CAPM Agile Frameworks and Methodologies Practice Question
Which is an effective way to prioritize user stories in a product backlog?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Order by business value, risk, and dependencies.
Prioritizing user stories by business value, risk, and dependencies ensures that the most valuable and impactful features are delivered first. Option A (story points) indicates effort or size, not value. Option B (number of tasks) is irrelevant to priority. Option C (creation date) is chronological and does not reflect importance.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Order by story points.
Why it's wrong here
Story points measure relative effort or complexity, not business value or urgency, so ordering by them sequences work by size rather than priority. It is tempting because points are visible on every card, and this ordering would be correct when planning a sprint to balance capacity across the team.
- ✗
Order by the number of tasks in each story.
Why it's wrong here
Task count measures implementation effort, not business value, risk or dependency order, so it cannot rank stories by what delivers most worth first. It tempts teams seeking a quick numeric proxy, and would suit sprint capacity planning or estimating workload distribution rather than backlog ordering.
- ✗
Order by the date they were created.
Why it's wrong here
Creation date reflects when a story was written, not its business value, risk or dependency relationships, so ordering by it ignores prioritisation criteria entirely. It tempts teams wanting a simple chronological queue, and would be correct for an audit trail or release-notes history, not backlog ordering.
- ✓
Order by business value, risk, and dependencies.
Why this is correct
Ordering by business value, risk, and dependencies maximises delivered value while addressing uncertainty early and respecting sequencing constraints. This balances customer priority with technical feasibility, giving a practical, defensible backlog order rather than ranking on a single dimension alone.
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