Book Chapter Summary | Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time (New York, 2014) by Jeff Sutherland - Chapter Eight: Priorities

Chapter Eight: Priorities

80 percent of a product's value is found in 20 percent of its features, so build those features first and deliver them to your customers as fast as possible

Quick Summary
  • You want to start delivering to your customers as soon as you possibly can
  • 80 percent of the value is in 20 percent of the features - the trick is building the 20 percent first
  • To prioritise the backlog, ask yourself which items have the biggest business impact, mean the most to the customer, and are the easiest to complete
Main Points

To get started with Scrum, the first step is putting together a backlog and a team. Initially, just get a week's worth of backlog ready. Gradually build up the backlog until it holds everything that could possibly be included in the product. The trick is deciding what to work on first. 'You want to start delivering value to your customers as soon as you possibly can.' Product development has repeatedly shown that 80 percent of the value is contained in 20 percent of the product.

Chapter Overview

The Product Owner manages the backlog. They need four characteristics: (1) domain knowledge to understand how the list of things to be done can be translated into value to the customer; (2) empowered to make decisions about the product vision and how to achieve it; (3) available to the team to explain what needs to be done and why; and (4) accountable for the value being delivered (e.g. revenue per 'point' of team effort). By delivering something that works every sprint, scrum allows the Product Owner to see how much value it creates and how the customer reacts to it.

Other interesting stuff

Put something that delivers a tiny bit of value into the hands of the customer as fast as possibly. This "Minimum Viable Product" will get you the feedback you need to better prioritise the product backlog. Then, when you come to the official release, you'll have already adjusted based on what people actually value. This allows you to reduce the risk by answering these questions 'Do people want what we’re building? Can we actually build it? Can we really sell what we’ve built?' When you're working with multiple teams, you'll need a Product Owner team so you can create and maintain a backlog big enough to keep the teams busy. 

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