Trivago – Marketing And Travel Services | Product Backlog Decomposition

Product Backlog Decomposition

Trivago is an international based company dealing with marketing and travel services whose vision is to offer the best hotel, lodging and travel services by giving the priorities to the target customers and offering best offer to the customers in order to become a leading international company (Karumanchi, 2012).

In order to present the product backlog there are various activities that will be involved where various epics will end being decomposed in to features and stories as below.

Below shows the decomposition of the three identified epics in order to decompose them to the user stories as below where the epic is changed top feature then feature into user stories as shown below (Goyal, 2011).

Epic 1

-Search for the best options of hotels

Feature

-Searching and comparing the hotels available on the website.

User story

As a customer,

I want to be able to login in the website

Then search for the best hotels

So that I can book it for spending the night

Epic 2  

– Priority Options for Customers

Feature

-Giving priority to the loyal customers.

User story

As a company,

We want to identify the loyal customers,

Who book the hotels regularly,

In order to give them the first priority. 

Epic 3

– Provide Offers to Customers

Feature

-Giving offers to the customers.

User story

As a company,

We want to give promotional offers to the customers,

And then provide new offer to our new customers,

And also to give priority to the new customers,

In order to attract all the customers.

Epic1 user story

As a customer,

I want to be able to login in the website

Then search for the best hotels

So that I can book it for spending the night

1. Customer cannot login without username and password.
2. The customer must fill in all logins field and is a mandatory.

• Customer should enter the name of the hotel to search.

1. Customer books the hotels and all the booking records are stored in the database.

Epic 2 user story

As a company,

We want to identify the loyal customers,

Who book the hotels regularly,

In order to give them the first priority.

Epic 2 user story acceptance criteria

1. Company staffs cannot login without username and password.
2. The staff must fill in all logins field and is a mandatory.

• Staffs look for the loyal customers by checking the booking frequencies.

1. Staffs give the loyal customers priorities in the hotel vacancies.
2. The staffs submit the customer’s records into the database.

Epic 3 user story

As a company,

We want to give promotional offers to the customers,

And then provide new offer to our new customers,

And also to give priority to the new customers,

In order to attract all the customers.

Epic 3 user story acceptance criteria

1. Company staffs cannot login without username and password.
2. The staff must fill in all logins field and is a mandatory.

• Staffs search the available promotional offers from the system databases.

1. Staffs allocate the customers some promotional offers.
2. Staffs allocate new offers to the new customers.
3. Staffs then give priority to the new customers in services.

• The staffs then submit the customer’s records in the system database.

This is a type of a scheme that is used in the process of giving the priority to some aspects that have great impact on the system being developed and they are summarized as in the table below.

IMPACT FACTOR
Hard impacts(quantifiable)	Soft impact (meaningful)
High conversion rates: Logins Registration Searches Bookings Awarding offers Giving priority	System login Searching hotels Booking hotels Prioritizing new customers Giving offers to customers Giving promotional offers Implementing the processes
Metrics to maximize: Bookings Customers Income
Metrics to reduce: Operational costs

The completion of the product backlog is through the decomposition of the epics, the epics are reduced to features which are then used to make the user stories as below (Gupta, 2015).

Epic1 user story

As a customer,

I need to register in the website,

Then I will be able to login in the website,

Then search for the best hotels,

So that I can book it,

And I spend the night there.

Epic 2 user story

As a company,

We want register in the website,

Then login with username and passwords,

Summary of User Stories

In order to identify the loyal customers,

Who book the hotels regularly,

In order to give them the first priority,

And allocate them the available hotels or facility.

Epic 3 user story

As a company,

We want to register in the website,

Then login using the passwords and usernames,

In order to give promotional offers to the customers,

And then provide new offer to our new customers,

And also to give priority to the new customers,

In order to attract all the customer

The table below is a summary of the system product backlog.

PRODUCT BACKLOG ITEMS

1. Creating database

Design the database

Select the tools to use

Create the database

Create tables

Link tables

Test database

2. Registration page

Create registration html page

Create the username field

Create password field

Create confirm password field

Create the login button

Create reset password button

3. Login page

Create the login html page

Create username field

Create password field

Create login button

Create exit button

4. Home page

Create the home html page

Create the link menus

Create the social media links

5. Hotel page

Create the hotel html page

Insert the menus

Insert the hotel images

6. Searching option

Create the search option html page

Add the search field

Add search button

7. Booking page

Create the booking html page

Add the menus links

Add the booing form

Add the submit button

Add the exit button

8. Gifts assigning page

Create the gifts assigning page

Create the menu and links

Create the assignment form

In the system analysis and design the product roadmap is very essential and it is used in giving a high level visualized summary that map-out the visions and directions of the products that are offered over a period of time, however this product roadmap has assisted in the communication processes regarding the system that is being build where it acts a guide strategic documents and acts as a plans to be used in the executions strategies (Singh, 2016). .

