I got this idea from a student; I think it has merit, so I'll pass it along here:
Our backlog is managed by our Product Owners Council, made up of 7 voting members representing the users in the global markets. The voting members are responsible for translating their constituent user requirements into user stories for review by the council.
The council members bring their user stories to council meetings where they are reviewed using a specified criteria before admission to the backlog. We have a large backlog that is prioritized by the POC for each release based on the velocity the development team can deliver, usually 100 points per sprint per scrum team - there are multiple sprints and scrum teams per release.
.... in our case, there are constant trade offs taking place in what gets developed from the backlog. When functional requirements are the focus of a release, the POC meetings become very political with each member arguing for their backlog of stories. The final vote includes a consolidated view from each POC member on the user story's impact on our customer, regulatory environment and user productivity along with a hi, medium, low ranking.
When the global deployment was in progress, all user stories that enabled the countries to go-live on the system where prioritized ahead of functional requirements, including some less critical defects.
Our current direction from executive stakeholders is to standardize our cloud based systems and any requirement that enables the standardization will have precedence over functional requirements.
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