Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Thanks to all the business people we have coached and trained over the last few years. This book would not be the same without you.
We’d also like to thank Sharna Sammy for her fantastic cover designs for our “Coach’s Guide” series.
About the Authors
We are Sam Laing and Karen Greaves. We have worked in software our whole lives. With Type A personalities and a strong work ethic, we have both done our share of overtime on death march projects. Eventually we knew we had to find another way. Agile brought us together when we worked at a company trying to do Scrum for the first time.
In 2012, we took the plunge and started our own business, Growing Agile. Since then we have been doing the work that we are passionate about - introducing and improving agile. Best of all we have a positive impact on other people’s lives.
If we have one principle at Growing Agile it is continuous experimentation. We used this principle to figure out different ways to help Product Owners. This book represents our current thinking about how best to approach this.
As always, we love feedback, so don’t hesitate to send us your thoughts via email info@growingagile.co.za or Twitter @GrowingAgile.
Chapter 1: Introduction
Scrum is great for getting teams to deliver good quality software regularly, but that doesn’t really help if you are building the wrong thing! The Product Backlog is a key artefact to helping steer the team in the right direction. Yet sometimes the Product Backlog is just a long list of tickets logged by the business. Often Product Owners can’t see the forest for the trees. There are so many items in their backlog that the team have no idea what direction the product is actually headed. Even if you know what your backlog should look like, finding the time to get it in order seems impossible.
If this sounds familiar, this book is for you. We have worked with a number of business analysts and Product Owners who feel the same way. We found that sending Product Owners on two day theoretical training courses is not the answer. Instead we run short workshops where we work with the Product Owner’s actual backlog. The workshop is a working session, and an hour later the Product Owners emerge with an improved backlog.
We have combined a number of these workshops into this book. We provide all our workshop plans, tips for facilitation, and teaching points to cover for each topic. You can use these workshops to help the Product Owners you work with to master their backlogs.
The chapters in this book each relate to a different topic on Product Backlogs. You can use the book in a number of ways.
- You could use all the chapters together to deliver a half or full day training course on Product Backlogs. We haven’t run this particular set of workshops in this way, as we prefer to do these workshops individually.
- You can use an individual chapter to run a workshop session on a particular topic of interest.
- You can use an individual chapter to give focus and structure to a regular working session on backlog management, for example a Backlog Grooming or refinement meeting.
In all cases we highly recommend using actual backlogs for people to practise the techniques. Occasionally we give an example to illustrate a technique. If you do that, ask people to practise the technique they have just learned on their backlogs.
Unlike our previous book on Training Scrum, we don’t assume you are an expert on the topics in this book. Not every coach and trainer have come across the same tools. If a topic is new to you, we have provided details of the points we teach for each topic in the C2 section. There are also links to blog posts and books we recommend on the topic on our website.
You only need the standard training kit mentioned in How to use this Series to run all the workshops in this book.
How To Use The Coach’s Guide Series
As agile coaches we often find ourselves running workshops or training sessions with people we are coaching. We put a great deal of effort into creating the plans for these sessions to help the participants get value. Over the past 2 years we have collected a lot of these plans. This series is our way of sharing these workshop and training plans with other agile coaches to enable you to run similar workshops.
All the books in this series are structured in a similar way, this section explains the concepts you’ll need to effectively use any of the books in the series. We’ve put it here at the start of the book, so that if you’ve used any of the other books in the series you don’t need to read through this again, it’s the same in each book.
4Cs Plans
Each chapter in these books includes a 4Cs plan. The technique comes from a training style called Training from the BACK of the room (TFTBOTR) developed by Sharon Bowman.
TFTBOTR is based on how adults learn and is focused on maximising learning and retention. TFTBOTR describes four parts that should be included in any training plan. These parts are known as the 4Cs and are described below.
- C1 – Connections: To get participants to connect with each other and the trainers, and to connect participants to what they might already know about the topic
- C2 – Concepts: Some facts and theoretical concepts about the topic
- C3 – Concrete Practice: An activity or simulation to experience the topic
- C4 – Conclusion: An opportunity for participants to evaluate what they have learned about the topic
Another important part of TFTBOTR is making sure you use a variety of methods to keep people engaged. Read more about it in this article on the Six Trumps by Sharon Bowman.