Below is the trivago website product roadmap where it is indicating various releases that are part of the system epic , in this the trivago website is used where the customers registers , then they login in website account to search for the available hotels , the system is able to give priority to regular and new customers , however various promotional offers are given to the customers through the staffs finally the system allow the customer to book and use the hotel services as in the below product roadmap.

In the development of the proposed website there will be three releases which include the following releases.

1. Implementation of Search options of hotels.
2. Implementation of Priority Options for Customers.

• Implementation of the Customers offers Provision.

 Below are the various maps:

1. Market map. 

1. Market event. 

• Architecture map.  

1. Feature/benefit map. 

In the system development process there is use of the unified modeling language and is used to model the software’s solution , applications structure , the system’s behaviors and the various business processes ,however the unified modeling language is made of the various classes which acts as the major building blocks of the system UML , however the components in the class diagrams give the representation of the classes that will be programmed , major objects and indicates the interaction between the classes or the objects (Wixom, 2016).

In the implementation of the trivago system there are various classes that are going to be drawn using the enterprise architecture software indicating the class names, attributes and the respective class methods.

In this trivago website system there are various content classes that show the various attributes and the methods used in the various classes and they include the customers, staffs, hotel, booking and the gift classes as shown below.

1. Customers class 

1. Staff class 

• Hotel  class 

1. Booking  class 

1. Gift class 

1. Navigation classes

The trivago website has various website links that are used by the users in the navigation process to various website pages , these links are represented by the various navigation classes which includes the menu class, search class, booking class, social media class and offer class as shown below (Award, 2013).

1. Menu class. 

1. Search class. 

• Social media class. 

1. Process classes

The website system will be having various operations by the customers and the staffs and these functions will be represented using the functions and the process class diagrams, among the process class diagrams are register class, login class, search class, book class, issue gift class and offers class as represented here below.

1. Register class. 

1. Login class. 

• Search class. 

1. Book class. 

1. issue gift class 

1. offers class 

Summary of System Product Backlog

The figure below shows the content class diagram where the tree diagram and the epic in the previous assignments are considered, in this class diagram the various entities in the websites are put into consideration indicting the various attributes and the entire entities interfaces as shown here below.    

The process class diagram is used to indicate the various functions that are used by the various users of the system to accomplish a specific task and the class diagram has various classes where their attributes and relationships are clearly indicated, the below shows the process class diagrams for the travigo website system (Karumanchi, 2012). 

In the trivigo website system there are various actors and they do various processes , these actors perform certain functions in the system including the registering ,login, searching hotels ,booking hotels, issuing gifts and giving offers and they are all captured in the sequence diagram.

The trivigo website sequence diagram has parallel vertical line called lifelines, various processes/objects, and horizontally running arrows and the messages exchanged between them, in this the trivago website sequence diagram is designed using the content and process class diagrams where the various actors who include the customers and the staffs are involved in various events which follows a certain order (Laplante, 2013).

Therefore the UML sequence diagram models the flowing of logics within the entire system visually which enables the documentation and validation of the logics which will assist the developers in the design and analysis processes.  

In the website design process the sprint plan and backlog are essential in that the system owners and the system developers in the scrum require to meet to discuss on the system development progress and timeline, however in attendance are the invited persons through the stakeholders, in this meeting the trivago company manager describes the highest prioritized feature to be implemented by the scrum team.

The sprint planning will involve the collaborative efforts where the scrum masters who is the meeting facilitator ,the products owner who give the system details of the system and the acceptance criteria , and the agile team who are responsible of defining the various efforts to meet the sprints commitments in the delivery of the system.

The sprint backlog identifies the list of the various tasks that had been identified by the scrum team that will be completed within the scrum sprints period, however in the sprint planning meetings the scrum selects the product backlog items in users story format and tasks are identified that will be used in the completion of the user stories.

The below are the trivago website sprint planning and sprint backlog.

