Different patterns for Backlog Items

If you've followed through the series of articles on Scrum (see Using the pre-defined Scrum Process) you'll know they've covered making a Scrum project in xProcess and setting up a backlog of tasks that you can prioritise, forecast and display in Burndown or other charts. Participants on the project can access their tasks in the plan and update progress or modify estimates to complete them. But the pre-defined "Basic Scrum" process is just that - basic. It doesn't take into account the type of project you are doing with Scrum (it may not even be a software development project), nor the specifics of your company's or your team's process. With a little process engineering we can make things much more specific, and sometimes that's very useful.

The types of things you might want to consider once you're up and running with the basic process include:

• Adding different role types if there are areas of specialisation within the team
  
• Adding artifact templates for essential documents
• Adding gateways to tasks (quality checklists)
• Adding structure to the "Backlog Item" pattern, for example subtasks of a standard form
• Adding different types of Backlog Item with different roles, estimates, gateways, structure and so on.

For example you might want to distinguish between a defect and an enhancement and use a slightly different structure of subtasks and roles for each. If you want both patterns to be used as backlog items you need to modify the Scrum Project pattern so that they can be added by Project Managers / Scrum Masters to Sprints and the Unscheduled Backlog.

This diagram shows the hierarchy in the Scrum Project pattern. It consists of a project, named in the pattern as "$Name$" (this string will be substituted with the name the user supplies for the project). It has a General Overheads... task and a Scrum administration... task, both of which cover background work not related to backlog items. The Backlog Item pattern appears 3 times within the project pattern: in the first sprint, Sprint 01; within the Sprint pattern (which can be instantiated within the Sprints parent task as many times as required for Sprint 02, Sprint 03, etc.); and within the Unscheduled Backlog task. In order to add additional or alternative patterns, all 3 of these locations will need to be modified slightly so that the new patterns appear in place of, or additional to, the Backlog Item pattern.

Here's the situation after adding 2 new patterns for Defect and Enhancement as alternatives to the general Backlog Item. This will give the Project Manager a choice of the types of backlog item she wants to make in each case.

One word of confession here: to add extra pattern shortcuts like this means that the composite task that contains them (Sprint 01 for example) must be a selection composite rather than a collection composite. In version Basic Scrum 2.9.0 they are collections so you either need to change this or, to save hassle, use version 2.9.0a or later of the process (if this is not yet available for download, email support@xprocess.eu.com to get it.)

Next we'll look at adding structure, artifacts and gateways to our new patterns. Or check out the next article in the Using Scrum series: Participating in the Project.