Start The Year With a Clean Backlog - Mike Cohn

Think outside the box.
Do you hate that phrase as much as I do?
It’s become another overused business cliché, and it bothers me for another reason: Creativity often comes from thinking inside the box.
This is especially true in agile story-writing workshops.
 

The difference between a successful story-writing workshop and one that fails to deliver often comes down to a single factor:
Whether or not the product owner defines a clear, significant objective: a “box” within which the team can think.
Workshops without boundaries often roam across the entire product. Teams may generate a long list of user stories but those stories lack cohesion or purpose. They’re hard to prioritize, and even harder to act on.
 

The most productive workshops start with a simple framing statement from the product owner, like:
 
“We’re here to think about this specific subset of the product.”
That’s it. One well-chosen boundary and suddenly the team is aligned, focused, and generating better, more valuable ideas.
Early in the product’s life, that boundary might be about identifying what’s needed to deliver an MVP.
Later on, it might center around a Minimum Marketable Feature (MMF), something small enough to ship but valuable enough to matter.
 

When workshops are focused around a meaningful objective, you don’t need to hold them every sprint. I typically run them about once a quarter because one well-run session generates a steady flow of high-value stories.
As this year closes and a new one begins, it’s a great time to schedule a story-writing session. You might even want to bring our trainers in for a Story-Writing Workshop, where we’ll work with you to:
 

• Set powerful, objective-based boundaries
• Write stories that are right-sized and ready to build
• Build a focused backlog that everyone can align around

 Discover how to kick off the new year with a backlog that’s ready to go.
Whether you hold your own story-writing workshop or bring us in to help, remember that thinking inside the box is a powerful way to take teams from good to great,

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