After using this technique extensively for training, we started using it for workshops as well. The 4Cs plan is a great way to weave new information or a technique into a working meeting. You can use C2, the concept stage to talk briefly about a technique, then spend time in C3, getting practice on using the technique on your work items.
We drive all our workshops and courses from these 4Cs plans. If you usually train from slides this might take time to get used to. We print out the 4Cs plans and refer to them during the course or workshop to see what’s up next and if we are on track.
We have created our own template for the 4Cs plans. The template can be found in the Coach Toolkit for each book. Use it to create your own training plans.
Here is a short overview to help you understand the template.
- The box in the top left corner is for the name of the topic.
- The big clock icon gives the time for the entire plan; the smaller clock icons in each quadrant gives the time needed for that section.
- The box in the top right corner has a space for you to enter the time for a section. For example 9:00 to 9:30 am. This helps you stay on track during the training. These are not filled in on the training plans we provide. We suggest you fill them in when you have planned your training.
- The rest of the page has a quadrant for each of the 4Cs. C1 covers connection activities. C2 is for concepts and is quite often a short lecture. C3 is for concrete practices or some activity to help people understand what they have learned. C4 contains conclusions of how people might apply the learning.
- At the bottom of each quadrant you can circle what the participants are doing in each section: Move, Speak, Draw, Listen, Write. This helps ensure that you have sufficient variety in each topic.
Chapter Layout
Each chapter contains the following:
- overview of the topic covered in the 4Cs plan
- 4Cs training plan
- notes on delivering each 4Cs part
- slides used for the topic
- exercises used for the topic.
Once you have a feel for what each topic covers you can structure your own workshops using one or more topics depending on your goal and time available.
Coach Toolkit
Each book in the series includes a Coach Toolkit which you can download from Leanpub. The toolkit contains the following items.
Training plans: PDF combining all the 4Cs training plans. You should print these out and use them when you train. You will notice that these plans are handwritten, we find them much easier to create and change by hand than if they are typed.
Slides: PPTX containing all the slides used. These slides were created using scanned hand drawings. Some slides have been edited to allow you to insert your own details. For these slides we used Lauren C. Brown font as it closely matches the handwriting on the other slides. If you prefer not to use slides you can recreate these images on flipcharts.
4C template: Use this blank template to create your own 4Cs plans on new topics.
Agreement Cards: PDF of cards used in the Getting Started chapter of each book. We printed and laminated them and use them in nearly every workshop we run. You don’t need to use all the cards each time. Look through the cards before each workshop and decide which agreements are appropriate. The cards help make sure you don’t forget anything important.
Workbook: DOC containing all the pages of a participant workbook. You should print one per participant for them to fill in. Feel free to edit the order and cover page of the workbook. Many of the workbook images were created in Omnigraffle and pasted as images into the workbook.
Handouts: Not all books in this series contain a workbook, since we generally only use workbooks in training courses. For topics that work well individually we provide PDFs of handouts that can be printed for each participant.
Other materials: PDFs containing materials to be printed and used in various chapters. Each chapter will reference these if they are needed. These are different in each book.
Room layout
We have trained in a variety of venues around the world, including a computer training centre, a bar and a tent! Room layout can have a significant impact on your training.
Our preferred room layout is cabaret style. i.e. small round tables seating groups of five to seven comfortably. The room should be large enough to have open space for some of the discussions. We look for a room with dimensions 7m x 9m for 20 people, with four tables. Ideally the tables should be small enough (around 1.5m–2m diameter) that people can easily talk to everyone at the table, but still have place for everyone to take notes.
Don’t worry about allocating seats when people arrive. The Getting Started chapter includes an activity for the participants to self-organise into appropriate groups.
If you are facilitating an in house workshop with only six participants, try find a room with a small round table so that everyone can sit close to each other.
When to change exercises
Feel free to change the training plans and activities to suit the class size and time available. We have delivered most of the chapters to groups varying from five to 50 people. As a result we have developed activities that scale well, but it is a good idea to be aware of the size of the group when planning your activities.
All 4Cs plans give times for each activity. These are just guidelines; any activity can be adjusted based on time available. It is often useful to have two exercises on hand, a longer and a shorter one, so that you can adjust if you find yourself with more or less time available.
