Hiding open tickets in the backlog

[Ivana]

Hello, I would like to ask about a practice that one of the Product Owners is doing. Is it common to hide unprepared open tickets from the backlog by labeling them to filter them out? For me as a Scrum Master, it is complicated work because a few times happened that we could not find on the board tickets that Developers started to work on and the PO forgot to remove the label. Is hiding tickets from the backlog a good practice?

[Vishal Biyani · Accepted solution]

@Ivana 

It is possible that Product Owner is talking directly with developers to groom the tickets. Based on the discussions and agreement between PO & Developers, team may be starting work.

if you are aware what labels are being used to hide the tickets from backlog, why don't you create a filter for such issues and have a dashboard for this?

That way you will be aware about the tickets that exist outside of your board.

You can monitor these tickets and if there is any development related activity, then you will be in a better position to take corrective action.

[Ivana]

I am doing this now, but it is imho unnecessary extra work.

[Trudy Claspill · Accepted solution]

Hello @Ivana 

Welcome to the Atlassian community.

What is the definition of "unprepared work"? Does that mean the issue has not been groomed and estimated?

What type of board is being used?

Why are developers starting work on issues that are not visible on the board? How do they get informed that the issue is ready to be worked on if it is hidden from the board?

It sounds to me like there are multiple people in your team not following the established process. You need to address why that is and fix that problem, which may mean changing the process.

In my opinion it is not a good practice to hide issues from the board based on labeling them "unprepared" when those issues might have work started on them without the label being removed.

[Ivana]

Thanks, Trudy! Unprepared work, good question: The PO says it is not groomed, but I see Developers starting on it because the PO asked them to. We are using sprint board across multiple projects for multiple products. I will take it the way you suggest and ask about the process on our retrospective.

[Trudy Claspill]

Are the developers or POs adding those items to the active sprints when the work is started? Or is it being worked on without being added to the sprint?

For teams that have wanted a clear distinction between groomed backlog items and ones not yet groomed, what I have suggested is have a "sprint" named Groomed. As items get groomed, they are moved from the Backlog into the Groomed sprint. That sprint is never started. It is just a bucket for collecting the groomed items.

When sprint planning is in progress you can then clearly see the bucket from which to select groomed items for the sprints.

In the interim while your team talks about your process, I suggest you change the board filters so that they no longer hide the items that have the "unprepared" label.

You could also explore the use of Automation Rules to automatically add an item to the current Active sprint when it is transitioned to "In Progress".

There are, of course, ways that the team members could still hide the work from the board and active sprint. That could be indicative of a larger process or culture issue that may also need to be explored.

[Ivana]

Exactly, we already have one more sprint created and I ask developers to take tickets from the next sprint if they finish or if waiting/blocked. I have recently created two filters:

1. To make the PO happy, I am filtering "unprepared" out on her product filter, other POs are not using it

2. I have a separate filter to see the "unprepared" so we have also control over them when we need them.

 Automation Rules to automatically add an item - wow, will do, thanks!

There is a culture issue and I am having it on my radar. Anyway, thanks for the brilliant answers.

[Mohanraj Thangamuthu]

Hello, Good day. What I understand is that developers started working on a ticket which was hidden from the backlog. This practice will cause issue with tracking the progress, better you could leave all the tickets in backlogs and label the tickets as "unprepared". Thanks

[Ivana]

It is the PO who is doing that, not me. He is very resilient in keeping it hidden and the reason is not very clear to me. That is why I asked.