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    Managing "old" backlog (pre-Rally &...
    Question posted 2/1/08 by Peter88 , tagged Adoption and Comparison, Challenges
    1542 Views, 1 Comment
    Title:
    Managing "old" backlog (pre-Rally & pre-Scrum)
    Question:
    We have been carrying a backlog list from another platform for about a year now.  These items are all over the place in terms of business benefit and where they "fit" in the application.  My product owner and I are going to start reviewing these (using Excel) to see what can be discarded because it's either already been addresses or just of no obvious value.  Even after this exercise is complete I'm anticipating a pretty hefty list of perhaps 100 items.

    So, what's the best approach to deal with this?  I certainly don't want to lose any good ideas from here but I also don't want to fill-up the backlog (a backlog) with a big wave of stuff.

    Any ideas for a good way to transition this into Rally?

    Comments

    • posted 2/4/08 by Alex
      When you're starting out with Scrum, it's useful to think of a backlog as a never-ending list of items, because it helps you respond to stakeholders.  ("Sure, that's a great idea! I'll put it in the backlog.")  But Mary Poppendieck has suggested being careful about backlogs that grow so large that they're an unmanaged pile of tasks. 

      I find that as a product owner, I'm really only worried about the top 20-50 items most of the time.  So I keep the following backlogs:

      - In Rally, I keep track of all defects, and all stories for the next 1-2 releases.
      - In Salesforce.com and Rally Product Manager, I keep all customer-requested features, so we can notify customers when a request is implemented.
      - In Agile Commons, customers request features, comment, and vote things up and down.  I follow this discussion.
      - I have a personal "wish list" that I look at from time to time.
      - I use a combination of index cards and OmniOutliner to brainstorm possible backlogs for epics.  I used both of these tools when we implemented our project hierarchy, and I'm doing the same for our work on Rally AQM.

       I try to keep in Rally only the work that I'm reasonably sure will be happening in the near future.  This helps reduce clutter.

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