Scrum Table Berlin #
Last week I attended the scrum table Berlin. This time around Phillippe gave a presentation on “backlog colours”, that
is types of work items tracked in the backlog.
The easiest type to track are features - that is items that
generate revenue and are on the wishlist of the customer. Second type of items he sees are infrastructure items - that
is, things needed to implement several features but invisible to the customer. Third type are bugs. Basically these are
diminishing the value of features one had already classified as done earlier in the process. Fourth and last type are
technical debt items - that is shortcuts taken or bad design choices (either knowingly as intentional decision made to
meet some deadline or unintentional due to lack of experience).
A very simple classification could be the
following
matrix:
| Name | Value | Cost |
| Feature | Visible Positive | Positive |
| Infrastructure | Invisible Positive | Positive |
| Bug | Visible Negative | Positive |
| Technical Debt | Invisible Negative | Positive |
All four types of items exist in the real world. The interesting part is making these visible, assigning costs to each of them and scheduling these items in the regular sprint intervals.
The full presentation can be downloaded: http://scrumorlando09.pbworks.com/f/kruchten_backlog_colours.pdf