Creating a Backlog of Content Work

I have posted a couple of series on how we plan content work for Team Foundation, one in 2007

• Planning the Sprint
• Tracking Work Items
• Reporting Status

and the other in 2009.

• How we Track Content Work
• Managing Technical Reviews in TFS and SharePoint
• Reporting Progress

Well, it's an odd year. That means the pink salmon will be running this summer, and it's a good time to take a fresh look at how we're managing our content projects.

There are some important factors that have changed in the last couple of years. One is that we have adapted proven agile practices to build a proper backlog of content work. We create backlog items that meet our criteria for a good content requirement, we estimate them collaboratively using planning poker, and we rank them systematically, employing Mike Cohn's method of Theme Scoring. I'll post more about how and why we did this over the next few weeks.

Here's what I have so far:

• It's About What the User Does, not What the Product Does
• How do You Prioritize Content Work? Here's What We Did