1. Build a Better Backlog
The quality of your product backlog is key to realizing the benefits of Agile.
Info-Tech's products and services combine actionable insight and relevant advice with ready-to-use tools and templates that cover the full spectrum of IT concerns.© Info-Tech Research Group

2. ANALYST PERSPECTIVE
Exceptional customer value begins with a clearly defined backlog focused on items that will create the greatest human and business benefits. This is the first step of building quality into every stage of your SDLC.
Cole Cioran,
Senior Director, Research, Application Delivery and Management Info-Tech Research Group
SAMPLE

3. Our understanding of the problem
Product owners
Application managers
Understand how to conceptualize the process of product development planning.
Structure your backlog to facilitate the activities of product development planning.
Establish the roles and perspectives needed to assess, validate, and prioritize a backlog item.
Build value and quality into your product.
Ensure teams have the information they need to build exceptional products.
CIOs
Development teams
Product managers and stakeholders
Project and portfolio managers
Manage the backlog at the highest level.
Understand what is in the pipeline and how value-driven decisions are made.
See how the product vision will become reality.
Understand how their ideas are triaged by product management.
SAMPLE

4. Executive summary SAMPLE
Use a three-tiered backlog. You should only have one product backlog with distinct tiers that contain standards and guiding principles for PBIs and facilitate product planning and delivery.
Remember the ABPs of backlog management: Always Be Prioritizing. Good backlog management means you prioritize and then reprioritize as needs change, new items are introduced, and PBIs become more granular. At each level of granularity you must refine the value and effort to re-establish priority.
Stick to the minimum required information. Your teams rely on information, but excessive documentation kills productivity. Establish the minimum information needed to effectively plan, prioritize, and execute.
Products require continuous additions and enhancements in order to sustain their value. Many organizations struggle to handle the volume in way that maximizes value.
Product owners need tools, and more importantly methods, to help assess, validate, and prioritize their workload (i.e. backlogs and backlog management).
Development artifacts or product backlog items (PBIs) exist at different levels of granularity and readiness for development.
A product backlog needs to incorporate the processes of filtering and validating ideas to refine PBIs so that they are ready to be consumed by development teams.
Build a playbook containing the standards and guiding principles for your product’s backlog and associated activities.
Restructure and reconceptualize your product backlog to not only store backlog items but also facilitate product planning and delivery.
Define the terminology for your organization’s PBIs.
Establish the necessary participants for the activities related to backlog management and product planning.
Build the quality filters to ensure the right information is available to your teams and value is built into your products.
SAMPLE

5. If your backlog isn’t properly managed, you will end up with…
There is no shortage of ideas to improve your product. The challenge is determining which ideas to implement.
The ability to welcome changes in priority and enable collaboration are fundamental drivers behind Agile development.
However, that ability generates more ideas, requests, and additions that are demanded of your development teams.
If your backlog isn’t properly managed, you will end up with…
benefit of Agile is “Ability to manage changing priorities” (VersionOne, 2018). #1
Too Many Voices
Multiple stakeholders of varying influence, perspective, and subject matter expertise all want something to change, and they want it right now.
Overwhelmed Teams
Development teams are overburdened with the volume and variety of these requests and lack necessary information to understand what they really need to build and what to build first.
Low-Value Products
Changes are then made without alignment to established vision and value drivers, resulting in products that fail to achieve business goals and deliver value to the end user.
End Users
Tech SMEs
Customers
Product
Manager
Business
Dev Team ?
Only 40% of products are considered important and effective (Info-Tech, 2018).
SAMPLE

6. Maximize Value to the Product Inform and Protect the Team
A product owner and the product backlog are critical to realize the benefits of Agile development
A product owner is accountable for defining and prioritizing the work that will be of the greatest value to the organization and its customers. The backlog is the key to facilitating this process and accomplishing the most fundamental goals of delivery.
For more information on the role of a product owner see Build a Better Product Owner.
Product Owner
Dev Team
Manage Stakeholders
Stakeholders need to be kept up to speed on what the future holds for a product, or at least they should be heard. This task falls to the product owner.
Maximize Value to the Product
Sifting through all of these voices and determining what is valuable, or what is most valuable, falls to the product owner.
End Users
Tech SMEs
Customers
Product
Manager
Business
Product Backlog
Inform and Protect the Team
The product owner is a servant leader of the team. He or she needs to protect them from all the noise and give them the time they need to focus on what they do best: develop.
Highly effective Agile teams spend 28% of their time on product backlog management and roadmapping (Quantitative Software Management, 2015).
SAMPLE

