MT247 Unit 4 Backlog Ordering Exercise Example

Seventh by the Formula, First by the Calendar: A Unit 4 Backlog Ordering Exercise for a Resident App

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

MT247: Agile and Scrum Methodologies

Unit 4 Backlog Ordering Exercise

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Larkspur Residential, its app backlog, scores and contract dates are composite and illustrative; the sources cited are real.

Method

The Product Owner scored twelve Product Backlog items on three parts of cost of delay, each from zero to ten relative to the other items: resident value, time criticality and risk reduction. Their sum is the item's cost of delay. The Developers gave each item a rough size in points. Dividing cost of delay by size gives a ratio that favors items delivering the most value per unit of effort, a method Leffingwell (2011) calls weighted shortest job first, built on the economics of product development flow set out by Reinertsen (2009). The ratio is a starting point; the Product Owner, who is accountable for ordering the backlog, sets the final order (Schwaber & Sutherland, 2020).

The Scored Backlog

Each item shows value, time criticality and risk reduction, then cost of delay, size and ratio.

Permission-to-enter windows: 7, 5, 4; 16; size 3; 5.33

Status notifications to residents: 8, 3, 3; 14; size 3; 4.67

Resident cancels an open request: 5, 2, 2; 9; size 2; 4.50

Photo fix for older phones (defect): 4, 2, 2; 8; size 2; 4.00

Technician request closing from the phone: 6, 3, 6; 15; size 5; 3.00

Rent receipt download: 6, 2, 1; 9; size 3; 3.00

After-hours emergency routing: 9, 6, 5; 20; size 8; 2.50

Photo attachments on new requests: 7, 2, 2; 11; size 5; 2.20

Package locker alerts: 5, 2, 1; 8; size 5; 1.60

Spanish-language screens: 7, 2, 3; 12; size 8; 1.50

Amenity booking: 6, 1, 1; 8; size 8; 1.00

Dark mode: 3, 1, 1; 5; size 5; 1.00

The Final Order

The final order departs from the ratio in two places.

1. After-hours emergency routing

2. Permission-to-enter windows

3. Technician request closing from the phone

4. Status notifications to residents

5. Resident cancels an open request

6. Photo fix for older phones

7. Rent receipt download

8. Photo attachments on new requests

9. Package locker alerts

10. Spanish-language screens

11. Amenity booking

12. Dark mode

First Departure: Emergency Routing

Emergency routing sends a resident's after-hours leak report straight to the on-call technician through the app, instead of through the answering service the company now pays. The answering service has given notice that its contract ends on June 30. After that date, residents reporting a leak at night would reach a voicemail. The item's time criticality score of 6 reflects some urgency, but a score cannot express a cliff: before June 30 the cost of delay is moderate, and after it the cost is water damage in occupied apartments and a safety failure.

Raising the score to 10, or to 20, to push the item to the top would hide the reason. Anyone reading the table later would see an inflated number and no deadline. Placing the item first with a written reason keeps the formula honest and the decision visible. Reinertsen (2009) notes that fixed-date items have a cost of delay shaped like a step rather than a slope, which additive scores handle poorly.

The formula measures how much waiting costs; it cannot see the day waiting becomes a flood.

Second Departure: Technician Request Closing

Technician request closing, letting a technician mark a repair complete on the phone, ranks fifth by ratio, below status notifications. It moves above them because notifications depend on it. Today, technicians write completions on paper and the office enters them a day or two later, so request statuses are often stale. Sending residents automatic notifications from stale statuses would tell them a finished repair is still open, or an open one is done. Delivering closing first makes notifications accurate when they arrive.

What the Scores Rest On

The scores are relative judgments, not measurements. Resident value draws on the last six months of resident complaints and survey comments, in which repair status was the most common topic. Time criticality reflects deadlines and seasonal patterns, such as the summer rise in leak reports. Risk reduction reflects how much each item lowers operational or legal risk, such as stale request statuses or entering an apartment without notice. The Product Owner rescored the table with two Developers present so that each number has at least one challenge behind it.

Ties

Two pairs tie on the ratio. Technician request closing and rent receipt download both score 3.00; closing ranks higher because its risk reduction score, 6 against 1, reflects the stale-status problem. Amenity booking and dark mode both score 1.00; amenity booking ranks higher because its resident value is twice that of dark mode.

The Vice President's Requests

Two items came from the vice president of operations: amenity booking and package locker alerts. They land ninth and eleventh. At the Sprint Review, the Product Owner will show the scored table, explain that both items rank low because their value to residents is modest relative to their size, and invite the vice president to argue for a higher score on any part with evidence, such as complaint counts. That keeps his requests in the same process as everyone else's instead of bypassing it.

References

Leffingwell, D. (2011). Agile software requirements: Lean requirements practices for teams, programs, and the enterprise. Addison-Wesley.

Reinertsen, D. G. (2009). The principles of product development flow: Second generation lean product development. Celeritas Publishing.

Schwaber, K., & Sutherland, J. (2020). The Scrum guide. https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html