learning
content.
NEED
An LMS that supports different
types of content and provides
enough opportunity for the
learners to engage with the
content and feel motivated to
learn.
VISION
Development Guide
• Use a centralised content repository created on Drupal 8/9, which offers advanced
capabilities on content editing, media management and managing roles
and permissions.
• Track basic events on site to understand learner behaviour
• Integrate with existing content repositories on Vimeo and Brightcove
Value Proposition
• Improved customer satisfaction with Beauty Advisors being better informed on
brand’s products
• Informed content creation capabilities for the content team, by using the course
consumption data

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Defining A Product Canvas
Purpose of the
product:
What is our
audience?
What are our
audience’s needs?
What is the product? What are the
project goals?
What are the key
metrics?

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The Product Canvas and Product Vision Statement
allows us to focus on the real meat within the Product
Backlog

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Defining Business Value

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Value Of Aligning Product Backlog With
Product Canvas
Identify potential for
new business
More effective Change
Management
Build a long term
Product Roadmap
Build a repeatable model for portfolio

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High Level Product Roadmap

23. Thank You
Arunima Shekhar
Srijan Technologies Pvt. Ltd.
email: arunima.shekhar@srijan.net
linkedin: /in/arunimashekhar/
twitter: @shekhararunima