7. A backlog is more than a prioritized list
A backlog is more than a prioritized list. A tiered backlog stores and organizes PBIs at various stages of readiness.
The DEEP backlog
Detailed Appropriately: PBIs are broken down and refined as necessary for each tier.
Emergent: The backlog grows and evolves over time as PBIs are added and removed.
Estimated: The effort a PBI requires is
estimated at each tier.
Prioritized: The PBI’s value and priority are determined at each tier.
Multiple tiers but just one product backlog
High
Small
1 – The Refined Tier
This tier is composed of refined PBIs that are ready to be placed in your development teams’ sprint plans.
2 – The Qualified or Filtered Tier
This tier is composed of researched and qualified PBIs awaiting refinement.
(Perforce, 2018)
Priority
Size & Detail
3 – The Idea Tier or The Icebox
This tier is composed of raw ideas that have yet to go through any formal valuation.
Low
Large
Adapted from Essential Scrum
SAMPLE

8. Backlog Tier & Typical PBIs
Backlog tiers facilitate the steps of product planning from initial intake of an idea to a PBI ready for development
Each activity is a variation of measuring value and estimating effort in order to validate and prioritize a PBI.
A PBI successfully completes an activity and passes through to the next backlog tier when it meets the appropriate criteria. quality filters should exist between each tier.
Backlog Tier & Typical PBIs
Sprint Backlog
Quality Filter
Backlog Activities
Activity Participants
Sprint Backlog
“Accepted”
Scrum
Master
Dev Team
Product
Owner
Tasks
Sprint Planning
Tier 1: Refined Backlog
“Ready”
Product
Owner
Dev Team
Refine
Tier 2: Qualified or Filtered Backlog
User Stories
“Qualified”
Product
Owner
Architects
Business
Product Backlog
Analysis
Tier 3: Idea Backlog or Icebox
Epics & Features
“Backlogged”
Product
Owner
Product
Manager
Stakeholder/
Requester
Intake
Raw Ideas
SAMPLE

9. Quality filters, outlining the criteria to proceed to the next tier, ensure quality is met and appropriate information is provided
Expand the concepts of defining “ready” and “done” to include the other stages of a PBI’s journey through product planning.
Intake
Idea BL
Analysis
Filtered BL
Refine
Refined BL
Sprint Planning
Sprint BL
The PBI is…
considered valuable, useable, and feasible enough
To… enter the backlog
and justify the next step of… initial research and design.
“Backlogged”
The PBI is…
understood by the product team; aligns to the product vision; has defined benefits, acceptance criteria, and KPIs; has undergone timeline, complexity, and effort estimations
To… invest
and justify the next step of… refinement and any other required business analysis.
“Qualified”
The PBI is…
decomposed into user stories, with all related requirements containing clear descriptions of what is expected of a given functionality, and acceptance criteria, effort, value, and priority are re-established at a more granular level
To… prioritize
and justify the next step of… sprint planning.
“Ready”
The PBI is…
able to fit within the capacity of a sprint
To… execute
and justify the next step of… development.
“Accepted”
A quality filter ensures quality is met, but it also ensures the appropriate teams are armed with the appropriate information to work more efficiently and improve throughput.
SAMPLE

10. How is your backlog structured
Use our Product Backlog Playbook Template to capture the standards and guiding principles for your product backlog 1
How is your backlog structured
The Product Backlog Playbook Template contains three main components:
The structure of your backlog
The plans for your related activities
The checklist for your quality filters
Backlog Tiers
Tier 1 – Refined Backlog
Tier 2 – Filtered Backlog
Tier 3 – Idea Backlog
Activity Plan
Facilitator _____________
Participants ___________
_____________________
Schedule _____________ 2 3
Backlog Checklist
Quality Filter:
Review
Define
Valuate
Estimate
Prioritize
What else?
Who needs to be there?
What needs to be done?
SAMPLE

11. Review Info-Tech’s Product Backlog Glossary to align with the concepts used throughout this blueprint
Term
Definition
Product Backlog
An ordered list of all of the work items, or PBIs, that are intended to be added to a product.
Sprint Backlog
An accessory to the product backlog, containing the items that will be completed within the current sprint.
Product Backlog Tiers
Conceptual divisions within a product backlog that separate PBIs based on their readiness to develop, their granularity, or their PBI type.
Product Backlog Item (PBI)
A work item or artifact at any level of granularity or readiness, listed within the product backlog, including:
Idea
A valuable yet partially defined goal, objective, or proposed change or addition to the product, yet to receive appropriate analysis.
Epic
A defined and documented goal, objective, or proposed change or addition to the product that can be estimated and has a business value to the organization.
Enabler Epic
An additional product element needed to provide the means for future functionality.
User Story
A short description of a desired piece of functionality from the perspective of the customer. User stories provide just enough information of what the functionality is, who will be using it, and what benefit it will provide to the user.
Enabler Story
An activity needed to provide the means for future functionality.
Task
The granular and often technical work items needed to accomplish PBIs that exist only within the sprint backlog.
Points
Arbitrary values used by Agile teams to estimate the effort to complete a PBI.
SAMPLE

12. Dive Deeper Into Our Research by Clicking One of the Elements Below
Find out how Info-Tech makes your job easier. Contact Us Today: Toll-Free (US & Canada):
SAMPLE