What is a product backlog in Agile development and how is it used

Have you ever wondered, "What is a product backlog in Agile development and how is it used?"

In answering that question, it helps first to understand the core benefit of the process: the Agile method gives you the ability to make fast and powerfully effective course corrections as you construct your product backlog.

Power and agility have always been a winning combination.

Athletes who combine power with light feet and quick correction capability are usually the ones who out run, outmaneuver, and outscore their opponents.

In aviation, the F-22 Raptor fighter jet has "supermaneuverability" -- the ability to turn on a dime, yet maintain incredible power and control, in ways that outperform normal aerodynamic technology.

These analogies illustrate how product backlog works when you're applying the principles of agile development.

It's all about speed, effectiveness, and maneuverability.

The Crucial Role of Product Backlog

Venture Beat makes this important observation about product backlog:

A backlog is where you define and prioritize the functional and non-functional requirements of the app. Each feature within the app must have requirements associated with it. If the development is left open-ended and lacks requirements, then you are more likely to get something you didn’t expect.

In other words, product backlog ensures that every little component knows what it's supposed to do (and not do).

Going back to the sports analogy, it's very similar to crafting a successful play in football: the 11 players on the field know exactly what their job is -- and what their job isn't. (You really wouldn't want a 350-lb lineman trying to run a passing route to catch a pass.)

How the Agile Scrum Revolutionizes the Backlog Process

As you map out all of the requirements for your app's features, the scope of the work can be intimidating.

That's where the "Scrum" team in Agile development comes in.

This method saves you the inflexible, tedious burden of having to document every requirement in your product backlog at the beginning of the process -- a very imposing, slow-going road over the mountain, especially at the start when you haven't built much momentum yet in your project.

How is this accomplished?

The major stages of developing product backlog -- mapping out the requirements for features and bugs, for example -- are no longer kept separate. You don't do each type of work one at a time in a linear path like an assembly line (also called the Waterfall method). Each type of work in a Scrum is combined, developed, and refined all together into "sprints." This allows incredible flexibility, speed, and quick correction capability.

Mike Cohn of Mountain Goat, one of the top trainers in the Scrum method, wrote this about product backlog in Agile development:

"Typically, a Scrum team and its product owner begin by writing down everything they can think of for agile backlog prioritization. This agile product backlog is almost always more than enough for a first sprint. The Scrum product backlog is then allowed to grow and change as more is learned about the product and its customers."

Other crucial stages, like listing all technical work or additional research that is needed, are also combined with the other stages. The team -- as they review their agile list of features, bugs, needed tech work, and research to-dos -- then decide together which items are the highest priority and which of those can be done in a single "sprint."

Greater Transparency and Collaboration

This sprint-by-sprint, all-stages-combined process allows insightful transparency for the customer. In fact, it gives the customer real-time collaborative opportunities throughout every stage of development. They no longer have to walk away and wait for the team to make their way down the assembly line of the Waterfall Method.

It also helps to have a wonderfully talented team of engineers, analysts and designers -- something that we're very proud (and grateful) to have at Contensive. To discover more about agile development, contact us and learn how our talented, hard-working team can help.

The Apple Watch has grabbed the most headlines so far, but the new Apple gadget represents just a small drop in a very large tech tidal wave heading our way. According to IDC.com, global wearable shipments will likely hit 112 million units by 2018.

What this means for mobile app companies can be summarized in one word: revolution.

And, just like it has been doing for everything else in the last 10 years, Apple is leading the way with the Apple Watch.

iGeeksBlog.com thinks the Apple Watch is a great idea because, among other things, it makes Apple's SIRI service immensely better, it's safer to carry (and harder to lose), and it means less time wasted on the phone. And mobile apps that design themselves around the Apple Watch's Star Trek-like SIRI voice interaction could go in some interesting directions.

But, as fantastic as the Apple Watch might be, it is only the beginning. Here are some other fascinating (and jaw-dropping) wearable gadgets that could transform design potential for mobile apps and, ultimately, change our world.

Feels Good to Look Good: Mobile Apps for "Smart" Clothing?

Companies are developing smart clothes. The most obvious application, physical fitness, is already well underway. Companies make smart shirts that measure your heart rate, breathing rate, steps taken, and other physical actions, and the shirt automatically sends it to a physical fitness app on your phone that compiles your fitness data.

MakoInvent observed the next step in smart clothes:

Apart from smartwatches, there are also wearables in the form of fashion...clothes such as Ralph Lauren’s Smart Polo Shirt. These devices are being tested for the possibility to assist field-based or remote working employees, through ‘bring your own wearable’ (BYOW).