If you are working with large groups, be aware that debriefing exercises can take much longer. To save time you can have teams debrief in their table group and then ask one or two table groups for their insights. Also remember that some exercises speak for themselves and don’t have to be debriefed - this is the beauty of TFTBOTR.
What else do you need?
We are able to run most of the workshops in this series with our standard training kit. We keep this packed in a small suitcase on wheels so we can take it wherever we go. Below is a list of what you’ll find in our kit. Some books in this series require specific items, these are listed in the Introduction for each book. Each chapter also contains a full list of materials you need for that topic’s training plan, in case you plan to deliver just one topic.
All the techniques referenced in the training plans are available in the Appendix. If you aren’t sure what to do for a Standing Survey or Fast Pass, check the Appendix.
After the workshop or course
Whenever we train or run workshops we take photos. These include action shots during any activities and discussions as well as any flipcharts we use and posters people create.
After the workshop or course we put these photos together in a PDF, and send this to all participants as a reminder of the workshop or course. This photobook is useful if you don’t use slides and participants want some materials to reference afterwards. We also send links to further reading on any topics that came up in the Q&A that were not fully answered.
Chapter 2: Getting Started
We spend time at the start of a workshop building connections and getting people to bond with each other and us. This immediately increases the level of trust in the room. If you are running a 90 minute workshop with people who all work together, you don’t need to spend as much time on this. In that case, we might only do a Fast Pass. If you are doing a full day session with people who don’t know each other well, we’d recommend following the full plan below.
4Cs Training plan
FastPass (C1)
We start with Fast Pass posters. Ask everyone to write up one sticky note for each of the two posters. The posters we chose for this workshop are: “what do you know about backlogs” and “how do you maintain your backlog”. This allows for participants to immediately identify with the topic and for the facilitator to get a better understanding of any relevant issues.
The posters are usually flipchart sheets with a question written on them in bright colours. You can see an example of these posters on the slide below.
Slide
Introductions (C2)
Simply introduce yourself by saying who you are and what your experience is. Don’t bore people - keep it short and entertaining. Our names, Twitter handles and company website are shown on a slide (see below). If you are doing this training in house with people you know, this slide might not be needed. Perhaps instead share something people might not know about you. You probably also want to mention the goal of the workshop, and why you are there.
Slide
Agreements
Next go through some Agreements (like rules, but we don’t like that word - too formal). For example: “Please put cellphones on silent, but feel free to leave the room if you need to take a call”. This helps to set the tone for the workshop. It also allows everyone to understand the boundaries of behaviour that are expected for the duration of the workshop. The Agreement cards in the Coach Toolkit will help you remember things to mentioned. Pick the cards most appropriate for the workshop and run through each of them quickly.
Agenda
Briefly go through the agenda for the day. Most people want to know at a high level what will be covered, and most importantly when the breaks and lunch are, and what time they will finish. We put this information up on a slide, and explain that the times are approximate, although we should be within 10 minutes of them at all times.
If you are just running a short workshop, let people know you will finish on time, and give them a short overview of the objectives of the session.
Who is in the room? (C3)
This helps everyone in the room get to know a little bit about each other. Firstly shout out a few roles, asking people to stand if it applies to them (e.g.: Product Owner, Business Analyst). Ask if anyone’s roles was not mentioned. If so, ask what their role is. This allows you and attendees to see what roles are present.
Next ask the class to do a Standing Survey to see who has more experience as a Product Owner or in Agile. Again this helps everyone form a picture in their minds of who fits in where. You can use different questions depending on which differences or similarities you want to highlight in a group of participants, given the topics to be covered. Be sure to ask people to form groups below according to the questions asked in this section.
Form groups (C4)
Ask the class to form groups of five to six people with a mix of roles and experience in each group. The class self-organises to do this. This generally breaks up groups of people who arrive together and already know each other well. Encourage people from the same teams to join different groups. Once people have formed groups ask them to find a table and introduce themselves to everyone in their group. Let people know this will be their group for the rest of the workshop.
Chapter 3: Product Backlogs
The Product Backlog is simply a to do list, or is it? Like most to do lists, the Product Backlog can suffer if not looked after. In this topic you teach some patterns for Product Backlogs, like how big it should be, and what the items that make it up should look like.
