Product Backlog Breakdown Strategies

Based on the Scrum Guide, a Product Backlog is an up-and-coming, systematic list of what is required to improve the quality of a product. Scrum team members know that a Product Backlog is the single source of work to do.

Items in the Product Backlog list that the Scrum Team can do within a single sprint are considered prepared for selection in a Sprint Planning Event. After refining activities, they achieve a level of transparency. Product Backlog breakdown, or Product Backlog refinement, involves breaking down and further defining the items in the Product Backlog into smaller and more precise items. Scrum teams regularly do this work to add details like size, order, and description. However, the attributes generally differ based on the niche of work.

Developers, handling the actual work, size items in the product backlog. In this process, the product owner might influence the developers by helping the development team understand and select trade-offs. In some instances, many Scrum teams work on the same product. Even in this case, a single product backlog explains how the forthcoming product will work.

Why and When to Breakdown Product Backlog?

We are here to provide you with details about different Product Backlog breakdown strategies. However, it is better to understand why and when product backlog breaking becomes essential.

In general, it is hard to predict software development. Some items in the Product Backlog will require more effort than expected, but some require less effort and time. Let us consider that a sprint's work has only a few large items. In this case, even if a single item is underestimated, it can impact the entire sprint.

As larger items tend to be harder to evaluate and understand, the possibility of a failed sprint will increase further. To avoid this situation, experienced Scrum Teams often recommend spending effort and time to break down larger items in the Product Backlog into smaller stories.  At times, they do this breaking down at the time of planning a new sprint. However, with experience, they learned that this breakdown of items in the product backlog should be an ongoing process. Only then will sprints and sprint planning move on without any issues. 

As and when a sprint is fast-approaching, the Scrum team will begin breaking down the Product Backlog for the next sprint. However, the team will do it in a “just-in-time” manner. Scrum teams do this to make sure that they can spend increasingly less time on sprints soon.

Breaking down Product Backlog is important as it improves shared understanding. It even helps product owners with work prioritization. However, it is not easy to do breakdown a Product Backlog. It needs a lot of practice. However, experts in the Agile community like Mike Cohn, Richard Lawrence, and Dean Leffingwell have devised many useful strategies to break down work into tiny pieces.

Product Backlog Breakdown Strategies:

So, with the importance of breaking down Product Backlog understood, you will wonder about the types of Product Backlog breakdown strategies available. Here are a few of them for your understanding:

1. Breaking Down with the Help of Workflow Steps:

If a Product Backlog requires a workflow, it can be divided into individual steps. When teams split down a large Product Backlog item or PBI, they can better understand the functionality. It can even help them improve the estimate. Again, the product owner will find it easy to prioritize the work.

When you follow the workflow steps for backlog breakdown, the steps of less importance in the workflow will move to future sprints. Here, it will be possible for the Scrum Team to review the entire functionality when the team gets to the closing point of the sprint and then evaluate it for feedback and making changes.

Gaining Insights:

When the stakeholders and the Scrum Team can jointly spot insights, it will be possible to establish a shared understanding of the work. They can rely on UX Fishbowl and Hypothesis Canvas to do this discovery.

UX Fishbowl:

Expanded as User Experience Fishbowl, it is a liberating structure that permits Scrum Teams to explore how will the implementation of an item in the Product Backlog will look from the perspective of stakeholders. 

The UX Fishbowl has a couple of steps and two groups. These steps are carried out in order and as many times as required. Among the two groups, one group is the Scrum Team and the other is the group of stakeholders. When using this technique, the following things happen:

Stakeholders are called upon to discuss certain things. They are asked to imagine that a particular feature is already part of their organization's product. They are asked how, why and when to use the feature. They are also asked about the steps involved and what makes the feature useful. Also, they are asked about the things that can deter them. During these discussions, the members of the Scrum Team will be present and they will carefully take notes of the things expressed by the stakeholders and take essential insights.

Following the meeting with the stakeholders, the Scrum team members stay back. Otherwise, a meeting will be arranged the following day to formulate follow-up questions based on what they heard from stakeholders. These questions will be used as points to discuss for the next round.

This technique's advantage is that it allows Scrum Teams to break down bigger Product Backlogs into smaller items. When breaking down, they will be particular about bringing value to stakeholders.

2. Breaking Down Based On Business Rules:

One popular Product Backlog breakdown strategy is to break down the items based on the business rules. The items in the Product Backlog always involve many implicit and explicit business rules. 

Let us take the example of a department store. As a customer, a person can buy the goods that he has added to his shopping basket from the store. He pays for the products to get them delivered to his doorstep. But the owner of the store might have already framed certain business rules in place like those below:

As the store's owner, I have the right to cancel orders for which I have not received payment within 48 hours. In turn, I can sell the products that a customer has added to his shopping cart to another customer as he has not paid even after 48 hours.

As the store owner, I can reserve the products ordered from stock for 48 hours. By doing this, I can ensure that other customers can see realistic stocks.

As the shop owner, I have the right to decline customers from outside a particular region. The shipping expenses I will have to bear can make the deal unprofitable for my business. 

Also, I reserve the right not to ship orders less than $10, as shipping will increase my business's costs.

Business rules are generally implicit, so extracting them will require some analytical skills. How will the new functionality be tested? In general, test cases denote crucial business rules. Once the rules of businesses are identified, they will again help improve understanding. 

The product owner might decide that some business rules are not crucial for now or can be implemented simply. It is fine for now to manually return products that are not paid to stock when payment is yet to be received even after 48 hours in the example above. Otherwise, it is possible to cancel the orders manually. For the rules mentioned above, mentioning the minimum order value required for shipping on the website and orders not shipped outside a particular location may be enough. It will save money and time needed to enforce this business rule.

3. Breaking Down Based On Unhappy/Happy Flow:

Happy flows denote methods in which the functionality will behave when the project moves on well. On the other hand, unhappy flows show up when there are exceptions, deviations or other issues. By spotting and breaking down the different flows into happy and unhappy ones, the Scrum Team will be in a position to understand the required functionality better. In turn, the product owner will decide what is important and must be attended to immediately. By splitting functionality into unhappy and happy flows, teams can ask about the value of the business to aid them in arriving at better decisions.

Conclusion:

In addition to these Product Backlog breakdown strategies, organizations can also try using input options/platforms, data kinds of parameters, breaking down by operations, test cases, roles, and by browser compatibilities. To further support Agile adoption and proficiency, Simpliaxis offers comprehensive training programs such as Certified ScrumMaster (CSM)® Certification Training and Certified Scrum Product Owner (CSPO)® Certification. These courses equip professionals with the knowledge, skills, and certifications necessary to excel in Scrum roles and effectively implement Agile practices in their organizations. By investing in training and certification opportunities, businesses can effectively empower their teams to leverage Scrum principles, driving greater collaboration, innovation, and success in product development endeavors.