Extensive Product Backlogs Transform Scrum Into a Waterfall Approach
The longer the Product Backlog, the less Scrum you are doing
How many items do you have in your Product Backlog?
What is the oldest item do you have?
How often do you remove items from your Product Backlog?
Answering these questions will help you to understand how your team is doing Scrum.
Responding to change over following a plan
At the end of 2018, I joined a team as a Product Owner. When I looked at the Product Backlog, I was shocked. Some items were around two years old. The Product Backlog contained 150 items in total. I wondered why that happened, so I asked the Development Team, they told me, “We have a lot of things to build, but we haven’t found the time yet.”
Over my journey, I have observed many Product Owners maintain long Product Backlogs. I also did that in the past. But I noticed this is counterproductive. It comes with many drawbacks, which inevitably leads to focus on irrelevant wishes, while avoiding what really matters.
I’ve come across some approaches that help us to achieve better results with Product Backlog…
