AGILE IN ACTION

Backlog out. Mind-map in showing user activities and high-level tasks

At Agile 2008, Luke Hohmann from Enthiosys talked about converting business value into actual money. Luke said prioritizing the backlog by ROI doesn't work and suggested developing attributes for backlog prioritization that drive profitable growth. In terms of what we've been doing at one of our clients using throughput accounting this means increasing revenue without significantly increasing investment and decreasing costs without impacting throughput (or the capacity to deliver).

It can be hard to look ahead at what's coming in the next iteration when you're so busy in the current iteration. It sounds easy, just go look at the story cards at the top of the product backlog and have a conversation about them with the product owner. But it isn't easy. You might grab a peek every now and again when you come up for air, but you might not get the time to follow-up with the product owner.

A few people I've spoken with recently said that agile planning tools do not really fit into an informative workspace because the information they contain is not directly visible to passers-by. They have a point.