#29 – Prioritization

Authors comment:

The Scrum Guide says “The Product Backlog is an ordered list of everything that is known to be needed in the product”. Therefore, ideally, The Product Owner is empowered enough to decide how to order the PBIs. If this is not the case, the PO should involve his/her stakeholders and make transparent to them, and the development team, how the ordering is made, and which prioritization mechanism might be needed to create an appropriate ordering, such as CoD, WSJF, Kanu, MoSCoW, etc.

What is rarely the most optimal way of ordering the backlog is by using the approach of, e.g., the HiPPO (HIghest-Paid Person’s Opinion) or Squeaky Wheels (the opinion of the one who shouts the loudest or makes the biggest promises). If this is your reality, and you think it’s not really optimal for the product, customers, organization or team, have a talk to the PO and stakeholders, organize a workshop to try out a more value-based prioritization technique and let them see for themselves whether the new order of the Product Backlog is more better than with the previous way of ordering. It probably is.