Convivio Cookbook
  • Introduction
  • Our Business
    • The Convivio brand
    • What do we do?
    • Our work for clients
    • Our Purpose
    • Our Pulse
      • Big Rocks
      • Problems
    • Company Policies
      • Environmental Policy
      • Anti-Bribery Policy
      • Fair Tax Policy
        • Dividends policy
        • 2020 Results and Tax
        • 2019 Results and Tax
        • 2018 Results and Tax
        • 2017 Results and Tax
  • Our Team
    • Help! I'm new. How do I get started?
    • Starting at Convivio
    • Staff Benefits
    • Being a buddy
    • Having a buddy
    • Free-Range Working
    • Convivio Fridays
    • Notes: give & receive feedback
    • Security Screening
    • Submit Expenses
    • Purchases
    • Your home working environment
    • People Analytics
    • Recruitment
      • Help Card: Writing a Person Profile
      • Help Card: Writing a Job Description and Advert
      • Help Card: Publishing a Job Advert
      • Help Card: Reviewing CVs
      • Help Card: Preparing and Conducting Structured Interviews
      • Help Card: Preparing and Conducting Remote Working Interviews
    • Team Policies
      • Security Policy
        • Acceptable Use Policy
        • Business Continuity Management
        • Data Usage Policy
        • Document Access Policy
        • Mobile Equipment Policy
        • Two-Factor Authentication (2FA)
        • VPN Guide
      • Equal Opportunities
      • Grievance Procedure
      • Disciplinary Procedure
    • Taking time off work
      • Holiday
      • Sickness
    • Peer reviews
    • Mental Health
      • Mental Health Training
      • Mental Health First Aid
      • Returning to work
      • Resources
    • Continuing Professional Development
      • CPD Annual Planning
      • CPD Sprints & Scrums
      • CPD Annual Review
      • CPD Annual Retrospective
  • Our Clients
    • Principles For Building New Client Relationships
    • Researching
    • Connecting
    • Nurturing
    • Assessing
    • Learning and Thinking
    • Pre-qualification questionnaires
    • Proposing
    • Agreeing
    • Beginning
    • Inspiration
  • Our Marketing
    • Content Publishing
      • Git Repository Conventions
      • Help Card: Writing a Case Study
    • Brand Guidelines
      • Content Guidelines
      • Branded Documents and Reports
  • Our Tools
    • Infrastructure
      • External Firewalls
  • Internal Projects
    • How we improve our business
  • Client Projects
    • Delivery Launch
    • Delivery Team
      • Convivio People
      • The Coach
      • User Researcher
      • Other Team Members
    • Digital Strategy
    • Discovery
      • Discovery Briefing
      • Discovery Planning
      • Discovery Modules
      • Discovery Findings
      • Discovery Principles
      • Prepare for prototyping
    • Prototyping
      • Inputs to Prototyping
      • Prototyping Objectives
      • Prototyping Inception
      • Prototyping Sprints
      • Prototyping Outputs
    • Build
      • Inputs to Build
      • Build Kickoff
      • User Stories
      • Backlog Management
      • Backlog Scouting
      • Sprint Planning
      • Sprinting
        • Daily Standup
        • Story Lifecycle
        • Design in Sprints
        • User Testing in Sprints
        • Quality Control in Sprints
      • Sprint Review
      • Sprint Retrospective
    • Service Management
    • Digital Service Standards
      • Delivery Methodologies
        • Scrum
        • Kanban
        • Lean
          • Technical Standards
        • Code Quality
        • Testing
        • Automation
          • Security Standards
          • Quality Standards
          • Risk Standards
    • Delivery Governance
      • Steering Group
      • Risk Management
        • Risk Attitude
        • Assessing Risks
    • Delivery Help Cards
      • Help Card - Sprint Planning
      • Help Card - Sprint Review
      • Help Card - Sprint Retrospective
      • Help Card - Product Owner Feedback
      • Help Card - Common Issues
      • Help Card - Slack
      • Help Card - Github
      • Help Card - Trello
  • Our Recipes
    • Convivio Classic Cocktails
      • Ingredients
      • Tips and Techniques
      • Martini
      • Negroni
      • Manhattan
      • Old Fashioned
    • Potage Dubarry (or, creamy cauliflower soup) with spiced green pepper
    • Roasted Sweet Potato in a Herb and Nut Salad, with Maple Chilli Dressing
    • Aubergine Curry
    • Vegetarian Paella
    • Easy Ice Cream
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On this page
  • Priorities
  • Calculating the Priorities
  1. Client Projects
  2. Build

Backlog Scouting

Keeping the backlog in good order is the responsibility of the Product Owner (PO). It's the Scrummaster's job to support the PO in this task. Regular scouting of the backlog, reviewing the stories, how they're written, attaching supporting documentation and maintaining the priorities is key to keeping the development flowing in the right direction. The backlog is the PO's interpretation of the business requriements. The team will draw from this backlog so it's important that the order is correct to ensure the development stays on track.

Priorities

The backlog lists, in the order they're to be work on, the user stories. Working in an agile framework means that the priorities we set can change regularly in order to respond to change and business direction.

How stories are prioritised is not an exact science and needs to take a number of things into consideration:

Effort How much effort is required to complete the story? Larger stories will require a sprint or two while others will take only a short space of time. Smaller stories can be packaged together and delivered in a sprint. Individual, smaller stories might fit into a sprint with several larger stories. It's down to your delivery team to estimate the effort required. With this information you can decide how to prioritise the effort.

Value The effort involved in delivering a story does not necesarily match the value it delivers. The value of a story will depend on the business objectives that have been set.

Dependencies Some stories will require other stories to be completed before they're worked on. Dependent stories could include data migration whereby content cannot be worked on until the migration is complete. In this example we'd need to prioritise some stories based on the dependencies.

Time Critical Are there stories that deliver particular functionality that is needed for an event? If you're working on a live service then look at the schedule and confirm which stories must be delivered by a particular time.

Calculating the Priorities

So... ((Effort/Value)-Dependencies)+Time Critical is an equation that will never calculate your priorities. The calculation of priorities requires human interaction, discussion and common sense. Put your stories on a board, group them, talk through the priorities, have your work schedule to hand, move the stories around, discuss the different permutations. What you must remember is that this is agile. Today's priorities are not necessarily tomorrow's priorities. Work with what you know now and adjust as you learn more later.

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Last updated 7 years ago