The more items you have in the backlog, the less you can innovate.
The product backlog should be a vehicle for driving value, but it often becomes a distraction from what really matters.
Over the last 15 years, something has surprised me. The best product teams I’ve encountered were reckless with their backlogs. They had less than 50 backlog items and deleted more than they created. While that may be controversial to most teams, keeping one's mind open to what truly matters is necessary.
Before we dive into this episode, I have something for you. In a few weeks, I’m hosting a free webinar about Overcoming the Top 5 Mistakes with Product Strategy.
7 Dangers of Backlog Management
How much time do you spend managing your backlog every week?
The more time you spend on the backlog, the less time you have to learn. Here’s how to evaluate it:
< 5h → Lean Backlog Management. You can focus on what matters.
> 5h < 10h → Sustainable Backlog Management. You can still balance innovation and delivery.
> 10h < 20h → Warning! Your backlog is taking more time from you than it should.
> 20h → Danger Zone! You need to review your activities; you probably became a victim of a few traps of backlog management.
Let’s clarify what gets in the way of delivering value with backlog management.
1 - The Christmas Wishlist
When you look at your backlog, do you see a path to a goal or a six-year-old's Christmas wishlist?
Let me share a brief story.
I was about to travel to Brazil, and my godson asked me, “Could you bring me a Marvel cap? Please. Ahh, I also want Captain America socks. I love the latest Top Gun movie and want to look like Tom Cruise. Please bring me his Rayban. And don’t forget I love games; I’d like a PlayStation 5 and a nice strawberry jam to eat while I play.”
Can you imagine that? It would be like the following image.
When I looked at my backlog that day, I realized my backlog was Christmas Wishlist from Marketing, Operations, Customer Service, Leadership, and other areas.
If you try to please everyone, you will end up pleasing no one.
Focus is fundamental.
2 - The Perfect User Stories
Are you a product manager or a story writer?
I wrote user stories so perfectly for many years that any software engineer could implement them without talking to me. Some even loved that. Yet, they didn’t know which problem they were solving.
When you write perfect stories, you will use the refinement to:
Clarify the solution
Define acceptance criteria
Estimate the task
You will not talk about the real problem. It’s better to write broken stories because:
You will talk about the problem it aims to solve
Improve the story collaboratively
Develop a shared understanding with software engineers
Focus on the collaboration, not on precise stories.
3 - Multiple Product Backlogs
How many backlogs does your team have?
I worked with teams with a backlog for features, another for bugs, and then one more for tech debt and design debt. I observed teams continuously talking about the multiple backlogs instead of focusing on their goals.
One product = one product backlog.
Everything that paves the way to create value should be in your product backlog. If you create multiple backlogs, you will develop silos as a by-product.
4 - The Product Manager Bottleneck
Some product managers develop a protective attitude towards the backlog. They block anyone else from creating items there. There is a reason behind this, but as a side effect, the product manager becomes a bottleneck.
Great product managers lead by context, not control.
The more you control the backlog, the less time you will have to learn.
Product management is beyond backlog management. You need to understand your opportunities, connect them to business objectives, and prioritize. You will struggle to do that if you’re a bottleneck.
5 - The Project Disguise
How do you populate your backlog?
Some teams have an idea, decompose it into multiple backlog items, and then separate the items into future sprints to clarify what gets done and when. Now, I ask you, does that look like product management or project management?
Product management is about uncovering what drives value and leading teams to realize that potential value. Yet, making that happen is messy because you don’t know what you don’t know. You cannot predict precisely what gets done and when. You need to continuously adapt the course according to what you learn.
6 - Long Live the Dinosaurs
What’s the oldest item in your backlog?
If you told me it was created two years ago, I’d say, “Long live the dinosaurs.” The older a backlog item is, the less relevant it becomes.
I understand many teams want to keep things in the backlog so stakeholders won’t be annoyed. Yet, outdated backlog items don't help anyone.
My recommendation is simple: keep the trash bin bigger than your backlog.
