How to manage a product backlog with multiple applications

Question

I am about to start working on a project that will be made up of a Windows Store, Windows Phone and Web application with each of these applications connecting to a Web API. To manage these I will be using Team Visual Studio Team Services.

For each feature I was planning on creating a backlog item and the associated tasks would describe how the feature will be implemented going from the UI, through the Web API, onto the database, etc. So once the backlog item is done I should have a feature that works from end to end.

With each of the applications having the same features I'm finding I'm creating the same backlog items. In this case for a single backlog item I have to create it 3 times, one for Web, Windows Store and Windows Phone. Also, the tasks associated with them only differ on the UI tasks. For example, each application will have different UI tasks, but the tasks related to the Web API, database, etc, are the same.

So basically I'm little stuck on deciding how to stick with the idea of generating backlog items based on required features, but at the same time trying to reduce the need to duplicate backlog items/tasks.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Answer 1

The way I typically handle this, is there is usually one UI that is the "primary", meaning the UI that you build first. Lets say that the Web UI is the primary. IMO, you need to include some UI in the initial Story otherwise there is no user/customer value to that feature/story.

I will have a Story for each feature, which includes everything necessary to develop and deploy that feature with a Web UI only.

Then I have additional Stories that represent the work to tack on a Phone/Store/Tablet/etc UI onto already developed features. These will be smaller stories, and while I may have split it up into 100 Stories/Features for the WebUI, when scoping the stories for the Phone UI I may group features together, so I may only have 10 Stories for creating Phone UI and each story encompasses an entire area of the application (ie. 1 Phone Story = ~10 Web Stories).