One of the things you never want to see is a team stopping because there aren't enough requirements ready or they're not prioritized. I call it the Prairie dog - You should never see the team pop their heads up and ask - what do we do next? You want them focused on getting things done.
I've worked on large programs where this was a serial process and a real waste of productivity. Don't wait until you finish one release before you start gathering requirements for the next.
This is what you don't want to see:
This is what you don't want to see:
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| You don't want idle time between iterations and releases. |
What I prefer to see:
You can take this too far though.
The product backlog is meant to be "purposefully vague" as it gets further down the list. There's no point spending lots of time getting a User Story clean that may be months or years down the pipeline.
So focus on the high priority items at the top of the list - fill out the rest of the wish list later.
