Prioritising In line with Customer Need
When thinking about prioritising our efforts in line with customer needs we need to ask ourselves three questions: Are we solving their most important need? Is each release or cycle of time (sprint, month, quarter) leading towards a better quality product or service? Are we investing our time and skills on activities we stand the best chance of delivering?
In a Nutshell
RICE is an acronym that sums up what we should be thinking about when it comes to prioritising our efforts in line with customer needs. It stands for ‘Reach, Impact, Confidence and Effort’. If we are prioritising activities that create a positive experience for a large population of users, we are likely to be delivering high value results. If we are prioritising actions that are low effort and we are confident of achieving, we are likely to be able get fast results. If we are able to do both, we stand the best chance of achieving fast, high value results.
Firstly, are we focussing our attention on those things which will have the greatest ‘reach’ and ‘impact’? In other words, does this issue (feature, user story, bug fix) positively impact a wide population of users, or are our efforts best placed elsewhere?
Of those far reaching, high impact issues, which ones are we most confident in delivering? In other words, are we ready to deliver this – have we investigated it, do we know what’s involved and do we have the skills to do this? If the answer is ‘no’ to any of these, is it worth prioritising the delivery of other activities first whilst we spend time increasing our confidence in achieving this feature to a high standard?
Lastly, which of the far-reaching, high impact issues will require most effort? For example, is it complex and multifaceted? Are there interdependencies that are hard to separate and/or multiple stakeholders involved? If yes, is it better to prioritise other things first whilst working through some of these complications?
Practices
Product Backlog Refinement is a Scrum activity that is performed on the Product Backlog. The scrum guide defines Product Backlog Refinement as the act of breaking down and further defining Product Backlog items into smaller more precise items. This is an ongoing activity to add details, such as a description, order, and size. Attributes often vary with the domain of work.
Sprint Planning is a Scrum event that is held before the start of the sprint to establish the scope and priorities of the coming sprint. Its purpose is for the whole team to establish an agreed sprint goal based on the Product Owner’s view of the value that can be created for the customer. To establish a scope of backlog items that can be got to done. For each backlog item the team decides how done will be achieved.
The Product Backlog is the vehicle by which needs are turned into requirements and requirements are turned into operational features in our product. It is a prioritised list of the work that the team currently intends to deliver in the next period of time. The less imminent a feature is, the less well it will be defined.