In this webinar with Johan Karlsson, Agile evangelist and backlog expert, you’ll learn the art of backlog management, with a focus on essentials:
-Estimating Backlog Item Size
-Prioritizing Items
-Keeping Size Under Control
-Refining the Backlog
Through real-world examples and practical explanations, you’ll learn what artists and product managers have in common — and discover how to manage a backlog that impresses teams, bosses, and customers.
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Editor's Notes
Been with Hansoft for 5 years, seen hundreds of backlogs
Joined Perforce when they acquired Hansoft last year
Feel free to reach out to me after this presentation with any questions you might have.
1. The AGENDA is a lightweight introduction to proper Backlog Management
Pre-Backlog Era art by Picasso
This is what managing projects used to be like with limited capacity
This is why we need backlogs
In this webinar we focus on the essentials: SIMPLICITY
This principle in the agile manifesto sums up my core message
So what is a backlog? Compare it with a blank canvas
Just like there is a method to great art – there is a method to great products.
One, often undervalued, method is backlog management.
It is up to you to make it valuable. All of those ideas of what you want to put into the painting but is not yet in it – that is your backlog!
Now let’s relate this back to a typical project in a company.
Let’s look at a simple example with 1 TEAM that is funded by STAKEHOLDERS
Team pulls 3 items per week. But stakeholders make 5 wishes for what they want. MISMATCH between capacity and market needs.
The backlog is the artifact in the middle to manage the WHAT.
Many make the mistake to consider the backlog a “queue” or a todo list.
But just like this painting shows perspective, nearest body is largest, the latest idea is most exciting so you don't want to wait
Businesses need to be more FLEXIBLE than this
Introduce a first concept in our backlog – the concept around “Commitments”. Once you have committed, it is a promise. QUEUE
Each black circle represents a Product Backlog Item.
But we will fill capacity, and it goes into the backlog. NOT A QUEUE as we have options to rearrange.
If you do not have this option – that is the first thing to address so that you can start with backlog management.
If we know what a backlog is – then what is backlog management?
Here are the essential activities. Once these function – we can get into to more advanced stuff (follow up webinar)
Estimation – getting the perspectives right.
Prioritize – drawing the right strokes in the right time ADDING DIMENSION
Limit size – focus on the right details, get the core meaning and message into it. Simplicity
Refine – Focus on the right details at the right time.
Here we have a sketch, showing the scale of size of what will eventually be a painting. The grid is laid out. We know how much of it will be the face and the hat to our best knowledge.
The artist here is ESTIMATING. And he is doing this in PENCIL ON PAPER. He is not investing more time than he needs to make a commitment to draw the proper painting.
So we estimate to understand COST and TIME which is essential in project management both from an internal and external view.
It is easier to separate HOW LONG from HOW BIG.
If we let the circle size represent HOW BIG we can identify one of the smallest and just give that a size of 1
Then we continue where 2 means twice as big as the 1 etc. As this estimate is unit-less, it is often called a POINT
FINISHED PRODUCT IS NOT THE SAME, but similar and we can compare.
It turns out that teams are often OPTIMISTIC or PESSIMISTIC
We can use the size estimate as we work through our delivery. Once we have worked a bit, we can see how many of these POINTS we finish in a timeframe (1 week or 2 weeks)
So to answer HOW LONG it will be based on actual progress based on HOW BIG.
Also EASIER for teams to estimate by being able to reference (if that is a 1, than that is a 3 etc.)
Prioritization helps understand what to FOCUS ON. It is very different from giving every item VERY HIGH PRIO that many NEW CUSTOMERS struggle with.
Why are we looking at this image? Because the artist’s famously prioritized the most valuable item and its focal point, the pearl earring, which is has more dimension than flat whites of eyes.
Shared, transparent PRIORITY is good as it makes us more efficient, reduce task switching and we spend the limited capacity we have on the right things.
First we need to understand VALUE
Just like with estimate, this can be complicated which is why we simplify by making it ABSTRACT and RELATIVE
Value is almost never the same as estimate
Some try to think of this in terms of the COST OF DELAY – what happens if we would not be able to do this?
Now we can give PRIORITY
Typical is to do SMALLEST AND MOST VALUABLE FIRST. Sometimes called Weighted Shortest Job First.
We simply divide VALUE by SIZE and order them according to this based on best current knowledge.
SYSTEMATIC APPROACH to prioritization solves many issues.
Next up is that we need to set down the foot and LIMIT our backlog size
As I am sure Van Gogh understood after CUTTING OFF HIS EAR it can be very painful to limit size
People like hoarding, collecting and categorizing things so one of the core issues for many product backlogs is the inability to say “No!” or to clean items away.
EASIER when you have priority and estimate.
There are a few obvious problems when you have a big, fat backlog.
You will build up a lot of ‘development-in-progress’ which will delay any new great insights from being implemented and hence making you less agile
LITTLE'S LAW: Customer lead time increase if you build up a big backlog.
How big should it be? It is really all about how much the human brain is capable to make smart decisions around.
The Dunbar Number was originally for how many social interactions a person can manage – and this can also be useful to understand the mental capacity of how many items you can manage.
That number is defined to be around 150 items – but a backlog should preferably be much, much smaller than that to stay on top.
My recommendation is that the backlog should be of a size that covers the next 6-8 weeks worth of work (or a couple of sprints depending on how you measure time).
If it still are many hundred items - Think about the granularity of each item, Lower Prio = Less detail.
Expressionism is messy, emotionally charged, internal conflict
Backog items are not static things – they are living things and have a LIFECYCLE and mature over time.
It can make our backlogs messy
Refinement is the act of keeping the backlog under control and organized. … PROVIDE CLARITY
We much prefer our backlog in the style of Mondrian! Clearly articulated, easy to see. Refinement helps us do this!
The two things that needs to be institutionalized are REFINEMENT MEETINGS and a DEFINITION OF READY.
REFINEMENT happens before other planning meetings but is a continuous process. This is where you break larger items into smaller, add detail to create a better understanding, dare to remove items.
When an item fulfills the DEFINITION OF READY – it is so clearly defined and high priority that the team is ready to commit to it.
A definition of ready includes things such as “is it estimated?” “do the people that will do it understand it?” “can we test it?” “do we have an hypothesis of how it will add value to the business?”
Our own backlog, the HANSOFT Backlog
Structured to help REFINEMENT
Estimated in very simple method
Prioritized from Very High to Very Low. Visible to everyone.
Things that cannot fit in here, is in a customer suggestion list (also in Hansoft). So not everything is in the backlog.
A large scale example
Several product owners
If you want to have a demo of this – please reach out to me directly.
