Backlog in product management: what to do when ideas grow “like a snowball”
In conditions of high competition, it is important to concentrate on the highest priority. Competitors are constantly releasing new features. There are so many of them that there is simply not enough time to study them. Clients in product development also play a crucial role, offering improvements, constructive criticism and fresh advice. In general, ideas grow "like a snowball."
In any product, most likely, they want to introduce those functions that will raise revenues to a new level, increase returns (retention) or virality.
It's great if you have already implemented a quantitative framework, for example, Pirate Metrics (AARRR) . It helps you concentrate on the most important stages of your sales funnel, namely AARRR (acquisition, activation, retention, referral, revenue).
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But back to a large pool of ideas and initiatives.
So, the problem is the following - you have a lot of ideas from different sources: from Intercom, Zendesk, Satismeter, from personal conversations with customers, from employees. It becomes more and more difficult for you to choose ideas for the next sprint. Moreover, the cost of the error is very high: you risk making such a feature that will be unclaimed by the audience and will not bring the expected benefits. For example, it does not increase the conversion to registration or ARPD.
Backlog is constantly growing and it becomes more difficult to manage it - the product manager spends a lot of time on his audit, during which he looks at ideas, sets priorities, throws out what has ceased to be relevant. Every time you need to monitor all the ideas. It's time to “shovel” the known prioritization techniques and find your solution.
We at Hygger.io offer a system solution to this problem of choice. The solution consists of three main blocks:
As a rule, Backlog is a regular list. In Hygger, backlog is a two-dimensional Kanban board. Moreover, the user is offered Labels (tags) and Swimlanes. This is more than enough to structure your backlog of any size.
For example, the columns on this Kanban board can be the stages of working on ideas:
This is just an example of a process. Perhaps your company has a design department and you first need to design the idea, write the TK and only then send it to the development. You can independently “tailor” the structure of the board to your development process.
Instead of a process, you can make releases in the columns to distribute ideas. By the way, Hygger can count Capacity for columns - so that you can evenly distribute tasks across releases.
With Swimlanes you can share ideas. For example:
Labels can be used for anything, for example, to mark the ideas of specific customers. Or ideas of specific employees. Or note particularly important ideas. Or note andies - small features that make the product “tastier” for users. These Sandies do not require much effort, they do not affect the speed of work. But by silencing them, users feel concern for them and trust more.
Ideas are ordered by shelves, now you can begin to evaluate them. Evaluation will help you in the future to make the right choice.
It is convenient to evaluate all ideas using two criteria: Value or Impact and Effort.
In abstract terms, Value is the contribution that an idea or feature can make to your product. For a correct assessment, you need to first understand what you want to improve with this feature.
Suppose you have implemented Pirate Metrics (AARRR), then your goals might be:
At Hygger, Fibonacci numbers and Planning poker (or Scrum Poker) are used to estimate. Users can access a set of cards with the following values:?, 0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40.
The process of evaluating ideas for Value in a company is:
Efforts, as a rule, are evaluated by a person who has technical competencies - this can be a project manager or a product manager with programmer experience. The assessment is done rough, without the involvement of programmers. At this stage, it is still early to involve programmers, because not all ideas will reach development. And there is a danger of wasting time.
When you have evaluated all the ideas, you can proceed to the stage of selecting ideas. It is not necessary to do this immediately after the end of the assessment - sometimes it is better to take a pause and let ideas rest. You can get new data, for example, from the external environment, which may affect the assessment of Value or Efforts.
In our company, the process of revising ideas is constant and background. But we do it on the chart, not on the Kanban board, because on the chart the most important ideas are clearly separated from any unnecessary trivia. You can revise ideas from the most important to the unnecessary, if time allows. The main thing is that you revise important ideas at the beginning, and you will always have 5 minutes for them.
Those ideas that you rate, you can see on the chart.
The graph has two scales - Value and Efforts, as well as 4 quadrants:
The graph is convenient in that it allows you to evaluate ideas relative to each other. During the evaluation session, ideas are assessed, as a rule, independently of each other. But when we begin to compare ideas that are valued equally, with each other, obviously some kind of idea will be more useful or less labor-intensive. Based on this, we can adjust the assessment of the idea, their Values or Efforts.
So, you have appreciated the ideas, selected the most useful ideas with the help of graphics, and now you can send them to the development - on the Kanban board or on the Sprint board.
Summing up, briefly highlight the main thing:
And how is your prioritization? We are looking forward to your comments and feedback.
In any product, most likely, they want to introduce those functions that will raise revenues to a new level, increase returns (retention) or virality.
It's great if you have already implemented a quantitative framework, for example, Pirate Metrics (AARRR) . It helps you concentrate on the most important stages of your sales funnel, namely AARRR (acquisition, activation, retention, referral, revenue).
')
But back to a large pool of ideas and initiatives.
We define the problem
So, the problem is the following - you have a lot of ideas from different sources: from Intercom, Zendesk, Satismeter, from personal conversations with customers, from employees. It becomes more and more difficult for you to choose ideas for the next sprint. Moreover, the cost of the error is very high: you risk making such a feature that will be unclaimed by the audience and will not bring the expected benefits. For example, it does not increase the conversion to registration or ARPD.
Backlog is constantly growing and it becomes more difficult to manage it - the product manager spends a lot of time on his audit, during which he looks at ideas, sets priorities, throws out what has ceased to be relevant. Every time you need to monitor all the ideas. It's time to “shovel” the known prioritization techniques and find your solution.
Find a solution
We at Hygger.io offer a system solution to this problem of choice. The solution consists of three main blocks:
- Backlog structuring with Kanban boards, tags and Swimlanes.
