Tag Archives: Product Backlog

Agile, Development, Project Management, SDLC, Software Development, Technology

Delineation of Work Items, Segregated by Tech Stack

Leave a comment

Building any multitiered solution is not just creating a User Interface to render the data, there is most likely a service tier that fetches data from a database, and serves that data up to the UI to then be rendered. How do you derive work items in your product backlog? One User Story, and multiple child tasks, one task per tech stack tier, UI, service tier, and database? Or three user stories, one per tech stack tier?

User Stories Defined, Per Tech Stack Tier

There are clear advantages of representing most work items with User Stories such as deriving story points, determining team average velocity, and a more accurate burndown chart depicting a downward trending scope and implementation of user stories.

Using child Tasks of user stories may obfuscate the total work required to implementation of the solution unless baked into the parent story points. Tasks are typically tracked in terms of hours, and separately user story points are calculated/derived from a collective, relative effort estimation, e.g. Fibonacci sequence; 1,3,5,8,13,20…, and many teams may overlay this scale to fit their sprint duration.

Feature and Story Planning – At a Glance

In order to organize each feature, and correlated user stories, teams may use a prefix in the title of the user stories, such as [UI] or [DB]. At a glance, a product owner, or the implementation team can see if all the required stories for a given feature have all the elements required to implement the feature. For example, if a new report needs to be created, multiple stories must contain [UI], [API], and [DB] stories.

Drawbacks – Accepting a User Story as Complete

If you segment your product backlog user stories based on tech stack, you may need to wait until all related stories, UI, API, and DB have been implemented. For example, If your API and DB stories are developed, and not the User Interface (UI), you’re QA/Testing may not start until the UI story has been deployed. Of course, your tester could test the API using testing tools like SoapUI.

Agile, Business, Development, Project Management, SDLC, Technology

Agile Manifesto – Personal Reflection

Leave a comment

Individuals and Interactions over Process and Tools

Stereotypical software developers are introverts, heads down, coding. Articulating where they are in the development lifecycle sometimes heavily relies upon tools for measuring progress such as JIRA, Product Backlog status of User Stories, e.g. “In Progress” with an Effort estimation of 3.

“Blocked” User Stories may require the implementation team to “break out of their shell” and work with their teammates to “unblock” Product Backlog items. It breaks people out of their comfort zone. We need to discuss options and opportunities for removing blockers. “All for One, and One for all”

Working Product over Comprehensive Documentation

Over a decade or so ago, the measure of my merit was the complete test coverage of requirements for software implementation. Back then I was a QA lead, and my focus was to make sure all use cases for the software under development had complete test coverage.

Requirements changes from our business through our business analysts must be vetted with the QA team so use cases/test cases must be updated to ensure coverage. Sometimes a dependency of one requirement had a ripple effect throughout the software, so lots of documentation updates were required. Milestone dates were in many cases fixed, so teams were squeezed to do more with less time.

Flash forward to today, and leveraging Agile principles, I breathe a slight sigh of relief. Iterating product delivery via sprints every 2 weeks is supremely better than attempting to traverse updates to Business Requirements Documents (BRD), and technical specs. User Stories in a Backlog are much more succinct, and in some cases, a bit more abstract leaving functionality open to some level of ambiguity and interpretation.

Sprint Close scrum ceremonies every two weeks with our Product Owner, the central mouthpiece for the definition of the software product helps define the path forward. Did we get it right? Where do we need to make changes? There is no substitute for an evolving product and accompanying dialog with our Product Owner.

Customer Collaboration over Contract Negotiation

Both sides of the aisle seem to agree, building a solution with iterative input from the customer enables the product vision to be realized far better than without frequent touchpoints.

Statements of Work (SoW) to engage 3rd party solutions integrators (SI) may be abstract in some way. Holding vendors accountable for loosely formed requirements is tenuous at best. Quibbling about he said, she said is a waste of time.

