Backlog Prioritization in Agile Software Development

Product Backlog prioritization is one of most important exercise in agile software development.  Any projects is successful if the stakeholders or clients or business gets most valued functionality at earliest. And that is possible by effectively and consistently prioritizing the requirements (users stories).

Backlog prioritization is required to organize the product backlog items (user story/Defects/Spike etc) to make the sequence of its development and deployment.

This Sequence  is followed by the scrum team to choose product backlog items during grooming or sprint planning.

The influencing factors for prioritizing product backlog items are

1. Customer Satisfaction
2. Business Value
3. Complexity
4. Risk & Opportunity
5. Cost

Benefits of backlog prioritization

These are the key benefits of an effective and consistent backlog prioratization

Treatment of different backlog Items during prioritization

All Items in product backlog are treated equally during backlog privatization, that can include, Defects or Bug, New Functionality, Enhancements, Spikes.

There are many influencing factors to consider during prioritizing backlog items. most important consideration factors are.

1. Customer Satisfaction

We always prioritize stories by keeping in mind the factor of customer satisfaction, by assigning the functionality (backlog item) a high priority that have have a probability of higher customer satisfaction. and prioritize those functionality first without those customer may get dissatisfied.

So we need to implement the basic needs first , then the performance area, and then the delightful functionality

check out the section below for Techniques of product Backlog prioritization, below  that explains Kano Model to understand how measurement of customer satisfaction help us to prioritize our Product backlog item

2. Business Value

Understanding the business strategy and business goal is very essential to prioritize the functionality. That’s why the product owner or the business Analyst are best person to prioritize product backlog item.  Identifying which functionality will add most value to meet the business goal is helpful to prioritize the product backlog item.

The sponsor, Sales team, or strategic thinker influence the business value by targeting long term benefit or immediate value addition to counter competitors.

3. Effected number of users / or frequency of use

This factor is product specific, not everywhere considered as prioritization factor. The functionality may be prioritize by keeping in mind the number of users will be effected. for an example, in a eCommerce web site look and feel of consumer home page will get higher priority than a supplier home page.

Similarly if a functionality will be used more often, that should be prioritize early to work on any additional optimization work for it if needed.

4. Cost to develop and implement the functionality

High cost not necessarily be on low priority, we need to think rationally, about   each functionality’s cost and ROI. Cost is not the only factor, during prioritizing we need to think about the return of the functionality as well.

Definitely Low cost – High return will be on top priority and similarly High cost – low return can be low priority. But High cost – high return can also be at top of the list, considering other factors of prioritization.

5. Risks

Ranking high risks functionality in top of the list, maximize the early mitigation. Where keeping high risk functionality for later stage of the project, increase overall risk of implementation.

6. Complexity

Functionality with high complexity or difficult, is advisable to start working on early stages of the project, As the team is fresh so allocation of skilled and experience member is easy. And If it takes more time than estimated, the team will also have more room to adjust the extra time.

Explanation

In this matrix has the consideration factors and its weightage as column and the 9 backlog items (Story 1 to story 9) as row.

The numbers inside the matrix are the relative values to denote the rate for each story for its respected consideration factor. The rates are in a scale of 1 to 10.

Each story has a total value in the 2nd last column. Its represents the cumulative value  of all the factor’s value for that story. Factors value for a story is calculated as weight multiply by its Rate .

The last column represent the priority or rank of the story, maximum value is on high priority with rank 1, and minimum value is low priority. In this example the top priority story is story 6, and lowest priority story is story 3 and story 4.

There are many ways of doing prioritization. most commonly are as below

With this technique we categorize our user stories into different baskets like high low medium etc. and pick backlog items to groom, plan or construct. This is techniques of basketing Product backlog items to prioritize in groups.

Play the video below to watch practical demonstration in ALM tools like Jira, Rally etc. prioritizing backlog with different techniques including affinity analysis.

With this technique we arrange our backlog items, rather I will say the functionalities, keeping in mind the customer satisfaction factor. The Kano Analysis chart have different areas of customer satisfaction, and we place our backlog items on those areas, and prioritize accordingly. The different areas of functionality are as below

1. Must be Functionality
   Customer usually take those functionality for granter, If implemented customers are just neutral, but if not implemented or poorly implemented, customers are very dissatisfied.
2. One Dimensional Functionality
   Those are the functionality satisfied the customer if implemented and dissatisfied if not implemented. Those functionalities are often discussed with mutually agreement between development team and business/customer.
3. Attractive Functionality
   Those are the functionality satisfied the customer if implemented but don’t dissatisfied the customer if not implemented. Those functionality are often not demanded by the customer, but customers get delighted by having those functionality.
4. Performance Functionality
   Those are the functionality are proportional to implementation and satisfaction. More we implement more the satisfaction will be.
5. Indifferent Functionality
   These functionalities are nutral nor good or bad, implenting them or not implementing them does not satifiy or dissatisfy the customer.

Play the video below to watch details of Kano Analysis and how we can prioritize our backlog items using this technique.

MoSCoW is another method of prioritizing work items in Product development.  The acronym derived from the first letter of  its 4 prioritizing category (Must Have, Should Have, Could Have, Would like to have). This is another way of Affinity analysis by basketing the product backlog items in four categories.

As the name of the each category, team prioritize the Must have functionality first followed by Should have, Could have and would like to have, to get the return of benefit faster, reduce the lose of high importance functionality in case of time or budget constraint.

Play the video below to watch practical use of prioritizing backlog items in ALM tools like Rally and Jira.

Ranking items is another way of prioritizing backlog items in stack, A rank value (1,2,3,4,5…). With this method we organize our backlog items in stack, one above another. The Rank 1 considered as high priority than rank 2.  In our backlog the higher ( low number value) rank or high priority appears above the relatively lower rank (high number value).  We pick the top product backlog item first to groom, plan, construct etc followed by the lower rank.

Play the video below to watch practical demonstration of prioritizing product backlog item using Ranking method.