How Do You Prioritize User Stories?

The Contract Between Stakeholders & Scrum Teams

Built into Agile and Scrum, in particular, is a contract. There’s a contract between the business and the development team, and each has its own responsibilities. The business says, “This is what we’re gonna work on, and this is the priority,” via the product owner, which is embedded right into the Scrum team. The development team decides exactly how to get it built, and this contract is really important.

It avoids the development team saying, “Well, you know, this is a really neat or cool feature, what I call four-letter word features, and they don’t deliver any value to the business. The business decides what’s important and tells the development team how to do it. What we also avoid is the business trying to tell the development team exactly how all the nuts and bolts should work because they’re the only ones who know all the ins and outs of how the software is coming together.

So, by having this contract, by having these two roles and responsibilities, it allows us to make sure the business is in charge, and the development team is always delivering the highest value. And how we do that is prioritization. We always work on the most important things first, and the next most important things, and the next most important things, etc. And, again, the development team is free to figure out the fastest and best way to produce that value.

So, it’s all about priorities. That’s what drives the engine, that’s your business, and that’s what lets the Scrum development team deliver the value that you need. If you want help with your prioritization, if you want to look at your product backlog together, we’d be more than happy to help. Please contact us for a free consultation.