Fail fast, engage regularly and often with our [Business] Product Owner enables us to collaborate on a working solution. The focus is on the evolving product vision and not the paper trail.

Responding to Change over Following a Plan

A “last-minute” change request? It could push back our timelines and accompanying milestones. Dates can’t change, and teams need to absorb the changes, i.e. nights and weekends. Responding to incremental changes at a regular cadence is a sustainable life cycle.

Agile, Business, Development, Software Development, Technology, Work

Agile’s Watergate

2 Comments

A relic of the Waterfall model is the construct of a “gate” process. In order for a project to achieve a milestone, the project/solution would need to achieve certain criteria that would allow it to go to the next phase of the project. For example, going from solidifying requirements in a Business Requirements Doc (BRD) to the software implementation phase.

In Agile, we leverage the Product Owner (PO) and the Product Backlog to determine what gets done and when. A Product Backlog item (PBI) may cover the full lifecycle of a Feature, from requirements to implementation. The Product Owner dictates acceptance of the PBI based on the status/transparency of the Backlog, such as the criticality of the Bugs linked to the PBI. Product quality and implemented functionality are transparent to the PO, who will determine the next steps such as release the software, and/or go through another iteration/sprint. Iterations are a defined cadence agreed to by the implementation team and the Product owner, typically, 2-week sprints.

Agile, Hybrid Environments: Opportunities for Synergy

Epics, Features, Product Backlog Items, and Tasks are object types in a Backlog that enable the PO and the team to link objects and plan over multiple sprints. Epics or Themes of Sprints are “high level”, potentially strategic initiatives. Features roll up into Epics as a part of several sprints. Either Epics or Features may be high enough level to link to Psydo Project Milestones for a product roadmap of deliverables, and solicitation outside the team.

Aggregation of Product Backlog Items, Effort Estimations, roll up into Features, and then up into Epics, which roughly equate to milestone timelines.

The “Definition of Done” (DoD) for a Product Backlog Item may require 0 outstanding Bugs with the severity of “Critical” linked to this PBI. The DoD criteria could be analogous to a traditional Quality Assurance gate.

Tasks that are production rollout activities, without a project plan, should be planned for in future sprints, akin to estimating when items may be completed in the proper sequence. Some of the Tasks may be placed conservatively in “early” sprints and may require items to be “pushed forward” after each of the iterations.

Agile, Business, Development, Project Management, Technology, Work

When Stakeholders Collide

Leave a comment

Requirements Expedition

Maybe you’ll meet them during the Project Kickoff. Maybe you’ll first hear from them during a biweekly Steering Committee. Or maybe you will first hear from them three months into the project at a quarterly meeting with the CIO and the rest of his portfolio. Maybe you will never hear from them directly.

The politics of requirements gathering and prioritization is a daunting process. I’m not going to drudge up all the stories and categorize them here because it’s a painful process.

Why are some of your milestones in your project plan:

• the milestone exists within someone’s year end evaluation

• the requirements of a milestone are so bipolar, they are bound to fail. Need a project to bucket the requirements to say “we tried”, and we can pin it to a project.

• backing into established project timelines based on expectations set at the highest levels, e.g. regulatory compliance

Legal and Compliance Stakeholders

Global representation of legal and compliance requirements are a dichotomy of legal precedence between jurisdictions.

Agile Product Owner verse Waterfall Stakeholder Committee(s)

Many a project managed using waterfall kept me balancing the needs and wants of Stakeholders from all walks of life, some exuberantly voicing their opinions regardless of their position of power, or lack therein. The Agile Product Owner (PO) is a relief of burden, a single mouthpiece of the business, which dictates backlog priority.

Does Agile make the requirements gathering and prioritization pain go away? Possibly. There are various implementations of Agile, hybrid situations, and there are lots of tools out there to help manage the Product Backlog (requirements). Another exercise, developing User Journeys, working with your Personas / actors to derive their story, that is telling and lots of fun.