A Central Product Backlog

Megan Walsh, 16 March 2010

At the CSM course Jens told us over and over again – “Use your common sense!” Common sense is essentially what Scrum is founded on. Sometimes though, when you are trying to implement a new framework it is difficult to know when to stick to the rules and when to use your common sense.

My biggest question since starting to apply Scrum in Magnetism last June has always been:

“How does Scrum apply when one Scrum team is working on several different products/projects for several different customers simultaneously?”

At the CSM course, I finally got my answer – create one central product backlog for the entire organisation that contains all user stories, tasks, bugs, and requests for all internal and external projects that our Scrum Team is working on. The backlog is prioritised with most urgent/valuable at the top. Based on the Team’s velocity we can work backwards to create a projected schedule for work completion and see a high level burn down for company work.

Also when new requests or bugs are added we can slot them into the backlog based on priority and give the requester an accurate indication of when it will be completed by.

As we implement this new idea I’ll be tracking to see how our productivity increases over time.