The system development will take a short period of time and it will be divided into sprints which are short period of times when some specific tasks will be completed. Below are the goals of the sprints:

1. To identify the system user stories in order to cover the entire system requirements.
2. To complete the sprint tasks within the set time without delays.

• To identify the tasks completed within the set time frame.

1. To identify the tasks that is in progress.
2. To test the system sections and the entire system within the set time frame.
3. To verify that the entire system development is done within the set time frame.

• Below is the products backlog table.

Priority	Product backlog items	User story	Estimate hours
1	Creating database	6	240
2	Registration page	6	240
3	Login page	5	144
4	Home page	3	72
5	Hotel page	3	72
6	Searching option	3	72
7	Booking page	6	240
8	Gifts assigning page	3	72
Total time	1152=48 days

Determine the capacity of team and describe capacity estimation in detail

The system development team has a small number of system analyst, developers and designers and therefore team can be able to cover like one sprint within a given day and therefore since the system has more than 10 sprints to be covered the system development might take approximately 20 days since the system development uses the scrum process where the various sprints will have to be iterated to check their functionality.

The table below summarizes the capacity determination process. 

Team members	Number of sprints per release	Number of release	Number of sprints.	Total time to complete system.
10	5	55	75	48 days.

The sprint backlog is the comprehensive details of the various tasks where the user stories are sprint to form individual tasks to be completed however each task is given a specific time to be completed .The table below shows the sprint backlog indicating tasks and the time set for each task.

Priority	Product backlog items	User story	Estimate hours
1	Creating database	6	240
	Design the database
	Select the tools to use
	Create the database
	Create tables
	Link tables
	Test database
2	Registration page	6	240
	Create registration html page
	Create the username field
	Create password field
	Create confirm password field
	Create the login button
	Create reset password button
2	Login page	5	144
	Create the login html page
	Create username field
	Create password field
	Create login button
	Create exit button
3	Home page	3	72
	Create the home html page
	Create the link menus
	Create the social media links
4	Hotel page	3	72
	Create the hotel html page
	Insert the menus
	Insert the hotel images
5	Searching option	3	72
	Create the search option html page
	Add the search field
	Add search button
6	Booking page	6	240
	Create the booking html page
	Add the menus links
	Add the booing form
	Add the submit button
	Add the exit button
7	Gifts assigning page	3	72
	Create the gifts assigning page
	Create the menu and links
	Create the assignment form

This is a report about the trivago international company that essentially deals with the hotels and lodging services to their customers, however the company had grown drastically over the period of time and this is as a result of good customer relations and management, this report had covered the entire process of analyzing the current system and designing the proposed improved system. Among the parts covered in the report are the product vision ,the presentation of the product backlog, the decomposition of the system epics into the users stories, development of the priority scheme for system implementation, designing the product roadmap, designing of the UML profiles, designing of the class diagrams using the UML profiles, designing both navigation and functional design views, making the sprint planning and sprint backlog where the sprint goals and the system development capacity is determined.

The implementation of the proposed system to improve the  current system will be of great impact to the organization and it will eventually boost the operations in the company , the system will also enable the customers to book the hotels at their own convenient place and therefore there will be increase in the number of customers, however the company will be able to manage the resources efficiently and keep good record of their customers where they will be able to account for the customers who has to be given priorities and also the one to be awarded the gifts.

The system need to be improved regularly to adapt to new technology as it evolves, among the few issues to be added in the future improvement are the use of the map features and online payment mode for easy payment and reconciliation of the income and profit made for a given period of time.   

References 

Award,E.(2013) Systems Analysis and Design .3^rd edn.Delhi:Galgotia Publications Pvt Ltd.

Gupta,B.(2015) Power System Analysis and Design.1^st edn.New Delhi: S Chand & Company.

Goyal, A. (2011) systems Analysis and Design Paperback .2^nd edn.INDIA:Prentice Hall India Learning Private Limited.

Karumanchi,N.(2012) Peeling Design Patterns: For Beginners and Interviews.5^th edn.New York:CareerMonk Publications.

Laplante,P.(2013) Real-Time Systems Design and Analysis: Tools for the Practitioner.2^nd edn.New Jersey:Wiley.

Singh,B.(2016) Systems Analysis and Design.4^th edn.Delhi:New Age International Private Limited.

Wixom,D.(2016) Systems Analysis and Design.2^nd edn. New Jersey: Wiley publishers.