Sprint backlog is a Scrum Artifact that many Agile teams find useful. A sprint backlog [as mentioned in Ken Schwabers Book] helps the team in following ways:

• It allows them to see where they are and how much work is pending in a sprint
• Provides them focus for working during any given day
• Helps the team self organize by making them coordinate activities daily
  • In short, sprint backlog should help in implementation of Agile methods.

It is important to note why certain practices regarding “updating a sprint backlog” are designed the way are. In this post, we review the “why” of sprint backlog and practices regarding updating the sprint backlog:

• Sprint backlog is incremental and iterative. The team tries and divides as many requirements as they can into tasks. However, even the most experienced teams would discover tasks/ dependencies on system [arrange installation of particular IDE for instance] during the sprint. The difference between effort required to divide the entire project backlog into a sprint backlog that is “100% complete” and “reasonably complete” during a sprint planning meeting is immense. Hence, the teams could decide [especially for sprints longer than 2 weeks] to just break part of project backlog into tasks and start the sprint. They can add the tasks as they discover them. It is important to note here that teams committ to the requirements from a project backlog [estimated using relative estimation techniques] and hence, sprint backlog tracking is not “directly related” to how many requirements they can complete in a given sprint.
• A sprint backlog is a “team artifact” and they are not obliged to share it with anyone else. This is primarily because a sprint backlog is generally work in progress and can give only context based visibility. If the management or customers so desire, the team can keep a sprint wise project backlog of requirements and update the same when a requirement is completed. This is also important because Agile teams engage customers and management from requirements and features perspective. They would provide visibility from “this feature is done” perspective and not “this task in this feature is done, while feature is still work in progress”. The latter is not meaningful information as either the requirement is completed or not. In case management or customers wish to know how long it is to complete a requirement, they can ask the question during the sprint review meeting. The teams can decide to share the sprint backlog with the management or customers, probably after explaining how it works.
• Sprint backlog promotes teams “self organization”. One of the main rules of doing work is to plan effectively, revisit/ revise the plans and make effective decisions. Discussion of who would take what task and self volunteering for the same help the team collaborate and engage each other. This promotes self organization, as does the ability to take on tasks being done by someone else [if your task is completed or you find an important task is lagging behind]. In addition, every single team member updates the sprint backlog and its not a responsibility of one member alone. All the above are designed to have members talk to each other regularly, depend on each other and be one unit.
• Sprint backlog is “collective”. There is no such thing as “all tasks of A are done” and “two tasks of B are not done”. The team fails or succeeds as a team and not as an individual. Hence, the incentives are to be a team rather than lone rangers. This is again in keeping with the central Agile philosophy.
• Sprint backlog is “look ahead” at “work remaining” artifact. The team always focuses on “work remaining” as that is the thing they need to plan, organize and manage. Its no good knowing we have done “all this” till we know “this is what we still need to do”, as completing that would get the team to “done”.

As long as the teams maintain the spirit of sprint backlog as highlighted above, it would provide them a powerful tool [along with some others] to self organize, inspect and adapt during a sprint.

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