Press Release

Workshop on Estimation and Prioritizing of Backlog Items.

Workshop Organized by Pakistan Agile Development Society

March 26, 2016

By
Najam Farooq Alvi
(Founding Member: Pakistan Agile Development Society)

A workshop was organized by Pakistan Agile Development Society on Estimating & Prioritizing
Backlog Items at We Create Center F-11 Markaz Islamabad. The event was sponsored by Elixir
Technologies and Micro Finance Systems Pvt. Ltd.
Mr Chaudhry Shahid Iqbal (CSM), CEO Sparkle Genius USA was the presenter. The workshop was
attended by the professionals from the software industry.
Mr Shahid who had a vast experience in handling teams and successfully delivered projects using
SCRUM explained the core concepts of Agile and demonstrated how to over come the challenges
and hurdles while handling project within teams using SCRUM.
Before moving to workshop he explained different roles in Agile which were required within a team
to manage a project successfully. Scrum Master, Product owner, Developer and Testers should be
well aware of the roles and responsibilities they own while working together as an Agile team.
While diving deep into more details he explained that scrum master should act like servant leader.
He should act like a catalyst by facilitating and keeping focus of whole team on getting to done.
Keeping the process on track, team coaching and introducing new ideas are core responsibilities of
scrum master.
As contrary to scrum maser, product owner is a same individual throughout the active project. This
role demands excellent rapport with product management, attends all iteration planning meetings,
kept the stories ready for at least 2 iterations, involved in iterations reviews and responsible for
answering all the questions related to iteration backlog. Product owner is the one who closely
collaborate with customer and understands business needs very well. All requirements goes through
the product owner and prioritized in a single iteration.
After explaining the roles and responsibilities of different roles within a team the real learning fun
began. Workshop attendees were then divided into different teams. There were eight different teams
with different members. Every team has a scrum master, product owner, developer and tester. Teams
were tasked to develop a planning board by estimating and prioritizing backlog items.
A list of requirements in the shape of backlog items were then distributed among the teams. The
requirements were taken from real life projects. The teams were asked to prioritize the items and
draw a planning board. Every team was given thirty minutes to discuss, understand and then
estimate the work, prioritize the items for a two week sprint. During the exercise, workshop owner
closely monitored the activities of different team and was guiding, coaching and sharing his
knowledge. At end teams were asked to draw a planning board. Almost all the teams were able to
estimate and plan the items successfully.
At the end of workshop a open Q/A session was held and participant freely discussed and shared the
ideas. Workshop was ended by closing note of Naveed Ramzan and by presenting workshop
souvenir to Mr. Shahid Iqbal by members of workshop organizing committee Mr Adeel Iqbal and
Qamber Ali.