What is the Product Backlog?
The product backlog is a collection of prioritized requirements that need to be completed in a project. Once everything in the backlog is finished, the product is considered complete. However, a scrum team cannot work on every requirement at once. As such, the product backlog is prioritized. Higher priority requirements are placed higher in the backlog than lower priority requirements. These high priority requirements get worked on earlier in the project.
Priority of requirements is based on several different factors. The most important factor is value. Another way to describe value is how much stakeholders benefit from a requirement. In Agile software development, the top goal is delivering value to stakeholders. Therefore, working on requirements with a higher value is more profitable than lower value requirements. These high-value requirements are worked on early in the project, while other requirements can be completed later.
In addition to value, several other measures determine the priority of requirements. Risk and uncertainty refer to unknown information about requirements. Things like potential setbacks increase priority since working on them early in a project gives more time to sort out issues. Development time, including size and complexity, also determine priority. Larger and more complex requirements require more effort to finish. Placing a higher priority on these requirements gives the team a longer window to finish them. Dependencies, where requirements may rely on each other to work, also increase the priority. Development of modular code means that subsequent requirements can depend on code that is already finished.
Recommended Further Reading
The following materials may assist you in order to get the most out of this course: