Scrum For Dummies

Chapter 3

Planning Your Project

In This Chapter

Creating your actionable product roadmap

Turning your project into actionable-size chunks

Managing your master to-do list

Following common practices to expand the backlog

William of Ockham, a 14th century logician and Franciscan friar, was quoted as saying, “Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.” In simpler, modern-day terms, this is now known as Occam’s Razor: “When you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better."

In other words, Keep It Simple Smarty. This mantra can be applied again and again when managing your project with scrum. It’s all about common sense. If it doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t. In this chapter, you’ll see that this applies to a technique that I use to enhance scrum projects — called the product roadmap — as well as to decompose your product’s features into the smallest requirements possible.

Keep. It. Simple.

The Product Roadmap — A Common Practice, Stage 2

In the seven roadmap to value stages I outline in Chapter 1, you begin with the end ...