Anatomy of a Sprint Backlog

January 27, 2012

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At our Certified Scrum Master training classes, Platinum Edge gets a lot of requests

from students for an electronic copy of our sprint backlog template. Here is an Excel

version of the template, along with a quick breakdown of each part.

If you are not familiar with the sprint backlog, the sprint backlog is a list of the tasks

associated with the current sprint. The sprint backlog is one of the three scrum

artifacts. At the minimum, a sprint backlog should include:

The sprint goal.

The user stories within a sprint, in order of priority.

A burndown chart, which shows the status of the work the development team has

completed.

The tasks necessary to complete each user story.

The effort, in hours, to complete each task.

We like to use the following template:

 

Platinum Edge's sprint backlog template, which can also be found HERE, includes

the following parts:

A. The sprint title & dates

 

B. The sprint goal

The sprint goal is an overall description of the goal for the sprint, and it should

encompass the highest priority user stories in the product backlog.

 

C. The burndown hours, based on the remaining estimated hours

This section includes:

The total number of working days in the sprint.

The name of each team member and the number of available working hours that

person has in a week.

The total number of hours that person has available.

     o   The formula in these cells multiplies the number of days in the sprint by the

number of available hours per day each person has.

     o   For example, Person A can work 35 hours a week, or 7 hours a day. Since

there are 9 days in the sprint, she has 63 available hours (9 x 7 = 63).

 

D. The burndown chart

The burndown chart graphically shows the development team's progress.

The outstanding work (or backlog) is on the first vertical axis.

Time is along the first (blue) horizontal axis.

The outstanding story points are on the second (green) horizontal axis.

E. The list of user stories and tasks

Here, we have each user story title with its corresponding tasks under each user

story.

 

F. The number of user story points, task status and team member

responsible for each task

 

G. Whether the product owner has approved the completed user story

 

H. The days of the week and hours remaining for tasks

At the end of each day, development team members will enter the remaining hours

for the tasks they are working on, until the task's remaining hours are zero.

 

I. Remaining hours & story points

Actual hours remaining is the total number of hours for each day.

Schedule hours remaining is the total number of work hours from the previous

day, minus the total working hours available per day

Story points remaining is the number of story points left in the sprint. As you

complete each user story, update the remaining hours. For example, if on Day 4 of

the sprint, User Story #11 was approved by the Product Owner and complete, you

would subtract 8 from 25 and enter 17 story points for Day 4. You could also

update the Story Points column for that user story to 0.

 

J. A space to list any issues or roadblocks