Application Backlog view
Summarize
Summary of Application Backlog view
The Application Backlog view provides enterprise architects with a centralized interface to manage and visualize key scrum work items—epics, stories, and enhancements—that impact business applications. This view consolidates different task types into one timeline, enabling easier prioritization and sequencing without multiple sorting or filtering steps. Activation of the Agile Development 2.0 plugin (com.snc.sdlc.agile.2.0) is required to access this feature within the TPM timeline.
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Key Features
- Centralized Backlog: Displays epics, stories, enhancements, projects, and demands linked to business applications in a unified view.
- Risk Filtering: Lists applications initially filtered by high risk, with options to adjust filtering based on risk intensity.
- Flexible Timeline Views: Switch between quarterly or monthly timeline displays to suit planning needs.
- Expandable Application Details: Expand each business application entry to see the total number and types of backlog items attached.
- Integration with PPM: Supports adding projects if the PPM Standard plugin is activated; otherwise, demands are created by default.
- Clickable Records: Entries in the application column are interactive, opening respective records in new tabs for detailed review.
How Work Items Are Represented
- Epics: Represent high-level business goals broken into smaller pieces. Displayed on the timeline between their planned start and end dates, excluding those in Complete or Canceled states.
- Stories: Typically part of epics, stories appear on the timeline for their sprint duration, excluding those completed or canceled. Standalone stories linked directly to applications are shown under “Others.”
- Enhancements: User requests reviewed by product owners and converted into stories. Only active enhancements appear on the timeline, spanning from planned start to end dates.
- Projects and Demands: Projects appear if PPM Standard plugin is enabled; otherwise, demands are created by default and shown accordingly.
Practical Considerations
- For epics, stories, and enhancements to display on the timeline, they must reference the associated business application explicitly.
- The risk column reflects only business application risks, not the risks of individual backlog items.
- The timeline plots continuous lines representing work duration; if only one date exists, it is shown as a filled circle.
Benefits for ServiceNow Customers
This view streamlines backlog management for enterprise architects by consolidating various work items linked to business applications into a coherent timeline. It supports better visibility into work progress and risk prioritization, facilitating informed decision-making and efficient planning. Integration with PPM enhances portfolio management through project and demand tracking within the same context.
As an enterprise architect this view helps you to understand the epics, stories, and enhancements, which are the units of work in scrum, that impact your business application.
Application Backlog view helps you to look into the centralized backlog of records that are of different task types such as epics, stories, and enhancements. This view facilitates prioritizing and sequencing of different task type records in one location, saving you from sorting and filtering them in many steps. In this view, you can:
- View all applications (first column) that are at a high risk by default, however you can filter based on the intensity of their risk in the second column.
- Filter the application records by any attribute in the business application table. Switch to either quarterly or monthly view of the timeline (third column).
- Create a project or demand to add to the application.
- Paginate the number of applications to be displayed in a single view.
- Expand the business application to view its unified backlog of epics, stories, enhancements, projects, and demands attached to the application. You can also see the total number of these entities within brackets.
You can view the following application backlog entities on the timeline in addition to the projects and demands attached to the application:
- Epics
The high-level business goal of the application is broken down into one or more epics. Epics organize the work required to complete parts of the application goal in small pieces. Epics are further broken down to stories, which are fundamental units of work, that describe the business requirement briefly and can be completed within a sprint. The timeline for the epics is displayed based on the planned start date and planned end date of the epic. The status of epics must not be in Complete or Canceled state.
- Stories
Stories usually are part of an epic. The stories contained in the epic attached to the business application that are not in Complete or Canceled state are displayed in the timeline. The timeline starts with the planned start date and ends with the planned end date of the sprint to which the story is tagged.
- Others
There can be stories that are not attached to an epic but directly associated to the business application itself. Such stories are listed within the epics as Others and displayed in the timeline.
- Enhancements
Enhancements are special requests that come from users with non-scrum role. A scrum product owner reviews these requests and creates one or more user stories. Enhancements in Closed Complete, On Hold, and Canceled state are not displayed in the timeline. The enhancement timeline runs from the Planned start date to its end date when the sprint work is scheduled to begin and end.
- Projects
If the PPM Standard (com.snc.financial_planning_pmo) plugin is activated, then you can add a project to the business application.
- Demands
If the PPM Standard plugin is not activated, then by default, a demand is created.
Note:For the timeline to display the epics, stories, and enhancements, each of these records should reference the business application attached to it. See Associate epic to business application for more information.
- Application column
All the epics, stories, enhancements, projects, and demands listed in the application column are clickable. Clicking each of them opens the record in a new tab that the clickable field points to.
- Risk column
Shows the risks of the business applications only and not the risks of epics, stories, enhancements, projects, or demands.
- Timeline column
The start and end dates of the units of work attached to the business application are plotted as a continuous line. However, if only one date is present, either the start or end date, then just that date is plotted as a filled circle.