Effective Backlog prioritization: Common Techniques

An Intro to Product Backlog and Backlog Prioritization. Popular Techniques used for Prioritization

What is a product backlog?

A product backlog creates and maintains an up to date connection between the PO and the dev team. It is a collection of key features or user stories the dev team needs to develop your software. Backlog prioritization helps you focus on the backlog items that represent the highest value for the users.

A product backlog is a collection of key features or user stories the dev team needs to develop your software. Backlog prioritization helps you focus on the backlog items that represent the highest value for the users.

The most common backlog form is a list where the most important items are at the top so the development team knows what to deliver first.

A product backlog also can be derived from the product roadmap.You can also convert the story map into a product backlog if you started your product discovery by first creating a backbone of the product through user stories

Then, What is backlog prioritization?

Technically, Backlog Prioritization refers to the process of determining the order in which tasks, projects, or items in a backlog should be addressed or worked on. A backlog is a list of pending items, such as features, bugs, user stories, tasks, or requirements, that need to be completed or implemented. Backlogs are commonly used in various fields, including software development, project management, product development, and agile methodologies.

Prioritization brings measurable benefits in terms of time, money and product success, and bad decisions set the product back. A well-prioritized backlog organizes what the product development team spends its time on and makes it easier to plan the release and the next iteration.

Factors to Consider During Product Backlog Prioritization:

• User satisfaction
• Business value
• Complexity
• Minimizing risks
• Deadline
• Cost of development
• Dependencies
• Number of Users

How to prioritize a product backlog?

A product backlog item can be new feature requests, user stories, bugs, design changes or change requirements. Although it is the Product Owner’s or the Product Manager’s responsibility to prioritize the backlog, they are not entirely on their own to solve the task.

The Product Owner is supported in making informed decisions by the insights and feedback from users or customers, and the development team, and of course, there are many methods and tools to help them.

Common Prioritization techniques:

MoSCoW:

Used in project management and software development to categorize and prioritize requirements or features. The name “MoSCoW” is an acronym representing four priority categories namely,

Must-Have(M): These are critical requirements or features that must be implemented or delivered in the current phase or iteration.

Should-Have(S): Items are important but not absolutely critical for the current delivery. They can be deferred to a later phase if necessary but they are considered high-priority and should be included if possible.

Could-Have(C): They are nice to have terms that can be considered if time and resources permit after addressing Must-Have and Should-Have items.

Won’t Have(W): They are either not feasible, too costly or not aligned with the project’s objectives.

Kano Model:

A customer satisfaction and prioritization framework used to categorize product features or attributes based on their impact on customer satisfaction. Developed by Professor Noriaki Kano in the 80s and is widely used in product development and customer experience management.

The model classifies features into five categories:

Must-Be Quality: These are fundamental features that customers expect as a minimum requirement for the product or service.

One-Dimensional Quality: Features are directly proportional to customer satisfaction. The more you improve these features, the more satisfied customers become.

Attractive Quality: Attractive features are unexpected or “Nice to have” elements that exceed customer expectations.

Indifferent Quality: Indifferent features have little impact on customer satisfaction. They are often considered as low priority and can be resource neutral.

Weighted Shortest Job First:

A commonly used technique in Agile development methodologies, particularly in the scaled Agile Framework. It helps teams make decisions about which features or user stories to work on next by considering both their value and the time critically.

Business Value + Time Criticality = Cost of Delay

WSJF = Cost of Delay / Job Duration

A flow-based system, priorities must be continuously updated to provide the best economic outcomes. In other words, job sequencing produces the best results rather than prioritization based on a theoretical return on investment for each job.

Estimating Cost of Delay:

The calculation of WSJF assumes one can determine the CoD in absolute financial terms per unit of time, and the job time can be estimated with some degree of accuracy.

Cost of Delay = User Business Value + Time Critically + Risk Reduction

Estimating the Job Duration:

Larger jobs take longer to complete than smaller ones, job size can be used as a good proxy for the duration. Using job sixe as a proxy for duration results in a straightforward calculation for comparing jobs via WSJF.

Relative Prioritization:

A prioritization technique used to prioritize items in a list by comparing their importance or value relative to each other, rather than assigning specific numeric values or scores. It is a qualitative approach that relies on the comparative judgment of stakeholders or team members to determine the priority order.

List of Items: Create a list of items to be prioritized. These could be features, tasks, user stories, projects, or any other elements relevant to the context.

Pairwise Comparison: Items are presented to stakeholders or team members in pairs, and they are asked to compare the two items and decide which one is more important or has a higher priority. This is often done through voting or ranking exercises.

Repeat Comparisons: Continue the pairwise comparisons for all possible combinations of items in the list. This means each item is compared with every other item to build a comprehensive understanding of their relative priorities.

Ranking or Ordering: After all comparisons are completed, compile the results and establish a priority order for the items based on the number of times they were ranked higher than others.