Agile planning with Scrum

By Mascha Kurpicz, student in computer science, University of Bern

Project duration: Sept. 2010 – Feb. 2011

Scrum and other agile methodologies are now widely accepted in practice. In Scrum, the work is organized in user stories and the customer is responsible for their organization in a product backlog. At the end of each iteration, the progress is reviewed and priorities are re-evaluated. During the iteration, daily meetings take place to set direction and focus. The overall emphasis is on the incremental delivery of working functionality and the reduction of work-in-progress.

Despite a rich literature on the subject, more evidence-based research is needed. In this project, we would like to get better understanding of the dynamics of agile planning by mining existing product backlogs and their history.

It would be especially interesting to study how re-prioritization happens in practice. Are significant adjustments of the initial priorities frequent? Can overall patterns be detected? Other aspects could be analyzed as well. How is the focus set and maintained on a daily basis? How does the team velocity vary over time?

To conduct this research, we need access to existing product backlog to be analyzed. This research will lead to a better understanding of Scrum in general, but could also reveal valuable information specific to your company and its development practices.