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Product Backlog Management - a self-paced online learning course
Description
This adaptive learning online course looks at the management of the Product Backlog by the Product Owner. The Product Owner is accountable for managing the Product Backlog as well as for maximising the value resulting from the work of the Scrum Team. These are not really separate responsibilities. In order to maximize the delivery of value the Product Owner needs to organise the Product Backlog so that it delivers outcomes, and that the work the self-organising Scrum Teams perform is fully business-aligned.
On a day-to-day basis the Product Owner’s focus on the Product Backlog is the most important thing she does. Her ordering of the items in the Product Backlog structures the work of the Scrum Team, ensuring that they are always working on the most important thing next. However, the Product Owner cannot be reduced to a ‘Backlog administrator’ if she is to be able to deliver maximum business value.
Why This Course?
· Upgrade your Product Owners’ skills – understand how to order Backlogs so that they continuously delivers value and progresses towards achieving outcomes
· Understand how Product Vision and Product Strategy Shapes the Backlog – and how the results of Sprints may, in turn, impact them.
· Recognise that good Product Backlog management is a form of ‘just-in-time’ requirements elicitation – that supports continuous product discovery throughout the lifecycle of the product
· Organise multiple Scrum Teams – working on the same, large product, using the same Product Backlog
Who is This Course Suitable For?
Whether a Product Owner, Product Manager, Portfolio Manager, Program Manager or a Business Analyst, or someone who needs to understand Agile product development then this course is for them.
What They’ll Come Away With
After completing this adaptive learning course, attendees will have learned tools and techniques that they can use to organise and manage their Product Backlogs.
They’ll be able to:
· Explain the Product Goal as the commitment in the Product Backlog, and its relationship to Product Vision
· Explain ‘just-in-time’ requirements elicitation and its relationship to continuous product discovery
· Recognise the importance of preserving Scrum’s inspect-and-adapt cycle and why it requires that Product Backlog Items (PBIs) be broken into work packages that can be completed in a single Sprint
· List the different types of work that can be included as PBIs
· Understand user stories as simple statements of users’ needs that drive conversations to discover solutions
· Drive risk reduction by prioritising key risks (value, usability, feasibility and viability) and ‘failing fast’
· Recognise that while the Product Owner is accountable for Product Backlog refinement, she does not necessarily do all the work herself.
· Describe the Product Owner Team pattern and its application in Product Backlog refinement
· Organise the work of multiple teams working from the same Product Backlog
· Use the MetaScrum pattern to reduce external interference with the Product Backlog, and bring organisations behind the efforts of the Product Owners
What Topics are Covered?
The ‘Managing the Product Backlog’ adaptive learning course has 6 modules, with a total of 70 learning objectives and 150+ probes.
Understanding the Product Backlog
· The Product Backlog as a mandatory artifact of Scrum that has the Product Goal as its commitment
· Aligning the Product Backlog with Product Vision and Product Strategy
· Why “Scrum Teams commit to delivering value, not scope”
Managing the Product Backlog
· The dynamic character of the Product Backlog
· How just-in-time requirements elicitation enables continuous product discovery
· The importance of having PBIs ‘Ready’ for Sprint Planning
The Content of Product Backlogs
· The different types of work that might be included in a Product Backlog (user stories, non-functional requirements, governance and compliance, defect fixes, removal of technical debt, ‘spikes’ etc.)
· Good’ User Stories and how they should be used to drive conversations that help discover solutions
· The place of non-functional requirements in the Product Backlog
· The arguments ‘for’ and ‘against’ the use of Technical Stories
Ordering the Product Backlog
· Risk reduction in the prioritisation of the Product Backlog
· Factors that influence Backlog prioritisation
· Strategies for ordering the Product Backlog (Goal-oriented. Theme-based, Planguage, MoSCoW rules, WSJF, RICE scoring and Balanced Score Carding)
· The importance of ‘product sense’ when using algorithms to support Backlog prioritisation
Refining the Product Backlog
· ‘DEEP’ Product Backlogs (Detailed appropriately, Emergent, Estimated and Prioritized)
· The work of Product Backlog refinement and who does it
· The Product Owner Team pattern
· Techniques for estimating the effort required to get a PBI from ‘Ready’ to ‘Done’
Using the Product Backlog in Multi-Team Development
· The importance of there being one (chief) Product Owner, one Product Backlog and one Definition of Done for multi-team products
· Organising individual teams’ ‘Product Owners’ into a Product Owner Team supporting the Chief Product Owner
· Theme-based separation of PBIs to minimize the overlaps and dependencies between Scrum Teams working on the same product
· The Scrum of Scrums pattern to maximize the collaboration between teams to resolve dependency issues
· The metaScrum pattern to align internal stakeholders behind the Product Owners in an organisation and reduce interference with their Product Backlogs
What the Course Includes:
· High-quality instruction with slideshows and short videos, supported by an audible coach’s text created by Agile expert and Certified Scrum Trainer, Alan O’Callaghan
· Multiple probes for each Learning Objective
· Immediate feedback to answers, including remediation where appropriate
Different pricing models apply depending on the size of your organisation. Please contact maria@emerald-hill.co.uk to book a conversation.
