Want to be Agile? Make your backlog items small, independent and valuable
One important characteristic of being agile is how quickly you are able to pivot onto a new piece of work, having completed what you are currently working on. This alone does not make you agile; you also need to be great at things like getting feedback and continuous improvement. However, if
- you can quickly deploy (put live) all the work that you have been doing,
- this work adds value, and
- you can easily move on to something else,
then this is a great foundation. Teams that would take a long time to complete anything valuable are not going to be very effective if/when they need to pivot. Whilst these teams may be able to stop work on one thing and move on to something else, their recent work would likely be wasted. Pivoting without waste is one thing we strive for in agile teams.
Moreover, if we can always be close to deploying something that adds value, then it makes it easy to do great things like deliver value often, get feedback on our product, and continuously improve it. It is really hard to do these things otherwise, but they are attributes of really effective teams.
I believe that the most effective way to achieve this is to build your backlog appropriately. Look to ensure that the items at the top of your backlog have the following qualities:
- They are small — they can be built quickly
- They are independent — can be deployed on their own, not in a batch
- They add value to the user/organisation
If this is the case, then when the team pulls work bit by bit from the top of the backlog, it won’t be hard for them to put valuable work live at short notice and pivot on to something new.
I’ve written separately about the pitfalls that I have seen teams fall into with their backlog. Do read these for more clarity on where teams can go wrong with this. It can sometimes be difficult, but if you can create a backlog of small, independent and valuable items; then it makes it easy for the team to:
- Build things that can be put into production quickly
- Deploy often
- Pivot quickly to a different direction without wasting work
- Get regular feedback on new features
- Continuously improve the product based on feedback
The above points are all great things to do, and would create a great team with a fantastic agile mindset. However, with an unsuitable backlog these are all quite hard to do.
So get your backlog right, full of small, independent, valuable outcomes, and everything else will follow. Good luck, and let me know if you want help!
If you enjoyed reading please give some 👏 and/or leave a comment. For more stories like this check out my publication, The Agile Mindset.
