Decomposition for Agile Teams: From Business Initiative to Sprint-Ready Backlog
Course Objective
Decomposition for Agile Teams (DAT) is a practical course for developing the skills of decomposition and structuring the work of Agile teams: from a business initiative to a clear, estimated, and prioritized Backlog.
The objective of the course is to teach participants how to break down complex initiatives and large tasks into manageable elements that can be qualitatively estimated, planned, and implemented within a Sprint.
A feature of the corporate format is working with the participants' real work cases and the company's context, which allows immediately transferring the acquired tools into practice.
Who is this course for?
The course is recommended for professionals involved in the formation, management, and implementation of the Product Backlog:
- Product Owners and Product Managers;
- Project Managers;
- Business Analysts;
- Scrum Masters;
- Team Leads;
- professionals working in cross-functional Agile teams;
- managers and specialists responsible for planning and delivery.
The course is particularly useful for teams dealing with large tasks, vague requirements, a complex Backlog, or insufficiently predictable planning.
Course Outcomes
Upon completion of the course, participants will be able to:
- link business goals with Epics, Features, and User Stories;
- decompose large and complex initiatives into manageable elements;
- apply vertical and horizontal decomposition;
- use User Story Mapping to structure work and define the MVP;
- apply practical techniques for User Story decomposition, including SPIDR;
- determine whether a User Story is small enough, clear, and ready for implementation;
- formulate high-quality Acceptance Criteria;
- apply INVEST principles and Definition of Ready;
- estimate the decomposed work using Story Points and other Agile approaches;
- prioritize the Backlog taking into account business value, risks, and dependencies;
- form a Sprint-ready Backlog;
- reduce the number of overly large and vague tasks;
- improve the quality of planning and predictability of the Agile team's work.
What will you get from the course?
Program
- Business Goal та Product Goal
- Epic, Feature, User Story, Task
- The relationship between business value and team performance
- Typical problems when working with large tasks
- When and why decomposition is needed
- What is qualitative decomposition
- Vertical and horizontal decomposition
- Decomposition of Epic and Feature
- Determination of logical limits of work
- Practice on real working cases
- Principles of User Story Mapping
- User Journey and basic scenarios
- Definition of MVP
- Formation of release sections
- Converting a large initiative into a structured Backlog
- The main principles of dividing User Stories
- SPIDR
- Decomposition by roles and scenarios
- Happy Path and Alternative Scenarios
- Business rules and data options
- Interfaces and workflow
- Choosing the right technique depending on the situation
- INVEST
- Signs of an overly large or complex User Story
- Acceptance Criteria
- Definition of Ready
- Typical mistakes when formulating Stories
- Validation and improvement of real User Stories
- Why evaluate after decomposition
- Relative Estimation
- Story Points
- Planning Poker
- Story size and its effect on predictability
- Practical backlog assessment
- Prioritization of work after decomposition
- Business value
- Risks and dependencies
- MVP and value maximization
- Determination of the order of implementation
- Backlog preparation for Sprint planning
- Complex decomposition of real initiative
- Epic → Feature → User Story
- Acceptance Criteria
- Assessment
- Prioritization
- Backlog readiness check
- Typical mistakes and recommendations for further application of approaches
FAQ
The course is designed for Product Owners, Product Managers, Project Managers, Business Analysts, Scrum Masters, Team Leads and other Agile team specialists who work with Backlog and planning.
The corporate course is held individually in the format of 8 classes of 1.5 hours each — a total of 12 hours of training.
Yes. The course is practice-oriented: the participant works with real work situations, initiatives and Backlog, not only with training examples.
The participant will receive practical tools for decomposition, evaluation and prioritization of work, and will be able to apply the acquired approaches directly in their work.
Yes. For corporate training, the program can be adapted to Agile processes, tools, roles and real working cases of the company.
Education provides
