Backlog vs. Fatlog

I recently spoke with a CIO whose teams were trying to become more agile, but were having significant problems with the basic question of when they were “done”. There are many reasons that this deceptively simple question still eludes people. John Sonmez recently wrote about one reason – the Fatlog.

Do you use a bulldozer to build your sprint backlog – just scooping up everything in sight and building large piles of work items? Does your sprint have an objective or is it just a heap of stuff? How about doing just a little bit of analysis to make your sprint content cohesive? Or as John suggests, just simply divide up your Fatlog into smaller pieces.

So often the most challenging problems can be resolved with very basic, pragmatic techniques. What do you do to organize your sprint backlogs? Enjoy John’s article.