Allan Kelly is a keynote conference speaker and author of several books including “Succeeding with OKRs in Agile”, “The Art of Agile Product Ownership” and “Business Patterns for Software Developers”. He advises and mentors, managers and teams in using agile approaches with OKRs to accelerate delivery, meet deadlines, and execute against strategy. He believes these approaches benefit businesses and create more fulfilling work environments. He blogs at allankelly.net and can be contacted there or on Linkedin.
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Honey, I shrunk the backlog
The backlog was a great idea, until it wasn't. Many successful teams are delivering backlog items everyday but their backlogs aren't getting any smaller. Delivery success is overshadowed by the never ending backlog. Product discovery, dual track agile and OKRs accelerat backlog growth without taking anyway any of the rotting items. Worst of all, doing the backlog distracts from delivering benefit to the customers and responding to change.
What are we to do?
How about we rethink the very idea of the backlog and rebuild our agile process around outcomes. Rather than just "delivering stuff" we need to revisit "why?", set objectives, measure results and remember to think big - even while we deliver many small stories every day and provide teams the autonomy to decide and chart the best course to meaningful outcomes.
You have nothing to loose by your burn-down charts.
Key takeaways…
- A new perspective on the backlog
- Know how to use objectives to replace the backlog
- Understand how to use a Just-in-Time story generator