January 30, 2023

Agile Backlogs: Understanding Product, Sprint and Bug Backlogs

Are you a QA, Software Engineer or Product Owner who wants to understand backlogs in Agile and Scrum? View my Backlog Agile video or read on.

Agile development is about adaptability, collaboration and continuous delivery of value to the customer. Agile uses the concept of backlogs. I will explain what is Backlog in Agile and Scrum, what are the types of Backlogs in Agile methodology, the relationship of Agile Product Backlog to Bug Backlog and Agile Product Backlog vs Sprint Backlog, who writes the backlog items in Agile and where to put bug fixes in Agile.

First, what is Backlog in Agile? It is pending work that will bring value to the customers. It is a list of items that need to be completed in the project and includes features, user stories and other tasks. What are features in Agile Scrum backlog? They are higher level functionalities provided by the system, for example a feature for users to customize their profiles and another feature to give personalized recommendations to users based on their past transactions. What are user stories? A user story explains a software feature in non-technical or business language. What are the other tasks in Agile Product Backlog? They are tasks to achieve the project goals but each task should provide value to the users for example refactor the code to improve performance, update the test scripts, system testing or QA testing focusing on functional testing and performance testing or update user documentation. 

There are three types of backlogs in Agile:

1) The primary or biggest backlog in Agile is the Product Backlog. It contains all the items that need to be done in the project, and it's the responsibility of the Product Owner to add items to it and prioritize them by business value. 

2) The Sprint Backlog is a smaller backlog. It contains all the items that need to be done in the current sprint. The Developers select items from the Product Backlog, estimate the efforts and add them to the Sprint Backlog.

3) When it comes to bug fixes, the Agile approach is to address them as soon as they are discovered. The Bug Backlog is a list of all the known bugs that need to be fixed in the project. The Product Owner is responsible for prioritizing the bug fixes, based on their impact to the users and customers.

There are different ways to handle the Bug Backlog, depending on the team's preference. One approach is to keep the Bug Backlog separate from the Product Backlog. This allows the Product Owner to focus on prioritizing the bug fixes without being overwhelmed by other items in the Product Backlog. However, this approach also introduces more overhead work for the team.

The typical approach is to include the Bug Backlog within the Product Backlog. This approach simplifies the process of prioritizing bug fixes, as the Product Owner can address them alongside other items in the Product Backlog. However, this approach makes it more difficult to track the status of bugs, as they are mixed in with other items.

In order to manage the Bug Backlog, the team can use a tool like Jira to prioritize and track the Product Backlog Items (PBI). The Product Owner can create Product Backlog Jira by adding items, setting their priorities and assigning items and the progress can be tracked by the Agile Scrum Master, Developers and other team members. 

In conclusion, the create Backlog and Sprint in Agile process is that the Product Owner adds PBI's including bug fixes needed to Product Backlog, prioritizes each PBI and cleans up the PBI's, as needed. Then for each Sprint, the Developers select the PBI's, estimate them and commit to deliver them in the Sprint. I hope that now you know about Agile backlogs, which are Product Backlog, Sprint Backlog and Bug Backlog. Thank you 🙏

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