Does your agile team put requests in your backlog BEFORE there are supporting requirements ?

Randall Hoff

Should stories/tasks be placed in the backlog unless there are at least business requirements?

If business and technical requirements are insufficient to work the issue, should it be there?

If the story suddenly gets priority, I see insufficient time to develop good requirements for the oncoming sprint.    

John Funk

Hi Randall,

The way we operate is that all ideas/requests/stories/tasks, etc. get created and placed in the backlog. That gives us a central location and visibility into all requested/desired work. 

As a part of refining (use whatever term you like) the backlog, all requirements are placed on the issue that was discussed (just the ones that we can work in the next week or so). 

Then we pull the card to our first column on the board which we call Options (the status behind the scenes is really Backlog Pullable). This indicates that the issue has everything it needs for at least the first step to be done (hopefully more!). 

When the card leaves the Options (first) column, we consider that our Commitment point. 

Caveat is that we due Kanban and not Scrum. So we an replenish from the Backlog whenever needed. However, that cadence is usually on a weekly basis for most of our teams. 

Hope that helps!