The product backlog can be a powerful tool to discover and deliver the right product features. But how can you stock and prioritise it effectively? How can you reduce the size of a large backlog? How to secure stakeholder buy-in? And what backlog mistakes should you avoid? These are some of the product backlog questions that I am frequently asked, and that I answer in this article.
This post explains how to write user stories at the right level of detail, and how to derive small, ready stories from big, coarse-grained epics.
User stories are great at capturing product functionality in isolation. But they are not well suited to describe the relationship between different features and capture user journeys and workflows. This blog posts shows how context and activity diagrams can be successfully used to model interactions in user story context.
“Ready are you? What know you of ready?” says Yoda to Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars movie “The Empire Strikes Back.” Just as it’s important for Luke to understand what “ready” means, so is it for product owners. Luckily, you don’t have to become a Jedi to find out. Reading this post will do.
User stories come in different shapes and sizes. Large stories, also called epics, allow quickly sketching product functionality, which is handy for scoping a major release. But it means that larger stories have to be eventually refined and broken down into smaller, detailed ones, which the development team can implement. This post shares some tips to help you systematically refine your user stories.
User stories and use cases are both powerful techniques to capture requirements. But which one is right for you? This post shares my recommendations.