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The Sprint Backlog – Part 5

Backlog Prioritization

This is the truth hour for the product owner as it is where the prepared user stories meet the developers and get the feedback whether the tasks are ready for estimation and delivery or not. Usually (but not always) the whole team is present for prioritizing so that later the whole team can take the commitment to deliver the sprint (as they were present when the tasks were discussed and have all the information required).

The items on the top of the product backlog are gone through in more detail, making sure all information required is in the story and estimated using planning poker (e.g. complexity points like 1,3, 5, 8 and 13). Items further down are discussed more briefly and given rough t-shirt estimations (e.g. Small, Medium, Large) to give the product owner first indications on size.

The planning poker estimations are crucial for planning a few next sprints. Rough t-shirt estimations help in further story development and prioritization. It can often be that based on initial t-shirt estimation, a task gets deprioritized in the backlog as the benefit is (currently) not worth the effort required or is so small that it can jump to the top of the list.

Ideally, by the end of a prioritizing session, all the tasks in the product backlog have an estimation, some estimations have been updated in light of new information and the backlog is prioritized. Depending on the teams’ history and the product, full estimation and prioritization of the whole backlog can be difficult to achieve.

The important thing to remember is that a bit more than one sprint worth of stories for the team needs to have detailed story point estimations. This is because only estimated stories can be added to the sprint backlog during the Scrum planning meeting.

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Master of Agile – Scrum Product Owner With 59 Seconds Agile (Video Training Course)

Introductory Offer: Free Course

What is this course?

This ‘Master of Agile – Scrum Product Owner With 59 Seconds Agile (Video Training Course)’ provides an in-depth understanding of the Scrum Product Owner roles and responsibilities

You will explore the Agile Scrum project life-cycle, including how an Agile User Story is created, to how we know when it is ‘done’

This course is aimed at those with or without prior knowledge and experience of the Agile values and principles

During this course you will learn the tools needed to succeed as a Scrum Product Owner

What will you learn?

You will gain an in-depth understanding of the Scrum Product Owner roles and responsibilities, and you will be able to

  • Fully understand the role of the Scrum Product Owner
  • Understand the roles involved in an Agile project
  • Create an effective Product Backlog
  • Effectively participate in Scrum Meetings such as the Daily Stand-up, Sprint Review and Retrospective
  • Identify the roles involves in the Scrum Team

What topics are covered within this course?

You will cover the following topics during this course:

  1. An Introduction to Agile Project Management (Product Owner)
  2. The 12 Agile Principles (Product Owner)
  3. The Declaration of Interdependence (Product Owner)
  4. Introduction to Scrum (Product Owner)
  5. Scrum Project Roles (Product Owner)
  6. The Agile Project Life-cycle (Product Owner)
  7. Acceptance Criteria and the Prioritised Product Backlog (Product Owner)
  8. Epics and Personas (Product Owner)
  9. Sprint Planning (Product Owner)
  10. User Stories (Product Owner)
  11. The Daily Scrum (Product Owner)
  12. The Product Backlog (Product Owner)
  13. Scrum Charts (Product Owner)
  14. Review and Retrospective (Product Owner)
  15. Validating a Sprint (Product Owner)
  16. Releasing the Product (Product Owner)

Our Book Recommendations

We found these books great for finding out more information on Agile Scrum:

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