Introduction

"Accountability breeds response-ability.” - Stephen R. Covey, Author

Decisions to make

• Decide what the program is accountable for improving
  • Does the work drive changes to specific functional areas of the organization?
  • Does the work drive changes in specific products?
  • Does the work drive changes in specific business domains or capabilities?

Context

• Sometimes a program is organized around a set of functional areas or business units, and it is useful to associate features with the functional areas or business units receiving the value (especially when they are funding it)
• Sometimes a program is organized around a product line, and it is useful to associate features with the product that is being changed
• Sometimes a program is organized around a business capability, and it is useful to associate features with the business capability being improved

Why we care

• Programs are usually accountable for the improvement and maintenance of specific things (e.g. products, business capabilities, and/or functional areas)
• Understanding the relationship between the work being proposed and these impacted areas is critical for good decision-making

The Atlassian view

• Prioritizing a backlog of features involves a set of trade-off decisions, and making the impacted products, functional areas, and/or business domains visible for each feature is useful during this activity