Hi
@Grant Warden,
Just to be clear, they are two interpretations of the word 'backlog'. In Rally, we normally consider the "Unscheduled" stories as in the backlog. Eveything else is scheduled to be done in a timebox (Iteration or Release). Stories that are in an Iteration could be considered to be in the "Sprint Backlog", but that is a term more common with Jira
For the Unscheduled Backlog, to answer your question in a different way, the things you need to look out for are dependent on your Definition Of Ready (DoR).
If you start with the fundamentals, each story should have a Size, and the backlog prioritised. Missing size is easy to spot - the 'wrong' size is harder. If you use something like Planning Poker (
https://github.com/nikantonelli/Planning-Poker), then you might end up with a more reliable way of getting the 'right' sizing. So, in effect, your DoR must contain the phrase "Each Story goes through Planning Poker to be accepted into an iteration". If you go through Planning Poker, it will become obvious as to whether the story contains other important fields, such as: correct title, acceptance criteria, owner, etc. However, these are fields that you could check with the Query Counter app as well.
By the sounds of it, you are asking a more generally question: "How do I see stuff that is not as it should be?" Once again, that also becomes a bit dependent of your style or working. Stuff that teams running Scrum style are worried about may be different from those teams that are purely Kanban style.
To sum up: the Query Counter app can give you a lot of answers on one page. It will only give you pointers of things to look at. You are still going to need the details. There are some metrics that you can read to help with 'alignment', aka preparation: stories that have features, stories that are not sized, have an owner, have some text in the description, etc. There are a few more that you can look for when looking for 'visibility', aka execution (in these times of remote working, this has to be in the tool rather than walking the floors): Stories that weren't finished in the sprint, stories in progress but not sized, stories in Completed state with unfinished Tasks, etc.
Other apps might give you help with the progress, but are not immediately obvious. For the alignment phase you might want to consider: Stories that have dependencies that are out of sequence/invalid. An example of this type for the visiblity stage would be setting sprint capacity (hours) for each user, allocating tasks to them and then finding that they were running out of working hours as the sprint progress. See here for that one:
https://github.com/nikantonelli/TeamLoadingA bit long, but I hope it helps.
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Nik
Ask me a question, I'm All Ears!
Rally Sales Engineer
Rally Software
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Original Message:
Sent: 04-24-2020 06:27 PM
From: Grant Warden
Subject: How to 'scrub' a backlog?
Does anyone have a list of what to look for when 'scrubbing' a backlog?I'm interested in compiling a list of what to look at each sprint or PI in order to ensure accuracy in Rally. This subject refers to inconsistencies or errors or omissions that may not be immediately recognized in your standard 2-3 views. One example is unparented US; another is US that are not Accepted but are in an iteration that is in the past. Thanks.
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[Design Program Coach / ScrumMaster]
[Aetna]
[CO]
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