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Limit Your Agile Teams Product Backlog

Limiting the number of items on your product backlog might make your product owner, and in fact your entire Scrum team, more focused.

Many Agile product owners that I work with complain about their product backlog being really long. They mention that it’s cluttered with stale ideas, old feedback, or requests that they haven’t got around to, and perhaps never will. This can make their backlog unwieldy, and difficult to manage or visualize. As stakeholders bring new requests and suggestions every day, the backlog only gets longer and more difficult to stay on top of.

One idea that you might try is to limit the number of spots in your backlog. Limit it to 100 or 150 items, whatever works for you. Only the top 100 items ever get onto your backlog. There are a few benefits to this:

• It allows your backlog to become more transparent and a lot more visible for all the members of your team.
• As a product owner, you become more intimately familiar with the items on your backlog, actively deciding which items need to be there, and which should not.
• If your stakeholders regularly propose a lot of requests for enhancements or features, it can encourage them to cut down their ideas to the most important or valuable. As they know that each idea will be competing to make it to the top 100, they are likely to only suggest the best one or two.

By limiting the number of items on your Agile team backlog, you could start enjoying a lighter load that is easier to manage and visualize within your Scrum team.

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Have you ever considered that budgeting time for each team member to give their daily updates might make your daily Scrum more valuable?

One thing that a lot of scrum or agile teams complain about, is getting value out of their daily Scrum. In some cases, team members might be providing too much information or taking up too much of the Scrum time by getting lost in the details. For others, the problem might be that they aren’t giving enough detail. Either way, the value of the Scrum is being lost.

One suggestion is to allocate time for each individual team member’s updates. Be explicit about the amount of time — bring a kitchen timer to the Scrum, or use an online tool like Google Timer to visually indicate the time box and the time remaining. Pick an amount of time for each team member’s update — maybe 60 seconds or 90 seconds — and let them know that this is the time they have to fill.

It can also help to coach your team members to get the most out of their update. They should be communicating their updates not just from the sender’s point of view, but also from the perspective of the receiver.  What’s the message you want your team members to receive from your update? From there, they can work out what to say during their 60 seconds to best communicate that message.

In this way, your daily Scrum only takes ten minutes, or maybe fifteen minutes max, but you’re getting a lot more value out of that time.

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Teach your Team to W.A.I.T

If you’re the scrum master of an agile scrum team and you find that those daily scrum meetings are taking longer than you want, or your team members are getting too into the details, and you aren’t getting enough value from the scrum, here’s a tool that might help your team be a little more mindful in how they communicate and share information in meetings.

W.A.I.T. – Why Am I Talking?

The acronym W.A.I.T is a quick strategy to help your team members ask and answer one simple question: Why Am I Talking? This is useful to help team members better communicate and collaborate – especially in meetings.  It helps people pause for a split-second to think about the message they intend to communicate and the best way to communicate it.

Just WAIT!

That thing I want to say, does it really need to be said? If it isn’t important – or if it has already been said – then just WAIT until something more relevant comes to mind.

That thing I want to say, does it really need to be said right now? If the timing isn’t right – just WAIT – a better time to put this idea forward might present itself.

That thing I want to say, are these the right people to say it to? Think about who would most value from this idea, feedback or thought. If the right people aren’t present – just WAIT.  Waiting for the right people to show up can limit repetition and make sure that the right people hear what your team members have to say.  

That thing I want to say, am I the best person to say it? Think about whether there might be someone more appropriate to communicate this idea – if so, just WAIT. Even if this thing needs to be said, it might not need to be vocalized by this particular member of the team.

That thing I want to say, have I figured out the best way to say it? Often times, we don’t stop to think about the best way to communicate an idea – typically when it enters the mind it then immediately enters the mouth.  If we haven’t determined the best way to share a thought – just WAIT – share it once you have figured out how to best communicate it.

This tool is an easy to remember device designed to help us pause for a split-second to think about how, when and to whom we’re communicating. It then helps to make that communication as effective and impactful as possible.  In the scrum, this helps keep the meeting much more focused and a lot more valuable.

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It may sound counter-intuitive, but if you’re a ScrumMaster, you might be able to improve your daily scrum or daily standup by not showing up at all.

If you’re the scrum master of an agile or scrum team and you feel your scrum isn’t as engaging or as interesting as it could be, you’ve probably considered what you could bring to the scrum to improve your daily meetings. Perhaps you’re worried that your team aren’t getting the most out of it, and you can’t work out what you could be doing differently to support them.  Many daily scrums even start to feel like team members are updating the ScrumMaster rather than each other.

One thing you can try as a ScrumMaster, is simply not to show up to the next Scrum.  Just skip one.  Don’t go.  Don’t telephone, don’t arrange for someone to cover for you, don’t even let the members of your team know that you won’t be there.  Just don’t go.

Afterwards, you can retroactively talk about what happened when you didn’t show up.  You can explore how your presence – or absence – changes the dynamic of the scrum.

Did the scrum meeting still happen as planned?
Did it start on time?
Did anyone capture the issues and relay them back to you, or communicate to you the most relevant points so you could follow up later?
Crucially, was the scrum more or less valuable without you present?

The daily scrum isn’t about – or for — the ScrumMaster so it should be just as effective even if you weren’t there. And if it wasn’t? Then this is a great way to open the conversation so that you can talk about ways to improve it

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One of the most common frustrations that teams have with their daily scrum meeting is getting everyone to show up on time. Could the answer be, start at off times?

The daily scrum – or standup – is intended to be no longer than 15 minutes, so when team members show up 5 minutes late, that’s a third of the scrum that they’ve missed. Teams wrestle with the whether to catch latecomers up on what’s been said — losing the momentum of the scrum team — or simply moving ahead with gaps in the updates.  Often times, team members find themselves simply waiting until everyone shows up before getting started.

One idea that could help encourage people to show up at the right time, is scheduling the scrum for “off times” rather than at the top or bottom of the hour. Instead of starting at 9.00am, or 9.30am, try scheduling it 9.04am, or 9.36am.

This gives team members a few extra minutes to finish up with a previous meeting making it more likely they will be on time to the scrum. Secondly, scheduling meetings at off times make participants more aware of the meeting time. They check their watches more often; are more nervous about missing the start; and therefore will be more likely to remember that it’s time to attend.

Test this idea out with your own teams, and see if it makes a difference, reducing your frustrating wait periods and getting your scrum participants through the door on time, every time.

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