Show your Sprint Backlog to the World!

Hi, I'm Hans. I write a blog about Scrum, Agile and anything that might relate to it or could be interesting to people interfacing with the themes. If you aren't following me, then here is what you might have missed this month:

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The Sprint Backlog rests at the core of each of our sprints. We look at it, we discuss it, we change it, all on a daily basis. Yet in today’s age, especially with the new challenges of collaboration as remote teams with members all over the world, it may have fallen out of focus a bit. And maybe it could be more for your team than a board of items.

The Basics of a Great Sprint Backlog in Detail

A proper Sprint Backlog answers the questions of why, what and how. Our Sprint Goal is the thing we want to accomplish for our product, it should convey the reason why our current work is valuable to our customers. What we do consists of items pulled from the product backlog at the Sprint Planning or while the Sprint is running. These individual items should contain value on their own and ideally all add progress towards the sprint goal, thus bundling their value and giving the team focus. All these items should be split (decomposed) into small pieces of work we need to accomplish to finish the particular sprint items and get closer to our goal. These tasks display our current understanding of how a particular Product Backlog Item (PBI) should be done.

One of the reasons Scrum works so well for so many of us is that it is based upon Kanban. The goal of this Kanban board at the center of Scrum is to make the current state of our work transparent so we can all make informed decisions on our steps towards the Sprint Goal. Like all Scrum artifacts, it allows change and should be changed often to always reflect the current state of the Sprint. As long as you make sure your Sprint Backlog answers the why/what/how, is clear, and up to date, then you’re doing great. Now that we have a great Sprint Backlog, we need to make sure it is seen!

Your Team Billboard

Kanban is Japanese and translates into “Billboard”, which is the underlying concept of the board. In Kanban, the board should always reflect the current state of the work and carry this information into the world around it. This is referred to as an “information radiator”, conveying valuable insights to anybody who looks at it. For this to work, the billboard needs to be in a prominent location. Nobody in their right mind would put a billboard where it can’t be seen, so make sure yours is visible!

A well-maintained and prominent Sprint Backlog can both be an information radiator for your team and anybody who interacts with it. If people know where to find it and are interested in your Sprint progress, it can reduce status meetings and calls, keep nosy managers happy and even support stakeholder trust as they see work on valuable items progress. Conversely, if you are having worries about displaying your Sprint Backlog, then maybe something is wrong with it or its surroundings to begin with.

The Challenges and Chances of Remote Work

The COVID pandemic has pulled people out of the huge open plan offices and put them into a work condition from the comforts of their home around the world. I’m a huge proponent of remote work and working from home, but we should not pretend that this shift in location does not come with its own challenges. When our Sprint Boards were hanging proudly from the office wall, people had no chance of missing their contents. Information would spread simply by people walking by. In a remote environment, looking at the Sprint Backlog is an active decision, no matter how accessible the board is.

How do we overcome this challenge? For starters, we have to make sure our team is using the board properly. Make the board the center of attention on each Daily Scrum. It’s a good idea to stream the board to all members so everybody can see it. Everybody in the team should be accountable for the state of the board, so see if it is up to date and respectfully ask team members to commit to refreshing the board whenever they work on something or acquire new insights. While it’s not something we automatically encounter on our office walls anymore, the effort it takes to refresh the board has also never been smaller, if you are using any collaboration tool.

Now that the board is being used and maintained by the team, we can work on displaying it to the rest of the world. The tool you are using should allow you to share your board with a simple URL. If people ask you about the state of the Sprint or your work, you should always garnish your response with a reference to your board. While it’s not a physical radiator of information anymore, your Sprint Backlog is now easily accessible from anywhere, so use that to your advantage. A reminder of the Sprint Goal along with information on all items that have been completed in the last Sprint and any that may still be open is central information to any Sprint Review, so why don’t you start your reviews off by showing the state of the Sprint Backlog? This is also a great time to remind present Stakeholders that the Sprint Backlog is always easily found online.

Takaway

While we cannot rely on location and encounters to relay information in a remote work environment any more, we certainly can use the digital nature of our work to our advantage. Do not slack on working with your Sprint Backlog, share your Kanban board, and reap the rewards of transparency and openness. What have your challenges working with remote Scrum teams been? What are your tools and your ways of sharing your Sprint Backlog? Leave a comment down below!