If something didn’t make it to your product 6 months after you created it, it’s good to go. Delete it if you can. Otherwise, archive it, but don’t keep it in the backlog. Context evolves, and it matters.
Whatever is necessary will be returned to your plate with the proper context. The new finds its space only when the old is removed.
7 - The Key to Feature Factory
When you look at your backlog, do you see features to implement or problems to solve?
Curiously, the first is the most common, while the second is rare. Sadly, focusing on features doesn’t mean maximizing value.
More features don’t mean more value.
When you focus on features, the work is done when you ship the product. Yet, you cannot guarantee that the desired outcome will be delivered.
When you focus on solving problems, the work gets done when you reach the desired outcome. You may try out multiple features before something works. Yet, your focus is clear. That’s why you can adapt.
Backlog assessment
Understanding the status quo is fundamental to transforming it. Please take a few minutes to reflect on the following questions:
Do your backlog items live forever, or do you dare to delete outdated ones?
Are your backlog items unrelated, or are most related to an overarching goal?
Does the size of your backlog scare you, or does it encourage you to discover the future and gradually bring new items?
When you look at your backlog, do you get confused, or can you quickly glimpse where you are going?
Are your backlog items related to fulfilling requirements or context to solving problems?
The more your answers are to the left, the more trapped you are in outdated backlog management. No worries! You’re not alone. I’ve been; it’s not funny.
Use the following Health Check to assess the sustainability of your product backlog. Do this with your team, share the results with your leadership, and then change one item at a time.
How to Manager Your Backlog to Innovate
The product backlog is the home of your product. How do you treat your home? You have different levels of cleaning, which are:
Daily cleaning: You do basic cleaning daily, such as making the bed, cleaning the toilet after yourself, washing the dishes after using them, etc., so your home doesn’t become a mess.
Frequent cleaning: Maybe once or twice a week, you take cleaning more seriously. You remove the dust, wipe the floors, wash the windows, etc., so your home still has good air to breathe and is cozy.
Special moments: On a few occasions, you take cleaning to a different level. You clean places you barely see, organize things for hours, throw away unused objects, etc. You may do that because you have a special dinner at home or your mom is coming, and you don’t want her telling you how “dirty” your home is.
There are three simple cleaning levels to ensure your home remains pleasant enough. Now, let me ask you a question: What would happen if you stopped cleaning daily? What if you didn’t remove the dust for a few weeks? It wouldn’t take longer to make your home so unpleasant that you don’t want to be there.
Now, apply the same thought to the backlog. If you stop cleaning it, you let it be. What would happen? It would probably be something you despise. That’s not what we want.
Let me give you my Extreme Backlog Cleaning Routine.
Weekly—Remove the Old: Once a week, you take a moment to declutter your Product Backlog. Identify all items untouched over the last three months and remove them. If you’re radical like me, delete them. Otherwise, archiving them would be good enough.
Bi-weekly—Keep the Goal Alive: Product backlog items should relate to an overarching goal. If they don’t, you’re getting distracted from what matters most. Every second week, go through your backlog items and remove everything unrelated to the goal you’re pursuing now.
Monthly—Keep it Beautiful: The backlog is your product's home, so make it so beautiful that you’re proud of it, and work becomes pleasant. Once a month, do the following:
Give a home to your items by assigning epics to them
Make it easy to read by simplifying the title of your items (User Story isn’t a title)
Remove or add information to placeholders. Don’t keep them distracting you
Key Takeaways
Backlog management should not take more than 5 hours a week, so you have enough time to focus on other matters.
Apply the extreme backlog cleaning technique to reduce distractions.
Be careful with cluttered and precise backlog items because you will struggle to understand what matters most.
A mindful backlog should pave the way to create value instead of maximizing features nobody uses.
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Nice article David. Agree with everything you say, just one exception. I think 5 hours a week in the backlog is a bit extreme. It’s too much. My own metric is “a few hours,” more than that and we’re spending too much time analyzing and not enough time building. I’m also very careful about deleting versus archiving – if there’s a decision (“not to build this feature” for example), I want that recorded. The backlog archive is documentation. So yes delete the fluff but not the history.