Product Backlog Management:

Tips to manage and reduce unfinished sprint backlog items:

• At the end of the sprint:

  • The unfinished work returns to the Product Backlog.  It doesn't have to go back to the top priority.  Whether you reestimate it, is a topic of debate.

  • Try to adjust and adapt during the sprint to maximise value by ensuring that every Sprint produces a software release candidate, a "potentially shippable" product increment.  This may mean reducing the scope of some user stories with the agreement of product management.

  • Aim to create options for the business to choose from.   For example, "we have a release that contains X backlog items and it costs us Y hours of effort to release to production.  Would you like us to release it?"  It's important to create a choice and not simply be in a position where there is no option to release.

• During Sprint Planning:

  • Ideally the relative (story point) estimations done before sprint planning provide enough of an early warning that something is too large to be done in one sprint.  As such, discussions can be had ahead of time to workout what scope might be feasible in a sprint.  But of course, Sprint Planning is the time to dive into the details and as such you'll have more understanding of what can be achieved in the sprint.
    
    Scrum is a "Pull" system.  That is, the team pull from the top of the product backlog what think they can accomplish.  It's not pushed into the sprint.  As such, the onus is on Product Management to ensure that the backlog is sufficiently granular such that the team and Product Manager can trade out larger backlog items that don't fit, for ones that do.  If the backlog isn't managed to this level of detail (see DEEP and INVEST below) the trade-off is less accurate estimates and thus poorer delivery predictability, and this needs to be understood.

• Estimating:

  • There are numerous techniques and practices to improve estimates.  These include well-facilitated planning poker sessions, an agreed Definition of Done (to help everyone have a common understanding of expectations and to consider everything required for the item to be deemed done), the right forums and discussions to drive out uncertainties and ambiguities and to reduce complexity by breaking down the problem into more manageable chunks.