4Cs Training plan
Shout Out (C1)
Ask people to shout out answers to “what are some things or items that go into a backlog?” - if you like you can write these up as they shout out. This exercise gets people thinking about the composition of Product Backlogs. What people say usually gives you some insight into how they view their backlogs.
Teach (C2)
Do a brief teach on Product Backlogs. Try and link back to what people mentioned in the C1 Shout Out.
Iceberg
Explain this with the iceberg slide since the visual image is important here. If you choose not to use slides then draw the iceberg on a flipchart or whiteboard. Only a small part of an iceberg is visible above the surface of the water. The analogy is that the User Stories groomed and ready for Sprint Planning are only the tip of the Product Backlog iceberg. The Product Backlog is actually made up of three parts: these are the slices of the iceberg. Often people only focus on the top section, however the other two layers of the backlog are equally important.
The top layer is a set of small detailed User Stories well understood by the team and ready to be developed in the next few sprints. Items at this level should be small enough to be implemented in a couple of days.
The second layer is a set of features, that might span the next release. Items at the feature level are less granular than at the story level. Usually it would take a few weeks to implement one of these features.
The last layer is a set of epics, these usually indicate the big items on the Product Roadmap for the next year or two. Items at this level might take months to develop, each one might even be the theme for a particular release.
In total we advise that a backlog should be no more than 100 items, and those should be split roughly in thirds between these three layers. It’s important to understand that the backlog is prioritised by value to the business. So the items at the top of the iceberg should be the most valuable items.
As items are delivered they move off the Product Backlog, and new items bubble up from the layers below. For example a feature might be broken down into more detailed stories a week or two before it will be added to the sprint. As an epic becomes more important it will move up the backlog and be broken down into features, and then later into stories.
Product Backlog Items
The items on the Product Backlog are known as Product Backlog Items or PBIs. Often people use the word stories instead of PBIs. That’s okay if everyone know’s what a User Story is. Also note that epics or features can also be called User Stories.
One thing that some people do get confused about with Product Backlogs is tasks. It’s important to explain that the Product Backlog does not include tasks. That breakdown (User Stories into tasks) is only done by the team in the sprint, and tasks are part of the sprint backlog only.
Vertical Slice
Each PBI should be a vertical slice of the system, rather than a horizontal slice. This is usually a stumbling block for teams who have worked using waterfall before, because their default approach to splitting work is via component. The hamburger is a great analogy to help people understand this. Explain that when you eat a hamburger you take one bite at a time, and you want a piece of bun, patty, lettuce etc in each bite. PBIs should be the same, they should include all layers of the system in a single item.
DEEP
A good acronym for the Product Backlog is DEEP. These are characteristics of a good Product Backlog. DEEP stands for: Detailed appropriately, Estimated, Emergent and Prioritised.
Detailed Appropriately - Items at the top of the iceberg should have lots of detail, where as items in the epic level, should have very little detail. Just a few words is sufficient. Having too much detail on a PBI that won’t be built for several months it usually waste, since requirements are likely to have changed by the time the item gets built.
Estimated - This means that all items on the backlog should be estimated by the team that will build them. The units for estimation can be anything, our preference is for a relative unit like story points. Often people think only the items coming up in the next few sprints need to be estimated, but if the Product Owner wants to have a release plan or roadmap, we recommend estimating items on all levels of the backlog.
Emergent - The Product Backlog should change over time. New requirements emerge as more is understood about the product. This is okay. Often people are used to words like scope creep and change requests. We remind them that in agile change is welcomed, and expected.
Prioritised - An important characteristic of the backlog is that it is prioritised, usually by business value. Items at the top are the most important. Something people often misunderstand is that the backlog is a single ordered list. That means there are not 100 items that are High Priority, rather items each have a unique priority order.
Slides
Drawing (C3)
Give everyone a copy of the Iceberg Handout. You can also just ask people to draw this, if you don’t have enough copies. Ask each person to visualise using big and small circles their current backlog. Assist them by asking questions like: Does it only have small stories? Does it have a few small stories and then hundreds of large epics?
Write (C4)
Ask everyone to write down one thing they want to change about their backlog.
It might seem trivial to write this down but it’s a good way to help people remember this, and it helps engage a different part of the brain to the one that has been listening to you teaching.