- Evaluation of all ideas on two criteria - Value and Effort.
- Selection of the most important ideas using the visual Backlog Priority Chart tool.
Backlog structuring
As a rule, Backlog is a regular list. In Hygger, backlog is a two-dimensional Kanban board. Moreover, the user is offered Labels (tags) and Swimlanes. This is more than enough to structure your backlog of any size.
For example, the columns on this Kanban board can be the stages of working on ideas:
- Collect Ideas - here you collect all the ideas. Enough one sentence or keyword.
- Review Ideas - then you explore ideas, clarify and detail. It is not necessary to describe each idea at the start in detail, because it’s not a fact that the idea will be chosen and will go into development.
- Score Ideas - at this stage, you evaluate the ideas (more on that later).
- Approval - here the idea is checked by Scrum Master or the project manager - is it described in sufficient detail so that it can be put into development?
- Developing - the idea went into development.
- Done - the idea is implemented and the function is “flooded” with production.
This is just an example of a process. Perhaps your company has a design department and you first need to design the idea, write the TK and only then send it to the development. You can independently “tailor” the structure of the board to your development process.
Instead of a process, you can make releases in the columns to distribute ideas. By the way, Hygger can count Capacity for columns - so that you can evenly distribute tasks across releases.
With Swimlanes you can share ideas. For example:
- by system components (backend, frontend, API, mobile apps, etc.)
- on high-level areas of product activity (usability, new features, marketing, technical debts, etc.)
- by Pirate Metrics (acquisition, activation, retention, referral, revenue).
Labels can be used for anything, for example, to mark the ideas of specific customers. Or ideas of specific employees. Or note particularly important ideas. Or note andies - small features that make the product “tastier” for users. These Sandies do not require much effort, they do not affect the speed of work. But by silencing them, users feel concern for them and trust more.
Ideas are ordered by shelves, now you can begin to evaluate them. Evaluation will help you in the future to make the right choice.
Evaluation of ideas for Value and Effort
It is convenient to evaluate all ideas using two criteria: Value or Impact and Effort.
In abstract terms, Value is the contribution that an idea or feature can make to your product. For a correct assessment, you need to first understand what you want to improve with this feature.
Suppose you have implemented Pirate Metrics (AARRR), then your goals might be:
- You want to increase the conversion in registration (acquisition).
- You want to increase the number of users who need to catch the “aha” moment and become loyal users of your product (activation).
- You want your users to come to you more often and use some kind of feature (retention).
- You want to increase the number of referrals sent.
- You want to increase the average revenue.
At Hygger, Fibonacci numbers and Planning poker (or Scrum Poker) are used to estimate. Users can access a set of cards with the following values:?, 0, ½, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 20, 40.
The process of evaluating ideas for Value in a company is:
- The presenter takes a new idea from the queue.
- then the team discusses this idea out loud so that everyone understands it equally.
- then each participant puts the assessment upside down.
- the lead reveals all the cards and there is a discussion of ratings.
- The participants who set the maximum and minimum scores explain why they gave this mark.
- then there is a process of discussion until the team comes to a consensus. Often we use a timer to improve the quality of the discussion.
Efforts, as a rule, are evaluated by a person who has technical competencies - this can be a project manager or a product manager with programmer experience. The assessment is done rough, without the involvement of programmers. At this stage, it is still early to involve programmers, because not all ideas will reach development. And there is a danger of wasting time.
When you have evaluated all the ideas, you can proceed to the stage of selecting ideas. It is not necessary to do this immediately after the end of the assessment - sometimes it is better to take a pause and let ideas rest. You can get new data, for example, from the external environment, which may affect the assessment of Value or Efforts.
In our company, the process of revising ideas is constant and background. But we do it on the chart, not on the Kanban board, because on the chart the most important ideas are clearly separated from any unnecessary trivia. You can revise ideas from the most important to the unnecessary, if time allows. The main thing is that you revise important ideas at the beginning, and you will always have 5 minutes for them.
Choosing ideas with the Backlog Priority Chart visual tool
Those ideas that you rate, you can see on the chart.
The graph has two scales - Value and Efforts, as well as 4 quadrants:
- Quick Wins - Ideas with High Value and Low Efforts. These are very useful features that are easy to do. These tasks are best done first. Quickly done - quickly got the result.
- Big Bets - ideas with high Value and Efforts. Tasks that are as useful as they are complex / lengthy to implement. These tasks can be done secondarily. Doing them will take longer than Quick Wins, but the benefits of them will be as great.
- Maybes - ideas with low Value and Efforts. Tasks that do not give much benefit, but they can be easily done. Such ideas are best deferred.
- Time Sinks - ideas with low utility, but with high labor costs. It is better to forget about such ideas.
The graph is convenient in that it allows you to evaluate ideas relative to each other. During the evaluation session, ideas are assessed, as a rule, independently of each other. But when we begin to compare ideas that are valued equally, with each other, obviously some kind of idea will be more useful or less labor-intensive. Based on this, we can adjust the assessment of the idea, their Values or Efforts.
So, you have appreciated the ideas, selected the most useful ideas with the help of graphics, and now you can send them to the development - on the Kanban board or on the Sprint board.
Conclusion
Summing up, briefly highlight the main thing:
- In the structuring of backlog, two-dimensional Kanban boards make life much easier. With the help of Swimlanes, it is convenient to separate ideas according to different parameters, after which you can begin to evaluate ideas.
- In Hygger, you can evaluate ideas using the Value and Effort criteria.
- The Backlog Priority Chart tool completes the process of selecting ideas, visualizing them on a convenient graph with two scales and four quadrants of prioritization.
And how is your prioritization? We are looking forward to your comments and feedback.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/350572/
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