Catalog
concept#Product#Delivery#Governance#Software Engineering

Product Backlog

A prioritized, continuously maintained list of product requirements and user value that serves as the central planning source in agile product management.

The Product Backlog is a prioritized, continuously evolving list of product requirements and user value.
Established
Medium

Classification

  • Medium
  • Organizational
  • Organizational
  • Intermediate

Technical context

Issue trackers (e.g. Jira, Azure Boards)Product analytics platformsCI/CD pipelines for delivery control

Principles & goals

Continuous prioritization by business valueClear accountability model (Product Owner)Transparency and explicit decision criteria
Iterate
Domain, Team

Use cases & scenarios

Compromises

  • Loss of focus due to too many low-priority items
  • Dominance of individual stakeholders without PO consolidation
  • Technical debt remains unaddressed
  • Small, deliverable items instead of large monoliths
  • Explicit prioritization rules and evaluation factors
  • Regular cleanup and removal of outdated items

I/O & resources

  • Product vision and strategy
  • Stakeholder requirements and user feedback
  • Technical insights and risks
  • Prioritized backlog
  • Estimates and implementation packages
  • Release and iteration planning

Description

The Product Backlog is a prioritized, continuously evolving list of product requirements and user value. It serves as the single source of truth for product planning, enabling transparent prioritization, estimation, and refinement of work items. The Product Owner is accountable for its content and ordering. It supports release planning, stakeholder alignment and continuous validation of priorities.

✔

  • Promotes focused value delivery through prioritization
  • Improves transparency and stakeholder alignment
  • Facilitates planning and release control

✖

  • Economic value can be hard to measure precisely
  • Requires discipline in maintenance and refinement
  • If misused, can become bloated and opaque

  • Lead time for backlog items

    Time from item creation to delivery.

  • Throughput (completed items)

    Number of completed items per iteration or time period.

  • Share of technical debt in the backlog

    Percentage share of technical debt versus new features.

Small SaaS product

A team maintains a clear, business-value prioritized backlog to rapidly deliver small features.

Scaling product team

Multiple teams use a shared product backlog and coordinate via a product owner and backlog slices.

Legacy migration

Backlog contains technical migration stories prioritized alongside new development to manage risk.

1

Define product vision and high-level goals.

2

Create initial backlog with prioritized epics/features.

3

Establish roles (Product Owner) and refinement cycles.

4

Introduce regular prioritization and grooming sessions.

5

Measure metrics and adjust priorities based on data.

⚠️ Technical debt & bottlenecks

  • Old architectural decisions block fast changes
  • Unresolvable dependencies due to outdated components
  • Insufficient test coverage for prioritized items
Unclear acceptance criteriaLack of refinementOverloaded backlog
  • Creating unlimited tickets without prioritization
  • PO delegates prioritization entirely to stakeholders
  • Technical debt permanently deprioritized
  • Confusing tasks with value drivers
  • Too many concurrently open top priorities
  • Lack of metrics to validate priorities
Prioritization and decision-making skillsAbility to communicate with stakeholdersBasic understanding of technical dependencies
Business value and user needsTechnical dependencies and maintainabilityTemporal release and market requirements
  • • Limited team capacity
  • • Dependencies on external systems
  • • Regulatory requirements for features