Scrum backlog templates and examples

In the Product Backlog (c_backlog.xls) there are a few columns whose titles are specified by acronyms such as MR, Pri, 50%, 90% and (90%-50%)^2.

Does anybody know the acronyms’ meanings? What are they supposed to tell you?

Thanks you so much in advance

Ric

Pri means Priority,
MR means MiniRelease (it's the same for all rows in the same mini release in the sheet)

The videos and templates posted are excellent. Thanks for the effort and work done.

Keep up the good work.

rgds
Jude

I'm not an Excel expert..... maybe there are others.

If you want to order a product backlog with more than 127 rows you need to redefine some names because the macro uses them.
"ProductBacklog" (I found it in the main menù -> insert - names - define).
It was defined as:
='Product Backlog'!$A$4:$G$127
and redefined as:
='Product Backlog'!$A$4:$G$1024
And so on with
"StoryName": redefined as ='Product Backlog'!$B$5:$B$1024
"Status": redefined as ='Product Backlog'!$C$5:$C$1024
"Sprint": redefined as ='Product Backlog'!$E$5:$E$1024

Apply the same to the Sort Sprint Task macro as it uses "SprintTasks", "TaskStoryID") and "TaskStatus".

Ok. Thanks for the examples.

Hi Matteo,

> Now I wonder that product backlog is owned by the product owner, and
> he put there just "business cases". When the team explode them in task,
> probably it means that I'm going to put the tasks in the sprint backlog.

In your team, is this activity of task planning done in advance to a sprint starting?

> So I would like to decouple the product backlog and the sprint backlog,
> but I also would like to create a hierarchy so I have two item's level in the
> sprint backlog: a story development would be completed only when all
> the related tasks are completed, then the product backlog may be synchronized.

I personally think this is overcomplexifying the issue. Of course, I don't know this particular case, but I don't see the great benefit from this activity being done within the Product Backlog and Sprint Backlog. Firstly, I wouldn't go into task level (apart from discussions related to estimating the size and effort) until the beginning of an iteration where the story is being made, and then track the tasks on a wall board or some other similar mechanic. This would mean that the Product Backlog would ever only have business stories and that the Sprint Backlog is emptied between iterations. Thus I wouldn't have the problem you're describing.

In fact, I don't even have an Excel based Sprint Backlog anymore in the latest version of the template. :)

Hope that helps, Petri

Hi Petri,

so there are now three sheets: the original one (that I'm recommending everywhere), the new one that you recently added (I didn't see it yet, but let me download it), and finally the original with some enhancement.
I really appreciated you comment and I understood that I was wrong: so the enhancements are just in the way of simplifying the management of all these sheets such as the automatic creation of a new sprint sheet, the synchronization of the sprint backlog to the product backlog, some different type of ordering. The most debated one was the synchronization: now I presume the Product backlog contains only business level stories (each one with a unique story ID) while the Sprint backlog contains tasks where more tasks can be related to a single story (same story ID). So the status of the item on the product backlog depends on the status of every task related. Yes, it is probably useless, but it's dramatically different to the intermediate version where I copy every task from the sprint backlog to the product backlog. While may be it was a VBA exercise, it was a big step towards the comprehension of Scrum philosophy.

Thank you again!

Matteo