How to Integrate Bug Fixes into Your Backlog?
Teams using Scrum have to deal
with the sheer complexity of projects by prioritizing, evaluating, and
translating product backlogs into enhancements to potentially useful features and
often also need to maintain a production system or eliminate errors that they
encounter again during development. What do we need to monitor and prioritize? How do we address the disaster? Who will
provide production support?
Bug Of The Day
The support for production can be
viewed as disrupting teams that simply want to continue but is often at the system
users’ heart, and therefore one of the scrum roles, product owner. This
problem can be difficult to solve as it further complicates the discussion on
prioritization. Production support is critical, so don't dilly-dally about
adding new features. When the system goes down, adding new features does more
harm than good. To get your new code working with the existing architecture,
you should focus on that first.
However, such an approach to
production support cannot be planned - just taking care of it when it occurs
can distract us from the most appropriate solutions in the face of the "bug
of the day" scenario. It's easy to forget our strategic plan and vision as
soon as we address the recent problem of the system.
The Product
Owner Certification gives you the credibility and recognition that you need
in order to be successful in your career as a Certified Scrum Product Owner.
First Step
In most cases, solution teams
that are initially deployed must effectively have two backlogs: for development
features and for production support problems. During planning, the product
owner sets a target metric for the team to assume, such as 70% development
and 30% backlog support. This is probably not too different from the fact that
the team simply reduces its ability to perform support tasks and successfully
hides the problem, avoids talking about priorities, and increases the stress of
suboptimal work.
Because support for the production
in this scenario is usually not readily predictable in the user stories form and
often occurs during sprints, teams experience development stories and burn
production support. The team can review the relationship between its features
and bugs daily, so it can report problems and improvements to the product
owner. There is a risk that all production support will collapse before the
end of the sprint, when the sprint is smaller, the potential impact of this
situation is also shorter.
Product
Owner Certification
gives you skills and tools for becoming a Certified Scrum Product Owner,
it helps with networking opportunities with other professionals, and it is an
excellent stepping stone for advancing your career.
Bug As Feature Request
For many projects, production
teams divide the backlog into two separate lists: resources required to deliver
a product and its business value. This division presents a problem. By
combining these two lists, we can clearly question whether or not we are making
“right” things—i.e., “things that matter.” While this adds complexity to the product
owner, it permits the scrum team to focus on what's essential. The team
still has the option to select synergies to increase overall value, leading to
another exciting way to solve manufacturing problems.
Emergencies
If the problem is really urgent,
the product owner should be allowed to play the "emergency
card" if he/she knows the cost - if he/she fails to complete the work we
have planned, and this could jeopardize the sprint objective. If this arises often,
consider a maintenance sprint to eliminate some of the technical debts that can
cause many of these issues. Another option is to reduce the sprints, the
periods of time during which you plan to develop the system.
There are several options for
teams to solve the production support problem, and while there is no
"right way," we saw the greatest benefit when teams treat production
support and feature requests equally. When a team is willing to take on the challenge
of solving prioritization problems by reconciling support problems with backlog
development and thus maintaining the product backlog. These teams focus on
improving their process while using the product and use the acceptance tests
for support purposes. This approach not only gives us more opportunities to do
the 'right' things, but it also shows that the team is ready to make
potentially difficult decisions on the way to a more agile working way.
Know
more about Scrum certification and training that helps you to understand
the basics of scrum and how to implement it in your organization.
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