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Backlog Goals or Objectives

This article provides an overview on Backlog Goald and Objectives.

Overview

A Backlog Goal or Objective is a system asset that contains groups of stories or backlog items that drive the direction of the project team.

It is a measurable target that specifies a business reason for doing development and drives the direction and priorities of the project team. They have a many-to-many relationship with workitems, to allow free association between stories, defects or even portfolio items to these assets.

Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up

Traditional management approaches use a top-down approach to derive lower level project backlog from goals defined at the higher level. When using a top-down approach you may specify projects that target each high level backlog goal, which enables you to track progress of related work items for a project and its sub projects.

The SAFe approach, which uses the term objectives, calls for objectives to first be defined at the team level within a program increment (PI) and then rolled up across teams to specify PI-level objectives. This approach uses objectives as a method to confirm common business understanding of the reasoning for developing a specific set of features and also assigns business value to each team-level objective to help track the individual and collective team performance over time using the Program Predictability Report. Terminology is automatically switched to 'objectives' for those who specify a SAFe setup during the startup wizard. System Administrators can always update terminology in an existing system as well.

System Administrators have the ability to switch the relationship back to the legacy backlog goal:backlog group instead of backlog goal:portfolio items that now defaults. To switch back, click the hamburger icon Hamburger icon > Administration > Configuration > System page and look for the option under the Backlog Goal asset option.

Accessing Backlog Goals

The Backlog Goals or Objectives feature must first be enabled in order for it to display in the Product Planning menu.

To access Backlog Goals or Objectives, Click the hamburger icon Hamburger icon > Product > Backlog Goals (or Objectives).

Managing Stories Backlog Items

Assigning Work Items to Backlog Goal or Objective

Closing and Reopening Backlog Goal Objective

Creating Backlog Goal or Objective

Editing Backlog Goal or Objective

Exporting Backlog Goal or Objective

Targeting Backlog Goal or Objective

Viewing and Editing Backlog Goal or Objective Details

Watching Backlog Goal or Objective

Configuring Terminology and Localization Options

Enabling or Disabling Features and Options for Enterprise and Ultimate Editions

Adding or Creating a Story

Closing Story

Deleting Story or Backlog Item

Editing Story

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Moving Story or Backlog Item to Different Project

Recovering Deleted Story or Backlog Item

Splitting Story

Viewing Story Details

Using Tasks to Breakdown Stories Backlog Items

Managing Projects or Releases

Managing Sprints or Iterations

Adding Links

Attaching Files

Copying a Work Item

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Working with Communities

Using Conversations

Working with Defects

Using Templates to Create Reusable Portfolio Items Stories Backlog Items or Defects

Using Ideas

Tracking Impediments with Issues

Managing Member Accounts

Portfolio Item Overview

Using Requests to Capture User Feedback and Suggestions

Sprint or Iteration Scheduling

Using the Portfolio Tree

Managing Stories Backlog Items

Using the Sidebar

Working with Community Topics