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How does developing strong Product Backlog management skills benefit a Scrum team?
Posted by SCRUMstudy® on July 22, 2024
Categories: Agile Product Owner SBOK® Guide Scrum Scrum Team
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Developing product backlog management skills is crucial for effective Agile product development. This skill set encompasses various tasks such as prioritization, refinement, and maintenance of the product backlog. Prioritization involves aligning backlog items with business goals and customer needs, ensuring the team works on the most valuable tasks first. Refinement entails breaking down user stories into smaller, actionable tasks and ensuring they are well-defined and estimable.
The Program Product Owner develops the Program Product Backlog which contains a prioritized list of high level business and project requirements preferably written in the form of large Program Backlog Items. These are later refined by the Product Owners of individual projects as they create and prioritize Product Backlogs for their projects. These Prioritized Product Backlogs have much smaller but detailed User Stories that can be approved, estimated, and committed by individual Scrum Teams.
The Program Product Backlog is continuously refined by the Program Product Owner to ensure that new business requirements are added and existing requirements are properly documented and prioritized. This ensures that the most valuable requirements in meeting the program’s objectives are prioritized as high and the remaining are given a lower priority.
The Program Product Backlog created for the program presents a larger picture of all projects that are part of the program. Therefore, it can provide significant guidance regarding project goals, scope, objectives, and the expected business benefits.
Similar to the Project Product Backlog, the Program Product Backlog may also undergo periodic refining to incorporate changes and new requirements. Changes to the Program Product Backlog can result from changes in either external or internal conditions. External conditions might include changing business scenarios, technology trends, or legal compliance requirements. Internal factors affecting the Program Product Backlog could be related to modifications in organizational strategy or policies, Identified Risks and other factors. Changes in requirements in the Program Product Backlog often impact the Project Product Backlogs of underlying projects, so they should be taken into account during the Refine Prioritized Product Backlog process.