agile insight

Product planning begins by creating the product backlog - a list of features, stories or "backlog items" that comprise the functionality of a system. At the start of a project, the team identifies as many potential backlog items for the system as they can. Ideally there is a single person, or primary stakeholder (sometimes referred to as the Product Owner), responsible for the backlog items, but feature requests often come from many sources. As backlog items are identified, they are prioritized within the overall product backlog by the primary stakeholder. In preparation for Release Planning, backlog items are estimated by the development team.

V1 Product Planning Step-by-Step

Create Backlog Item

The Backlog item and Defect Planning page provides a flexible, editable listing of all the available backlog items and defects contained in the currently selected project and all of its subprojects. New backlog items and defects can be entered and existing items can be edited, filtered, sorted, categorized and ordered relative to one another. The Backlog item and Defect Planning page is used to build the backlog of backlog items for each project and identify defects to be addressed.

• Select Product Planning in the main menu and click Backlog Item and Defects.

• Enter backlog item by selecting Add Backlog Item.

• Assign appropriate descriptions, estimates, values, priorities, ownership, and risks to backlog items.

• Advanced Search provides the ability to search all text fields in the following assets: Story, Defect, Request, Issue, Task, Test, Retrospectives, Project, Iteration, Change Set, and Member. Advance Search considers all projects and supports the AND, OR, and NOT boolean operators when searching on multiple terms. When searching for a specific phrase the terms should be wrapped in quotes. Results from Advanced Search are based on the members security. The Search results page can be bookmarked or e-mailed.

(Optional) Further Define & Organize Backlog Items

Feature groups are functional groupings of backlog items. Feature groups can be used in filtering throughout the planning and tracking process and can be used to report on progress and plans from this higher level functional perspective. The Feature Group Assignment page in Product Planning provides a location in which to create new feature groups, assign backlog items to feature groups, and even to organize the feature groups into a hierarchy if desired.

Epic Breakdown allows you to break a single backlog item down into smaller components that may be spread across projects, releases, teams or sprints. Breaking down a story, in effect, retires the original epic backlog item in favor of the newly created child backlog items and allows you to manage the relationships up and down the epic hierarchy.

• (Optional) Select the Feature Groups item in the sub-menu to add new Feature Groups. You can then associate backlog items to the feature groups.

• (Optional) If a backlog item represents an epic that is too large to be estimated or cannot be completed within an sprint, select Breakdown Epic in the action menu. Select the Epics item in the sub-menu to view the list of epics that have already been broken down. Broken down backlog items can be assigned to different projects, teams or sprints.

• (Optional) Rank individual backlog items against each other by moving the most valuable backlog items to the top of the list via either a drag and drop or by using the multi-select Rank actions.

• (Optional) Display and identify Acceptance Tests for backlog items.

(Optional) Create Defects

Defects allow agile teams to plan and track fixes as separate assets within the system. Defects are similar to backlog items in that they can be planned out, estimated, scheduled and tracked within an sprint. Defects and backlog items will both show up in the same lists if both are scheduled.

• (Optional) Define defects to reflect inconsistencies between expected behavior and actual behavior.

• (Optional) Assign and manage defects.

• (Optional) Define tasks and tests for defects.

• (Optional) Assign defects to themes. feature groups. use cases.

(Optional) Define Goals

The Goals page lists all available goals for the selected project, allows the user to designate which goals are targeted by the project and provides a view of the progress of each of the goals within the selected project.

• (Optional) Select Product Planning in the main menu. Set project context to be the level at which goals will be measured.

• (Optional) Define the strategic goals and objectives to be targeted by the project.

• (Optional) Associate project work with the goal(s) it supports.

(Optional) Manage Requests

The Request Planning page provides a flexible, editable listing of all the available requests contained in the currently selected project and all of its subprojects. New requests can be entered and existing requests can be edited, filtered, sorted, categorized and ordered relative to one another. The Request Planning page is used to collect feature requests submitted to the team.

• (Optional) Define requests collected from external and internal sources for additional features and/or enhancements.

• (Optional) Generate new backlog items from approved requests.

(Optional) Manage Issues

The Issue Tracking page provides a flexible, editable listing of all the available issues contained in the currently selected project and all of its subprojects. New issues can be entered and existing issues can be edited, filtered, sorted, categorized and ordered relative to one another. The Issue Planning page is used to collect and document high level issues that can or will impact the ongoing performance and delivery of the team.

• (Optional) Define issues identified by the team that can hamper team performance or delivery.

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