Scrum is the most widely used Agile methodology. According to a recent study, over 72% of companies who use Agile have been using Scrum for their project management. All organizations that have mastered Scrum understand how well it works with completing projects on time. The teams know that the best way to ensure a project’s success is to refine and break down the Product Backlog work for each project.
Teams usually complete their Product Backlogs by creating Sprint Backlogs that break down the task into very small and functional items to improve the flow and reduce chances of failure, especially when compared to keeping a few large tasks. Below are the ten most widely used strategies by Scrum Teams.
Breaking Down by Workflow Steps
If the Product Backlog needs a workflow, it can be divided into individual steps. When teams break down a large PBI, it helps them understand the functionality better and improves the team’s estimate. The Product Owner will be easily able to prioritize the work. The less important steps in the workflow get pushed to future sprints. The Scrum Team will be able to review the total functionality when the team reaches the end of the sprint and then test it to get feedback and make changes.
Breaking Down by Business Rules
There are a lot of business rules involved with PBIs that team members may not realize because these business rules can often be implicit. By breaking down the PBI by business rules, it can help Scrum Teams employ different strategies. It helps with prioritization, and the Product Owner will decide which business rules are not important as of now, and can be tackled later. This helps in saving time and money.
Breaking Down by Happy/Unhappy Flow
Happy flows are ways functionality behaves when the project is going well, and unhappy flows come out when there are deviations, exceptions, or other problems. By identifying and separating the various flows into happy ones and unhappy ones, the Scrum Team will understand the required functionality better. This will help the Product Owner decide what is important and needs to be taken care of right away. By dividing functionality into happy and unhappy flows, teams can ask about the business value to help them make better decisions.
Breaking Down by Input Options/Platform
When Scrum Teams design web applications, they need to see what platforms they have to support, such as desktops, tablets, mobile phones, and more. To separate the PBIs based on their input options can also be beneficial. This helps the Product Owner prioritize which input options are more important, and the application needs to be compatible at the earliest.
Breaking Down by Data Types or Parameters
Another strategy to break down Product Backlog Items is to divide them based on the parameters they are supposed to or can manage. When the Scrum Team breaks down the search functionality by data types, they gain a better understanding of the search parameters to be used, which in turn helps in estimating the functionality more accurately, and the Product Owner will be able to prioritize better as well. Some PBIs can be broken down based on the returning data types by seeing how the information can be presented visually, either in a tabular form or in charts or graphs.
Breaking Down by Operations
There are a lot of default operations that come with PBIs, known as CRUD (Create, Read, Update, or Deleted), which are widely observed when one of the functionalities of the product is the management of entities. This helps Scrum Teams see what items deliver business value in their project. Entities should be able to get updated or deleted afterward as well.
Breaking Down by Test Scenarios/Test Case
When large PBIs cannot be broken down based on functionality alone, Scrum Teams break them down by using test scenarios. Here the team asks for ways in which a piece of functionality will be tested and what scenarios it will be tested. When a team focuses on testing, it helps them come up with a number of business rules, various happy and unhappy flows, and other input options. The level of complexity for test scenarios depends on the amount of work it takes to set up the tests and work through them, which means an uncommon test scenario can be skipped by the Product Owner if it does not have a high enough risk and instead, focus on test scenarios which deliver more value to the project. Test scenarios can also be simplified and easily translated into backlog items.
Breaking Down by Roles
There are a lot of roles and groups involved in PBIs for functionality. Scrum Teams can choose to break down their PBIs based on their roles that need to perform aspects of the project’s functionality. This helps in creating a better understanding of which functionality is actually needed and can be used to estimate the work involved more accurately. This is a great strategy in helping Product Owners prioritize which roles are more important and relevant, and which can be implemented later.
Breaking down by ‘Optimize Now’ vs. ‘Optimize Later.’
PBI’s can also be implemented based on the level of optimization of the functionality that is being tackled. Scrum Teams can use this to prioritize which code needs to be perfect from the beginning and be maintainable. A Product Owner can prioritize and see which functionalities need to be optimized immediately and which ones can be worked on for optimization in future sprints.
Breaking Down by Browser Compatibility
This is an addition to the breaking down of PBIs based on which platforms the project, and its functionality will work on. Web applications usually need to work on many browser platforms as well, and the functionalities need to maintain standards. Newer browsers are easier to develop for whereas older browsers usually need hacks and customizations to get all processes working smoothly. By breaking down PBIs, a Product Owner will be able to prioritize which aspects need more focus and need more time and effort.
Final Thoughts
The above-mentioned strategies to break down PBIs can help many Scrum Teams with the timely delivery of their projects. It helps prioritize what needs to be taken care of with each sprint. The best way to utilize these strategies would be to train team members in the Agile methodology so that they can properly implement them without any chances of failure.
Some of the widely-recognized Agile Courses taken up by individuals and enterprise teams are:
