What Is The Product Backlog? User Stories Examples Provided!

Hello and a warm welcome back to my YouTube channel. In today's video, I'm going to be talking about the product backlog, and I will also give you some user story examples. So the product backlog provides you with a shared source of truth as it pertains to the vision of the product. It allows the business stakeholders and the development team to always understand the vision of the product. Inside of the product backlog, you will find 3 different components. You'll find the user stories, and user stories are lightweight requirements that represent the functionality that has to deliver value to the business stakeholders, including the end users. We're going to look at a couple examples in just a moment. The other component of the product backlog are tasks. So tasks represent the items that the development team would like to do. For example, an example of a task could be update developer workstation to the latest version of coding tools. The 3rd component of the product backlog are bugs. So bugs are defects and you don't want it to get into the hands of the customers. So when bugs are detected by QA team, the development team will try to fix it as soon as possible. An example of a bug could be that the search results are incorrect if I enter 2 words separated by space. It is important to note that if you want to create the backlog, the backlog has to contain everything that the team needs to do in order to complete the product in a way that matches the vision of the product owner. The product owner is the person who owns the product backlog. This is a person who is responsible for adding the user stories and the bugs and the tasks into the product backlog. This person is also responsible for grooming the backlog. Grooming the product backlog makes sure that only the user stories that are supposed to be in the backlog are currently in the backlog. Grooming also means that the user stories in the backlog are prioritized. The more important user stories will be at the top, whereas the less important user stories will be towards the bottom. Now let's talk about what is a user story. A user story is a requirement written from the perspective of the user. The format for user story is, as a blank, I want to blank so that I can blank. As an example of a user story, let's suppose that we are creating an e-commerce web application. Some user stories for this application could include, as a shopper, I want to check out so that I can get my products shipped to me. Another example of a user story for our fictitious e-commerce web application could be, as a shopper, I want to review my cart so that I can make adjustments prior to checkout. Let me give you a third example before moving on. A third example of a user story could be, as a shopper, I want to view a list of all of the products that's available in the store So that I can select some to purchase. I hope you get the idea of what is a user story now. Once the Scrum team is up and running, the development team will likely add some tasks. For example, there may be an upgrade to one of the development tools and the developers need to update their workstations. They may ask the product owner to add update developer workstation to the latest version as a task. By managing this type of work on the product backlog, it provides visibility to the product owner and allows him or her to properly prioritize. The product owner is the person who is a liaison between the business stakeholders and the development team. This is the person who will have the perspective of both the business and the ongoing development of the product. The Product Owner is responsible for understanding the business drivers related to the product. Because he or she is the only person that understands both the business as well as the ongoing development of the product, he or she is the only person who is allowed to decide what goes into the Product Backlog and in what priority order. While the team can give their feedback, It is ultimately the product owner that will decide. Sometimes in smaller companies, the CEO will also act as the product owner. This person can overrule all of the other people's decisions. Now, before you start working on the actual user stories, it's important that you discuss the backlog with your team. This has the following benefits. This allows the product owner to explain the vision of each user story to the team. It also gives the team an opportunity to ask clarifying questions, which will increase their understanding of what it is that the product owner is looking for. Okay, just to recap what we have covered so far, we talked about what is a product backlog, and essentially it is the entire list of requirements that you want to have in your end product. It basically encompasses the whole vision of the product. The product backlog includes 3 different components, the user stories, the task, as well as the bugs. We also know that the product backlog is ranked by business value, so the items at the top are more important than the items towards the bottom, and you will do the items in the backlog in the order that it is written in. The Scrum team can give feedback to the product owner as to what's possible. And what they think should be in the product, but it is the product owner who ultimately owns the product backlog. The product owner is the only person who can decide what goes into the backlog and in which order. So thank you so much for joining me for today's video. I hope you now understand what a product backlog is and how to write user stories. 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