Product backlog problems
Hello everyone,
Im sorry for my English, It is not my main language.
I have a problem.
In our company we use two tools for managing our tasks Productboard and Jira.
Now it looks in that way - product team define tasks in productboard and after user stories are completed, stories migrate to the Jira backlog and are refined there for an estimation. On retrospective as scrum master I suggested my team that Product Backlog have to be one source of truth and shouldn’t be separated at two applications and that estimations have to be made in productboard if we have decided that Productboard = Product backlog. I said that we shouldn’t separate this processes like this.
They didn’t want that change even if I argue it as a must have practice in scrum, that PB have to be one source of truth and product need this estimations for prioritization. PO said that they don’t need this estimations in PB and Dev team said that they didn’t want to change place where they do estimation because they want to add technical info on task before an estimation and its will be inconvenient in Productboard.
My question is. Am I right in my suggestion or this process they used is okay and it is waste to push my idea?
Thank you for your answers!
Where actually is the "single source of truth" about the Product Backlog for the team? If the two boards being used are ever at variance, which one holds?
As long as they have a consensus view on this matter, and the shared transparency they need, they can self-organize as many boards as they like and have patience for.
As long as the Product Owner is the only person using the 2 tools: no problem. The PO is responsible for the Product Backlog, and if they want to store it in 2 places: their problem. In all other cases: you're going to have problems with "the truth", as Ian said.
Plus: is there information in Productboard that is not in Jira? And if so, is that information not needed for the Developers to fully understand what they are doing?
And one more thing: I hope the "product team" is not a synonym of "the analysts" and that it means the 2 systems are a phase gate. The analyst is a Developer and in your case should be using Jira.
As a Scrum Master, I would highly advise against any sort of command/control approach to either teams or the organization regarding Scrum, unless it relates specifically to immutable Scrum items like artifacts, roles, or events.
You state that a task will exist in Productboard until User Stories are created in Jira and that is where the Developers do their refinement and estimations. Based upon my understanding of what you provided, it appears to me that Jira is your Product Backlog for the Scrum Team. It reflects the work that is needed and being executed for the Product. Productboard seems to be a list of tasks that the Product Team (one of which I assume is the Product Owner for the Product in question) feels they need to do. So for that team, Productboard would be their backlog.
So I see no problem with what is being done as long as everyone agrees that Jira is the source of truth for the Product Backlog as it contains all of the necessary information related to the work that needs to be done. Productboard is just a tasklist to help the Product Team keep themselves organized.
@Daniel
Thank you very much for your answer, it seems logic to me. I’ll discuss definitions of boards with my team and it can solve the problem.
Also thanks everyone else who took part in this discussion and spend your time. I’ll use your suggestions and thoughts.