Keeping the 'Big Picture' in Sight to Avoid 'Blind Man Product'

  Agile  

Saw an interesting thread in an agile coaching forum on "User Stories: Lack of Big Picture Leads to Blind Man Product" (If you’re unfamiliar with the blind men and the elephant parable, check out the story here). Basically, the story is used to illustrate the fact that if all your team members are not aware of the big picture, the end result may not be achieved in an efficient manner (i.e., the blind man product).

In the thread, the author states that a major factor contributing to the blind man product is the use of the “flat product backlog”, which makes it hard to navigate and manage to the big picture. 

In my opinion, the flat backlog is appropriate for keeping the team focused on the big picture for relatively small projects.   However, for large enterprise project with geographically dispersed teams, a more efficient alternative to the flat product backlog is User Story Mapping--along with constant focus on the product vision and the product roadmap.  

User Story Mapping--as explained by Jeff Patton’s blog “The new user story backlog is a map“ on his AgileProduct Design.com website--is an approach for organizing and prioritizing user stories.  Unlike flat product backlogs, Story Maps make visible the workflow or value chain by:

• Showing the relationships of larger stories to …

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