Although often relegated, one of the biggest challenges in the design of new products is managing the product backlog in order to align the strategic objectives of the business and user needs. Here is presented a model that unifies user studies and backlog management in order to improve the return on investment (ROI) in agile projects.

1. Getting (the right) Things Done
Uniting User needs and business objectives in agile projects
Carlos Rosemberg
Instituto Atlântico
ISA 2013

2. Nice to meet you.
Carlos Rosemberg
Business Analyst and UX Strategist at Instituto Atlântico
HCI Researcher (collaborator) at LUQS/Unifor

3. In honor to…
Product managers / owners
UX strategists
Project managers
Anyone else who also thinks that defining
what to deliver is a hard work.

4. Agile/Lean scenario
Early deliveries
Small increments
Continuous feedback
Flexible fine-grained product scope

5. https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrum

6. Questions
What to deliver?
What to deliver first?
What to deliver first and for whom?

7. Product Backlog
An ordered list of everything that might
be needed in the product and is the
single source of requirements for any
changes to be made to the product.
Scwaber and Sutherland

8. Prioritizating the
caos

9. By…
Perceived importance
Perceived complexity
Deadline
Feature grouping (module, workflow, etc.)
Return Of Investment (ROI)
… and many other factors

10. ROI
A measure for the efficiency of the
investment.
ROI =
Gains from investment
Cost of investment

11. ROI
In other words…
ROI =
Benefit of the feature
Cost of implementation

12. Leveraging user needs
in product backlog
prioritization

13. Supposing we have…
User profiles or personas defined
A list of features
Effort estimates

14. 1
2
3
4
Define a ‘ User
Value’ (UV) for
each user profile
Define a Business
Value (BV) for each
feature
Assign the feature
to an user and find
the final feature
value (FV)
Calculate the ROI
using FV and the
effort defined by
the development
team
25%
35%
FV = 24,5%
35%
Feature effort = 13
70%
30%
45%
70%
FV = 24,5%
Personas!
You can use
percentages (relative)
or scores (absolute)
Feature Value is a
weighted average
ROI = 1,88
Feature effort can be
story points, scores,
hours, etc

15. FV
How relevant is the
feature for achieving
a business goal?
Business
Value (BV)
How relevant is a
given user type
and its needs?
+
User Value
(UV)
Feature
ROI
The higher the
ROI, the greater
the value of the
feature for the
product
ROI = FV / C
Feature
Complexity
(C)
What is the effort in
order to get the feature
done?

16. Findings from 2 years
20% to 30% more value delivered
(compared to simple ranking)
Most useful in the beginning of the project
Better if used along with other backlog
prioritization methods
Needs a product owner to maintain it
The tool used makes the difference

17. Conclusions
Allows real efficiency and quality gains
Connects user research with agile backlog
management.
Decentralizes the feature prioritization
process

18. Carlos Rosemberg
rosemberg@atlantico.com.br