Employee uniforms with smart technology embedded could produce a limitless array of possibilities, from on-the-job safety to job training and performance monitoring, for mobile apps -- especially, as MakoInvent noted, for employees who spend most of their time in the field or in remote locations.

Myo Armband (For Everyone Who Has Always Wanted to Be a Jedi)

If you're a Star Wars fan, how many times have you pretended -- either as a joke as an adult or in serious play as a kid -- to use the Force on something? Every person who has seen Star Wars has secretly wished they could move a giant vehicle with their little hand -- Yoda-style.

Thalmic Labs has brought that wish a step closer to fulfillment. Although no one will be moving giant spaceships into the air with a hand gesture -- at least not yet -- their new wearable gadget, the Myo Armband, can move just about everything else that is important in our digital worlds.

How?

They've designed an armband that tracks your muscle movement on your arm, hand, and fingers with incredible precision. The armband then translates your gestures into commands that can operate any Bluetooth-equipped computer or smart device. You can then control any device you already own just like Tony Starks controlled his Jarvis computer interface in the Iron Man movies.

So what's it like to use it?

Mashable.com writer Lance Ulanoff tried the Myo Armband and explained his experience:

In one instance...I controlled a Keynote presentation. I would wake Myo, wave my arm to the right or left to change slides and then, because Myo was set to sleep after two seconds, wake it up again to gesture to the next slide.

The more I did all this, the more adept I became at all kinds of gestures. One of my favorites was the demonstration where I turned on Myo, clenched my fist and then slowly turned my hand one way or the other to control the temperature of an on-screen thermostat.

Just like the arena of smart clothing, creating apps for mobile devices or computers that interact with Myo Armbands creates new frontiers -- and new challenges -- for mobile app companies.

And that's where we come in. Our highly dedicated, talented team of engineers loves challenges. If you have some wild ideas for mobile app creation -- whether or not it involves wearables -- contact us and see how we can help you make those dreams reality.

System failures due to miscommunication between developers is a common problem that can endanger the success of application development projects. To combat this problem, something called Joint Application Development is used. JAD brings developers, users, and managers together in brainstorming sessions with the intention of improving the System Requirement Determination (SRD) phase of the Software Development Life-Cycle (SDLC), and elevating the standard of quality produced by software development projects.

While the introduction of JAD into the SRD process has resulted in substantial improvements in regards to obtaining consistent results compared to previous methods, it still suffers from the inadequacies associated with its freely interactive group structure. Studies have shown that as many as 57% of development projects end in failure because they did not accurately identify the needs of their intended users. The research paper in question proposes that JAD can be improved by introducing elements of Nominal Group Technique (NGT) – which is a series of protocols designed specifically to avoid the sorts of problems that are common to unstructured workshops session such as JAD.

The usage of Joint Application Development was intended to speed up the SRD phase of IT projects. In order to accomplish this, JAD utilizes input from clients in a group setting in an effort to develop solutions by identifying what they believe their businesses’ requirements are. Before the usage of JAD was introduced, the identification of these requirements was achieved using personal interviews with stakeholders. As time passed the inadequacies of this method became apparent, thus leading to the introduction of JAD, which focuses on a team oriented, consensus-based approach to developing IT solutions.

Nominal Group Technique is a method of conducting group meetings - such as JAD workshops - and was designed to allow each member at the meeting to contribute their input by preventing the more assertive group members from overpowering those who are less vocal, resulting in an increase in general group satisfaction in the final results of meeting sessions. NGT has proven to be particularly effective when tough decisions must be made, or controversial topics are tackled using the input from a large group of people. It can also mitigate the effects of some group members attempting to influence others. Meetings involving smaller groups of around 15 or fewer members can be conducted as a whole. Larger groups are more easily managed when organized into subgroups of six to eight people.

In order to demonstrate the potential benefits of marrying NGT techniques to JAD sessions, experiments were conducted in which 24 workshops were held where professionals, managers, and business students were brought together in a laboratory setting. The results of this experiment seem to indicate that introducing NGT elements into the JAD process can yield substantial improvements in the outcome of the software development projects. The results of experiment confirmed all of its creator’s hypotheses in regards to improvements in the recorded performance measurements; and while there were no significant benefits regarding efficiency, unresolved issues, and the number of unique features generated by the projects, there was also no measurable impediment to these attributes.

While the ultimate validity of this experiment in data collection is marred by the limited nature of simulated experiments, the promising nature of its results warrant further investigation into the effectiveness of its premise. If NGT has been proven to aid settings similar to JAD meetings, then there is no reason to doubt that it can improve actual JAD sessions in the real world.

If you'd like to learn more about how the application development techniques can improve the development of the applications you need, then please, feel free to contact us. We're waiting for you.