Fixing Your Scrum

Coach’s Corner

Sprints are about creating useful increments, not about gathering requirements. Scrum teams should start building the product as soon as possible, not spend their time building their product backlog. But what should they build first? Ordering, as we discussed in the previous section, helps the development team and stakeholders understand which tasks will be performed in what order.

More specifically, the product owner orders the product backlog in a way that maximizes the value of the work that the development team does during the sprint. As a Scrum master, you need to help facilitate this value-centered ordering, especially if your product owner is currently using a priority scheme to sort the product backlog. Here’s a liberating ...