Software Engineer

Taken from agilesoftwaredevelopment.com there i s good definition about Backlog. It’s Scrum artifact. it’s a list of things needed to be done; however, it’s more than a to-do list.

First of all, it’s a high-level document, because it’s made and managed mainly by the product owner which is the voice of the customer so the list of items to be developed are prioritized by business value.

Taken from agilesoftwaredevelopment.com:

• Product backlog always lists items adding value for the customer. It includes functional requirements and non-functional requirements. It can also include items required by the team, but only the ones that will eventually bring value to the customer, e.g. taking into use a continuous integration server in order to guarantee the continuous end product quality.
• Product backlog cannot include concrete low level tasks and requests for building the intermediate artifacts. For example, it cannot include request for producing the design document unless customer has to ship it further for some purpose.
• Product backlog utilizes the simplest and the most effective way for prioritizing requests – a simple list. Such a method does not allow for having 100 absolute max priority features and forces the product owner to actually make decisions about the feature priorities.
• The higher the items are located on the product backlog, the more detailed they are. Items for the closest couple of months are usually quite detailed, while items that will be worked on in some 6-12 month can be defined very broadly and imprecisely.
• When there are several interdependent teams in the company or department, typically they all have a single product backlog and pull their work from it.
• Product backlog does not typically include the detailed requirement information. Usually the final requirement details are figured out with the help of the customer, when the requirement is being implemented.

I’ve found this article very interesting (taken from sei)

Agile development methods and CMMI (Capability Maturity Model^® Integration) best practices are often perceived to be at odds with each other. This report clarifies why the discord need not exist and proposes that CMMI and Agile champions work toward deriving benefit from using both and exploit synergies that have the potential to dramatically improve business performance.

Here the pdf download.