Appendix
Agreements
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 |
 |
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | any number | Communication | ||
| minutes | people |
What you can learn
This sets a tone and expectations near the start of a session. It helps the attendees know what the boundaries of the session are, and what behaviours are acceptable.
What you need
It is best to have each agreement on a card and to go through them near the start of the session.
How to do this
Decide which agreements are appropriate for your audience and meeting. Explain them clearly and simply near the start of the session.
You can also ask participants if there are any agreements they would like to add.
How we’ve used this
We change these depending on the session we’re running. Over time you will learn more techniques and so this list will keep evolving.
Here are some of the cards we have:
- Take Care: Take care of your own needs. You don’t need to ask permission to go to the bathroom, or get coffee.
- Cellphones: Keep your phones on silent please. If you need to take a call, just leave the room. We’d rather you were paying attention than worrying because your boss/wife/child is calling.
- Right to Pass: You have the right to pass in any activity or exercise we do. Just sit to the side and observe.
- Workbooks: These are yours to keep. Please take notes. We will let you know when we are doing specific exercises in the books.
- Timeboxing: We give a specific end time for each break. We will start at that time whether you are back or not. It’s up to you to choose to be on time or not.
Who shared this with us
Various people over the years, many from Sharon Bowman. We came up with the concept of using cards to remember all of the things we wanted to say.
Fast Pass
|
|
|
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| 10 - 15 | 6 - 20 | Movement | ||
| minutes | people | Trust |
What you can learn
An activity to connect participants to each other through content related to the session. This is a great technique to use at the start of a session, so people who arrive early have something to do.
What you need
Flipchart pages stuck up on a wall, with questions. Have a minimum of three (for six participants) and a maximum of five (for 20 participants).
Some questions might be:
- What are your pets’ names?
- What do you know about <Topic of session>?
- Why are you here today?
- What is your biggest strength?
- What is your company’s greatest challenge?
Instruction flipchart:”After reading this, introduce yourself to a stranger and fill in the flipchart questions around the room with them.”
Marker for each participant.
How to do this
At the start of a session stick up the prepared flipcharts around the room and place the instruction flipchart near the front of the room.
Encourage people to read the instructions if they don’t notice them, and let them know they can start whenever they like.
How we’ve used this
We often use this at the start of training courses, or large group meetings, especially if people don’t know each other. It is a great way to get strangers talking at the start of the day.
Who shared this with us
Standing Survey
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|
|
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|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 - 10 | any number | Visualisation | ||
| minutes | people | Movement |
What you can learn
This is a great technique to introduce movement into a session as well as visualising information.
What you need
Decide what questions you will ask, and how you will ask people to arrange themselves in the room.
Having some open space in a room without tables and chairs is useful.
How to do this
Ask people to stand. Explain that you want them to organise themselves in the room according to some criteria (e.g. amount of Scrum experience).
Explain how to organise themselves (e.g. a single line, with no experience near the door, and most experience near the other side of the room).
Allow time for people to move around the room.
Remind people to speak to others to see where they should stand relative to each other.
Ask people to notice where other people are relative to them.
How we’ve used this
Some ideas for criteria to organise by:
- how easy you think something will be to implement (easy: one side of the room, impossible: the other )
- how well you know people in the room (close to those you know, far from those you don’t)
- people’s roles within an organisation (a quadrant with a different role in each corner of the room)
- where people are from (in the centre: close by, edges of the room: far away).
Who shared this with us
Growing Agile Online Courses
We offer several online courses aimed at Scrum Masters, Product Owners and Agile Teams.
If you are ready to get a taste of what our online courses are about sign up for our FREE five week Scrum Master or Product Owner email course.
Our online courses are a little different to regular online video courses. We’ve applied the principles of Training From The Back of The Room to our online materials. That means each course comes with a workbook and exercises for you to do, as well as video’s to watch and techniques that you can use with your teams. Each activity is intended to deepen your knowledge of an area, so we suggest doing the course over a few weeks and taking the time to do all the exercises.
Check out our offerings here http://www.growingagile.co.za/online-courses/.
Growing Agile Books
Growing Agile: A Coach’s Guide to Training Scrum
We have been training teams in Scrum for about three years. During this time we have spent many hours preparing training plans and creating workbooks, flipcharts and slides. This book will help you plan and deliver interactive, fun Scrum training for anything from a short workshop on a particular topic to a full two-day course.
