We all know the “Definition of Done” used in Scrum for items that should be potentially shippable to the customer at the end of the sprint. In his book Essential Scrum, Kenneth Rubin discusses the “Definition of Ready” that applies to product backlog items that should be ready to be developed before the start of the sprint.
If user stories are the start of the conversations to define user requirements, Scrum teams can also use other tools to obtain a more precise definition of these requirements. In the article “When and How to Create Customer Journey Maps”, Kate Williamson presents the concept of customer journey map, the visualization of the process that a person goes through in order to accomplish a goal, and when and how to use them.
It can be complicated to involve the whole team to facilitate product backlog refinement and take part in requirements discussions. I would like to suggest a structure of the PBR (product backlog refinement) meeting that will encourage everybody to speak up and share their ideas on functionality.
The creation of Agile approaches was also a reaction against huge and useless requirements documents, either textual or using modeling techniques like UML. All the values of the past should however not be discarded in the requirements activity. In his book “Agile Software Requirements”, Dean Leffingwell explains how user stories are different from use cases and software specifications.
Story mapping is a technique invented by Jeff Patton that order user stories along two independent dimensions. The “map” arranges user activities along the horizontal axis in rough order of priority. On the vertical axis, it represents increasing sophistication of the implementation. In his blog post, Sunit Parekh explains how you can apply story maps to build your product backlog in a visual way.
As Agile matures and learns from experience, it is clear that the Agile business analyst has a significant role to play. This interactive and musical session will explore the relationship between Product Owner and Business Analyst, their responsibilities and the skills needed. I’m an Alien … I’m a Business Analyst in an Agile world!”
The product owner is a very important component in a Scrum team, as it is the force driving the team towards the satisfaction of the end-user needs. This is a different situation if you are in a small startup or responsible for a large, established product line. In this blog post, Roman Pichler discusses the differences between small and big product owners.
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