Agile Software Development

This morning I was looking over several of our project backlogs and noticed something that really caught my attention. In addition to user stories that addressed the functionality we are developing, our project teams have been adding stories to the backlog that have nothing to do with project tasks (or maybe they have everything to do with project tasks). The stories are about improving processes and practices, organizational issues, team matters, and even the project structure.

Update: Link to XLS fixed. Kudos to Jukka Laurila

Update: See also section added

Product backlog in Scrum is simply a list of things needed to be done. As such it is a little different from many other to-do lists. The difference comes from the small peculiarities of the way you handle the backlog. Here some some things to note about the product backlog.

Update on 09 Oct 2007: "See Also" section added

Bas Vodde collected and published examples and templates of the Scrum product and Sprint backlogs. Most of them are in MS Excel format. Some (XLS) include a lot of comments, some (XLS) are very colourful. Check them out, Excel can really cover most of the needs of the archived backlog tracking.

See Also

• Simple Product Backlog Example
• Simple Sprint Backlog Example