Scale

Managing work in a large enterprise requires a more sophisticated approach than a single team backlog. Using the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) as a model, the speaker illustrates the need for multiple, interconnected backlogs at different organizational levels, such as the Portfolio, Program, and Team backlogs. These backlogs are hierarchical, meaning that large strategic goals, often called Initiatives, are broken down into smaller pieces like Epics, which are then decomposed into Features, and finally into the actionable User Stories that development teams work on during their sprints.

Both Azure Boards and Jira can be adapted to manage this complexity, but the video stresses that this functionality is not available out of the box and requires deliberate configuration. In Azure Boards, this is achieved by creating custom 'Work Item Types' for each level of the hierarchy and then arranging them into 'Backlog Levels' within the project's process settings. Similarly, in Jira, administrators must create custom 'Issue Types' and then define the parent-child relationships between them in the 'Issue type hierarchy' settings to build the scaled structure.

The central message is that this upfront configuration of the tools is a critical prerequisite for successfully implementing agile at scale. Once the hierarchy is established, it allows different roles—from portfolio managers to individual team members—to view and manage the work at the appropriate level of detail. Failing to set up these enterprise backlogs correctly in the software will prevent teams from effectively operating within a scaled agile framework.