Posted on 20, Dec 2010
Agile coaches teach teams to develop a business value that is delivered at the end of the sprint.
But should be a value an indicator of the priority? Yes, but not the only one. There are many other attributes we often forget to consider.
We suggest to apply different approach. We would like to have a possibility to calculate priority according business value but considering risk and effort as well. This way we can have the priority more precise, not just guess.
Product owners often see only positive business value. It is a value a company will gain if story is delivered. But there is negative value that drags your revenue down. Example of such negative value is non logical login during pages transitions.
Risk should be not forgotten. You can see risk management done in different ways. From High->Low or as numbered risk level. The more risky story, the higher priority.
Dependencies is number of relationships to other stories. The more dependencies the higher priority as problem seems to be more complex.
Effort makes priority non-linear. What is smaller it can be done sooner as it is much more precisely estimable. Big stories are typically epics that must be detailed hence they are not good for the implementation.
ScrumDesk uses this approach after consultations with our top customers. We learnt to apply this way in our backlog. It provides us validation of our priority feeling comparing to calculation.
It is very easy to accept proposed priority by clicking Set to importance.