Scrum: What's the average number of stories in your backlog

Question

Hi,

I'm currently working on a productivity tool for Scrum teams and would like to know what is the average number of stories you see in a product backlogs at any particular time.

Just to clarify the number should not include completed stories or stories which 'might' be broken into multiple stories in the future. Also I'm interested in what people 'are' doing rather than what they 'should' be doing.

Unfortunately I don't get out and about enough to other peoples labs so only really have experience with what's normal for us.

I'm guessing there are quite a few consultants on this site who maybe get to see far more team rooms than I do.

Now I know this is a "how long is a piece of string" type question and there will be some people with two and some with two thousand, but I'm just looking for a yard stick.

For the teams in our company is is usually less than twenty.

Regards,

Chris

Answer 1

If you don't consider epics as you mentioned, I would say twice as much stories as you complete during one sprint. I think that will varie between 20-30 according to the size of the stories and the size of the team.

Currently we have 7 stories that aren't part of a sprint in the backlog. But we're currently building the backlog, so not much of a reference.

Answer 2

just had a quick look at our issue tracker: we complete about 15-20 stories per sprint and have a rough plan/assignment for the next 3 sprints. the unassigned backlog portion tends to be between 10-20. our complete backlog thus contains roughly between 50 and 100 stories. i guess this will vary quite a bit, depending on how close we are to a release (currently we have about 4 sprints to go; a usual release cycle is about 15 sprints long) -- just to give you a rough estimate on the "length of the piece of string" in our team :)

Answer 3

It really depends on the project tbh.

For the uncommited backlog; on the lowest projects it's about 5-10, and the highest it's about 25-30.

The sprint Backlogs are more consistent and generally have about 7 backlog items per spring (2 week sprints).

Answer 4

A good rule of thumb is to spend 5% of the team's time maintaining the product backlog - having 1 to 2 sprints worth of stories fully groomed. For my teams this usually corresponds to around 15 to 25 stories.

Answer 5

It's surprising how consistent these numbers actually are between posters.

For 2 week sprints: 3 - 7 stories, depending on their weight. More stories if its new functionality, less stories when building or changing old/existing functionality.

Backlog'ed stories per project: 25 - 40 total?