Overview

So, we’ve come along the way where we’ve studied how to articulate an idea as requirements & order them in a backlog. But now in order to begin the project, align our development plans (project plan) with the release plan and inherently the product’s roadmap, we need to estimate each Product Backlog Item (epics, user stories, tasks, spikes, etc) so that we have a clear picture of when we’d be able to land the project and the planned features. But hold on. How does the team estimate without having a detailed “understanding” about each PBI?

The answer is by having a thorough Product Backlog Grooming session.

In today’s chapter, we will study everything about product backlog grooming and further take a look at models and methods used to prioritize the product backlog.

What is Product Backlog Grooming?

To keep it simple, the product backlog grooming is a meeting conducted by the Product Manager to give the entire team a detailed overview of Product Backlog Items in order to achieve collective and shared understanding about the product. But this is just the first part.

Backlog Grooming or refinement extends to regularly updating the product backlog at defined intervals, maybe a day before the sprint planning with the goal to keep the backlog as current as possible and prepare it for the upcoming sprint planning

With the sense of understanding achieved by the team about the backlog, it further helps in estimating and selecting items to be pursued in order to keep up with the release plan and the product’s roadmap.

The meeting is utilized to prune the backlog for items that aren’t relevant to the overall objective while also add new tasks & stories to serve the need, within the scope.

Involving key stakeholders can sometimes be challenging like handling a double edged sword as it may sometimes lead to superficial discussions which do no good to the team but give a sense of contribution to “superficial management”. Hence, it becomes important for the Product Manager to have a sense of judgement to decide, which stakeholder to invite and when.

A well groomed product backlog helps the team to estimate better, have an added ownership of the product and take objective and rational decisions towards achieving the product goal.

Now let’s take a look at techniques and models used to prioritize product backlog

Product Backlog Prioritization Techniques

Opportunity Scoring: –

Based on the framework of the popular “gap analysis”, opportunity scoring prioritization technique works by using data received from user research to find out what is exactly that the customer truly needs and then make a plan to work on these things. Let’s understand in detail.

The technique focuses on collecting feedbacks from users or a cohort of users. These users are asked to provide a rating on how important a few features are and how satisfied they are with these features. The features with HIGH IMPORTANCE & LOW SATISFACTION are to be considered as the most important ones thereby carrying a higher priority.

Based on this score, a PM should prioritize the backlog accordingly.

Thus Opportunity Scoring can be considered as an analysis of Importance v/s Satisfaction.

Stack Ranking: –

A method that truly tests the mettle & sense of judgement about the product of a Product Manager, Stack Ranking works on the principle of relative comparison for evaluating necessary and unnecessary product features.

The method works on determining which features to prioritize by a simple comparison with other features.

MoSCoW: –

The most popular and widely used technique amongst product managers, the technique works on ranking the product backlog items based on categorization of their importance. This categorization lies in the name of the technique itself

M – Must Haves. These are non negotiable product needs that are mandatory for the product to function

S – Should Haves. These are non-vital functions such as bug fixes or added performance improvements aimed to add significant value to the product

C – Could Haves. These are features which aren’t vital nor do they have a very significant impact on the product but have a potential to serve the product for good in some small way

W – Wont Haves. These are features that the product can live without and hence can be either removed or taken one at a time over a release.

There are three guiding questions a product manager should first ask himself and then the team and stakeholders to prioritize the backlog using this technique.

1. Will the product work without this feature?
2. What impact will the release have if this feature is left out?
3. Is there a way to make the feature work in a simpler way instead of this ?

Based on objective judgement, a PM along with the team can prioritize the backlog using the MoSCoW technique.

Cost of Delay: –

The technique works on determining “How much money would a business stand a chance to lose if a particular feature or set of features are not available for the users?”

There is ambiguity when it comes to the true definition due to two distinct school of thoughts around it.

One defines “How much money a business would lose due to absence of this feature and the possibility of the users migrating to competitor’s product? “

The other defines it as “How much money will the business be losing while the feature is being developed?”

Not a commonly used technique, it is better to be used as a small tool while deciding upon features to prioritize rather than using it as the primary technique for prioritizing.

There are other techniques which one can find upon googling “Product Backlog Prioritization”, namely 100 Dollars Test &Kano Model. But due to it’s sparse use and recognition, we wont be covering them in this chapter.

Takeaways: –

We took a closer look at Product Backlog Grooming and followed it up by learning Product Backlog Prioritization Techniques. These initiatives prove vital during the course of planning as they elevate team’s understanding about the product at a deeper level and gives them ownership of the product as well. It further leads to having better Estimation for the product to be planned better. Hence, in the immediate next chapter, we will look at the estimation process and techniques used.

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