Growing Agile: A Coach’s Guide to Training Scrum is available on Leanpub.
A Coach’s Guide to Agile Requirements
Our requirement workshops are aimed at different stakeholders ranging from business, to Product Owners and teams. This book is a collection of some of those workshop and can be used to help improve the way you think about and communicate agile requirements.
Growing Agile: A Coach’s Guide to Agile Requirements is available on Leanpub.
Growing Agile: A Coach’s Guide to Mastering Backlogs
Often Product Owners can’t see the forest for the trees and there are so many items in their backlog and not enough hours in the day to groom it. We run short workshops where we work with the Product Owner’s actual backlog. The workshop is a working session, and an hour later the Product Owners emerge with an improved backlog.
Growing Agile: A Coach’s Guide to Mastering Backlogs is available on Leanpub.
Growing Agile: A Coach’s Guide to Release Planning
We often hear people say “We’re agile, we don’t need a plan”! or even worse “We can’t plan”. This is just not true. We run Release Planning workshops with many organisations. This book is a collection of our workshops that will help you run similar workshops to create agile release plans. We include teaching points on a range of techniques like Story Mapping and release burnups to help you explain to other’s how to use these methods effectively.
Growing Agile: A Coach’s Guide to Release Planning is available on Leanpub.
A Coach’s Guide to Agile Testing
If a team believes they are agile, but nothing has changed about the way they test, then there is still much to learn. We teach 5 key principles that explain why agile testing is fundamentally different to traditional testing.This books includes a collection of workshops to help teams grasp these principles and adopt an agile testing mindset. It’s not just for testers. A key part of agile testing is that the whole team is involved, so we always run these workshops with everyone in the team.
Growing Agile: A Coach’s Guide to Agile Testing is available on Leanpub.
Growing Agile: A Coach’s Guide to Facilitation
It’s taken us several years to master the skill of facilitation, and it continues to amaze us how few people learn the skill, or even understand what it means. People spend much of their lives in meetings, and yet so many meetings lack facilitation. We hope the collection of tips and techniques in this book will inspire you to grow your own facilitation skills and improve the meetings in your organisation.
Growing Agile: A Coach’s Guide to Facilitation is available on Leanpub.
The Growing Agile Coach’s Guide Series
This series provides a collection of training and workshop plans for a variety of agile topics. The series is aimed at agile coaches, trainers and ScrumMasters who often find themselves needing to help teams understand agile concepts. Each book in the series provides the plans, slides, workbooks and activity instructions to run a number of workshops on each topic. The interactive workshops are all created using techniques from Training from the Back of the Room, to ensure participants are engaged and remember their learnings after the workshop.
The series is available in a bundle on Leanpub, or you can purchase the books individually.
Other books by Growing Agile
Flow
Do you have a never-ending to do list and not enough hours in the day? Imagine getting everything on your to do list done without stress or worrying. Imagine being twice as productive in half the time.
We have over 30 proven tips and techniques to help you achieve a state of flow, where time stands still and productivity soars. With these tips you will deliver value to your customers sooner in practical and simple ways. You will also be happier and less stressed.
Flow is available on Leanpub.
Collaboration Games
Add an element of fun to your meetings or workshops using these 12 short games that teach principles of collaboration.
Collaboration Games is available on Leanpub.
Who is Agile in South Africa
This book is based on the original Who Is Agile book, only this is a regional version for South Africa. It’s a collection of interviews with passionate South African agilists.
Who is Agile in South Africa is available on Leanpub.
About Growing Agile
At Growing Agile we help companies create great teams that build exceptional software. We are agile coaches passionate about helping you get the results you are looking for.
We are based in Cape Town South Africa, but work with clients from all over the world. We provide phone based individual or group coaching sessions, as well as online courses for Scrum Masters, Product Owners and Teams.
Find out more about us at www.growingagile.co.za.
Our personal goal is to help influence a million people on their path to becoming agile coaches. Our books and videos are ways we can spread that influence further than what we can in person.
We are also exploring new ways to do this. One of our latest projects is AgilePath.me. A community resource of links, courses, books, and ideas to help you find your own learning path as an agile coach.
If you’d like to stay in touch and hear about our new ventures, please sign up to our monthly newsletter.