Product backlog prioritization quadrants
This post is part of 101 ideas for agile teams.
Context
Product owner has difficulties to prioritize items for different stakeholders: new functionality, support, technical debt and architectural innovation.
Action
Use the quadrants in the picture to let stakeholders agree on what percentage the team should work on which kind of work. Then prioritize per quadrant.
Past and Business (Q1) — Support, bug fixes, minor enhancements
keep customers happy
Future and Business (Q2) — New functionality
get new customers
Past and Technical (Q3) — Technical debt
cost savers
Future and Technical (Q4) — New technology, new concepts
cost savers, feature enablers
What you gain
Transparency about different kinds of work (quadrants).
Easier prioritization due to time budget (%) per quadrant.
How to strengthen
Show what the team has done during the Sprint Review per quadrant so that your stakeholders get a better understanding of the different kinds of work needed to get a good product.
Risks
Stakeholders may prioritize quadrants to be not valuable resulting in severe consequences (for example to quality). Communicate consequences and value of skipping or working on the individual quadrants.
Source
I found this idea at http://www.growingagile.co.za/2014/06/a-technique-to-help-prioritise-your-backlog/
More ideas at 101 ideas for agile teams
Many thanks to bbv Software Services for making this blog post possible.
