AGILE-SCRUM BACKLOG CHANGES OPTIMIZATION IN SOFTWARE ENGINEERING ORGANIZATIONS
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Date
2022-03-21
Authors
Ghanem, Azhar
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
An-Najah National University
Abstract
Background: software engineering requirements are translation of the product needs or features requested by customers and stakeholders. Due to the evolution of technologies, these requests are always changing. These requirements should be managed carefully, in order to help the customers and organization achieving their goals. Agile-Scrum has been introduced as project management methodology that focuses on the customers first and team communications rather than requirements documentation.
Objectives: scrum methodology is all about delivering requests (i.e., backlog items) faster to customers and accepting changes to these requests, yet less reliable estimation of resources (e.g., time, money, manpower, etc.) exists. Backlog items depend on a lot of uncertainties inherited in the backlog management process using the scrum. Therefore, a need to reduce the changes in the backlogs is a must, by developing a new prioritization model.
Methodology: unstructured interviews were conducted with five product owners from two local organizations implementing the scrum to identify the factors that affect the process and lead to backlog changes. A prioritization model was developed to help software engineering organizations manage their backlog items effectively, and to minimize the losses due to continuous backlog changes
Results: results showed that the priority changes are the most dominant parameter that affects backlog changes. Unlike previous models in the literature, interdependencies between items, number of action words in the item description, and assigned developer features were found to significantly affect the priority ranking. In effect, the developed model serves as an effective tool to assign priorities during the agile-scrum planning phase for product owners.
Conclusion: we have validated our proposed model by having a case study in one organization that implements scrum and a benchmark project. The results pointed that change in time was reduces because of general prioritization methods used currently in the studied organization. In addition, our proposed model showed good impact on backlog prioritization in agile – scrum environment and help the product owners with their tasks related to backlog management.
Description
Background: software engineering requirements are translation of the product needs or features requested by customers and stakeholders. Due to the evolution of technologies, these requests are always changing. These requirements should be managed carefully, in order to help the customers and organization achieving their goals. Agile-Scrum has been introduced as project management methodology that focuses on the customers first and team communications rather than requirements documentation.
Objectives: scrum methodology is all about delivering requests (i.e., backlog items) faster to customers and accepting changes to these requests, yet less reliable estimation of resources (e.g., time, money, manpower, etc.) exists. Backlog items depend on a lot of uncertainties inherited in the backlog management process using the scrum. Therefore, a need to reduce the changes in the backlogs is a must, by developing a new prioritization model.
Methodology: unstructured interviews were conducted with five product owners from two local organizations implementing the scrum to identify the factors that affect the process and lead to backlog changes. A prioritization model was developed to help software engineering organizations manage their backlog items effectively, and to minimize the losses due to continuous backlog changes
Results: results showed that the priority changes are the most dominant parameter that affects backlog changes. Unlike previous models in the literature, interdependencies between items, number of action words in the item description, and assigned developer features were found to significantly affect the priority ranking. In effect, the developed model serves as an effective tool to assign priorities during the agile-scrum planning phase for product owners.
Conclusion: we have validated our proposed model by having a case study in one organization that implements scrum and a benchmark project. The results pointed that change in time was reduces because of general prioritization methods used currently in the studied organization. In addition, our proposed model showed good impact on backlog prioritization in agile – scrum environment and help the product owners with their tasks related to backlog management.
Keywords
Agile, Scrum, Backlogs, Backlog Changes Management, Prioritization.