Whats is the better approach working with several teams on a single backlog? (Boards or Sprints)

[David Villacampa]

Suppose the following scenario:
1) Three multifunctionals teams
2) Single backlog for the three teams

What does Jira recommend, having either three boards or activating three Sprints at once?
Please, take into account metrics, for example burndown charts, cumulative flow, velocity, bugs, lead time, and so on

Thanks!

David

[Emre Toptancı _OBSS_ · Accepted solution]

Hello @David Villacampa ,

This feels like a conflicting definition. Can you give more details?

Does a single backlog mean that every item in the backlog can go to someone in any of the teams? Or do teams work with specified subsets of the backlog?

[David Villacampa]

Hello,

I mean each item in the backlog can go to any team. It will be decided either in the Sprint Planning Meeting or in the Refinement meeting (LeSS framework)

Thanks and regards,

David

[Emre Toptancı _OBSS_]

You see, this is more of a process question than a Jira one. Whichever path you take, Jira probably can provide a way to manage it.

If any Backlog Item can go to any of the teams, then I would say you it sounds more like a single team (with subgroups) than 3 separate teams. In that case, 1 board, 1 sprint, and 1 burndown should be used.

Think of it this way, each sprint is a chunk of the backlog that you want to get done. The burndown chart shows the overall progress within that sprint so you can see how close you are to getting that chunk done. Based on my limited knowledge of your use case, a single board and single sprint would be my first choice.

Having said that, please also note that Jira Cloud has a feature flag somewhere in the admin pages that allows you to enable "Parallel Sprints". As the name suggests, this feature allows you to create and start multiple sprints in parallel based on the same backlog. According to your process specifics, this might also help.

[David Villacampa]

Thanks for your answer, we are going to activate parallel sprints!

Regards,

David

[Laura Holton _ACE Rotterdam_]

Hi @David Villacampa 👋

I feel if you are looking to work on one single backlog then working in Sprints over Boards would be more beneficial for all the metrics you mentioned.

All the best,

Laura