How to Handle Non-Prioritized Product Backlog in Sprint Planning Meeting?

You have taken Scrum training, have read some books on Scrum and are ready to begin your first Scrum project.

You are excited to well understood the theory and you are now ready to work on most important features based on the prioritized Product Backlog.

In the model world, prioritized product backlog is ready prior to begin your sprint planning meeting. In practice, that’s always not the case.

How do you take it further? You can do one of the following:

1. You can delay the Sprint Planning for some time for the Product Owner to update the Product Backlog.
2. If it is second or later sprint, you can identify some work for the team based on review feedback from the past sprint based on its importance.
3. You can continue Sprint Planning meeting without the prioritized Product Backlog. This can work only if the team knows what’s most important from product perspective.

Or you can choose to participate in prioritizing the Product Backlog along with the Product Owner. Sure, this eats up more time but it is much better than working on non-prioritized Product Backlog.

Most important thing is to have prioritized Product Backlog prior to starting the Sprint Planning meeting. Period.

In Scrum, most important thing is to keep the most important thing the most important thing and give your 100% to it.