A Deep Dive into Product Backlog Prioritization Technique in Scrum

In the software industry today, agile software development process has been the primary choice of most of the organizations for two basic reasons- the advantage of early release of partially developed module and capability to adjust late change of software requirements into the ongoing project. The incremental nature of the process gives a lot of focus on the requirement prioritization for each iterative and time-boxed event called sprint. The complete set of software requirements are documented in product backlog. In each sprint, requirements are selected from the product backlog to the current sprint backlog and then the team proceeds for design, development and testing for the same. The current research work analyzes and furnishes various details of the product backlog prioritization process in a step by step method. The research work also proposes a final prioritization formula combining three key aspects- business value prioritization, scrum team prioritization and cost of delay.

I. Introduction

Software Engineering is a process which pertains to designing, developing, testing and sustaining software. It is of utmost importance because software is an ever-changing and complex sector which requires an organized approach to establish a highly reliable and fine quality end product that meets the demands of the users. Furthermore, Software Engineering aids to manage risks, costs and schemes of the software development process in the long run by continuous testing and feedback. In early days of software engineering (late 90’s and early 2000) Waterfall method was used in the industries. In the last decade, time to market and flexibility in accommodating customer requirements became very important aspects in software project delivery [1]. Agile methodology has capability to deliver incremental product as desired by the user, meets the timeline requirement and also can accommodate the late change requirements in its framework itself. With these advantages, agile method gained its popularity among all software organizations. The agile program has 4 principles [1]: •

More focus on manpower and interactions than tools.

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Customer collaboration holds a higher value than negotiation.

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Working software is more vital than extensive documentation.

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The procedure should be open to change unlike blindly following a plan of action.