Three magic weapons of scrum

Three magic weapons of scrum: product backlog and sprint backlogAndBurndown chart.

Product backlog

At the beginning of the project, the product owner should prepare a list of customer requirements sorted by business value. This list is the prodct backlog, a list of product features that will finally be delivered to the customer. They are prioritized based on business value. The SCRUM team will estimate the workload based on this.

Product backlog should cover all product features used to build to meet customer needs, including technical requirements. Some product features with high priorities need to be refined enough to facilitate workload estimation and testing. For product backlog functions that can be completed in the next sprint, the granularity of the workload of about 10 person-days is good. The features to be implemented in the future are not detailed enough.

Sprint backlog

Sprint backlog is a magic weapon produced at the sprint planning meeting. when the scrum team selects and commits some high-priority product feature points to be submitted in the product backlog, these feature points will be refined into sprint backlog: A list of tasks required to complete the product backlog function. these points will be subdivided into smaller tasks with less than 2 days of work. After the sprint backlog is complete, the scrum team re-estimates the workload based on it. If the workload differs significantly from the original estimated workload, the scrum team negotiates with the product owner, adjust the workload to the sprint to ensure the successful implementation of the sprint.

Burndown chart

The burndown chart shows the accumulated workload in the sprint. It is a trend chart that reflects the workload completion status.

At the beginning of the sprint, the scrum team will mark and estimate the detailed tasks to be completed in the sprint. All tasks that need to be completed in this sprint but are not completed are accumulated workload. The SCRUM master updates the accumulated workload every day based on the progress. If at the end of the sprint, if the accumulated workload is reduced to 0, the sprint is successfully completed.

The product backlog function is placed in the fixed cycle of the sprint. The Sprint backlog changes for the following reasons:

• As time changes, the development team has a better understanding of the requirements and may find that new tasks need to be added to the sprint backlog.

• Program defects are added as new tasks and are committed to submitting unfinished tasks. These may be tracked separately.

• The product owner may work with the scrum team to help the team better understand the sprint.

Target, scrummaster and team may feel that small adjustments will not affect the sprint progress, but will bring more business value to the customer.