Our ultimate goal is to allow driving multiple projects from a single backlog. This is the case with large projects where multiple teams work on a single integrated product. The best practice is to maintain a single product backlog. We have been brainstorming about how to support this while maintaining a flat structure among projects. We like to avoid hierarchical structure as much as we can. After a lot of white boarding, we came up with a solution that supports our goal of keeping the flat structure.
Now we are working on expanding the portfolio view to support the following features:
- Move stories from one project (product) backlog to another project backlog
- Manage multiple project backlogs from a single integrated portfolio backlog
- Import/Export portfolio backlog
- What do we do with tags when moving a story from backlog to another since tags are backlog/project specific?
- What do we do with associated message threads, bugs, and impediments?
- What do we do if the story is already scheduled to a sprint and a release since sprints and releases are project specific?
- What if the story is assigned to a person who is not a member of the other project (team), which is most likely be the case.
- Should we allow a story "in progress" to be moved to another project?
- How do we integrate priorities across multiple projects into a single portfolio view?
- No workarounds
- Less reworks
- Simple yet robust solutions
We are pretty excited about the portfolio management in ScrumPad.