Product backlog: tips for creation and prioritization

A well-prioritized agile backlog not only makes release and iteration planning easier, it broadcasts all the things your team intends to spend time on—including internal work that the customer will never notice. This helps set expectations with stakeholders and other teams, especially when they bring additional work to you, and makes engineering time a fixed asset.

A product backlog is a prioritized list of work for the development team that is derived from the product roadmap and its requirements. The most important items are shown at the top of the product backlog so the team knows what to deliver first. The development team doesn't work through the backlog at the product owner's pace and the product owner isn't pushing work to the development team. Instead, the development team pulls work from the product backlog as there is capacity for it, either continually (kanban) or by iteration (scrum).

In the Scrum framework, the Scrum product backlog is a structured and carefully maintained list used by the Scrum product owner to guide the development team’s tasks.

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Keep everything in one issue tracker–don’t use multiple systems to track bugs, requirements, and engineering work items. If it’s work for the development team, keep it in a single backlog.

A well-managed product backlog can bring numerous benefits to a development team. Some of the key benefits include:

• Improved prioritization: A product backlog helps to ensure that the most critical tasks are being worked on first.
• Increased efficiency: By prioritizing tasks based on customer feedback and business objectives, teams can ensure they work on the most valuable tasks.
• Better communication: A product backlog ensures everyone is aligned and working towards the same goals.
• Reduced waste: By prioritizing tasks based on customer feedback and business objectives, teams can reduce waste and ensure that they are not working on tasks that are not valuable.
• Improved customer satisfaction: By prioritizing tasks based on customer feedback, teams can ensure they deliver customers' desired features and functionality.

Overall, a well-managed product backlog is essential for agile product development. It ensures that teams are working on the most valuable tasks and that everyone is aligned and working towards the same goals.

A team's roadmap and requirements provide the foundation for the product backlog. Roadmap initiatives break down into several epics, and each epic will have several requirements and user stories. Let's take a look at the roadmap for a ficticious product called Teams in Space.

Since the Teams in Space website is the first initiative in the roadmap, we'll want to break down that initiative into epics (shown here in green, blue, and teal) and user stories for each of those epics. 

The product owner then organizes each of the user stories into a single list for the development team. The product owner may choose to deliver a complete epic first (left). Or, it may be more important to the program to test booking a discounted flight which requires stories from several epics (right). See both examples below. 

What may influence a product owner's prioritization?

• Customer priority
• Urgency of getting feedback
• Relative implementation difficulty
• Symbiotic relationships between work items (e.g. B is easier if we do A first)

Effective product backlog prioritization ensures that the most critical tasks are addressed first, balancing team autonomy with the product owner's demands.

While the product owner is tasked with prioritizing the backlog, it's not done in a vacuum. Effective product owners seek input and feedback from customers, designers, and the development team to optimize everyone's workload and the product delivery. 

Creating a product backlog is a crucial step in agile product development. It involves building a product roadmap, listing product backlog items, and communicating with the team.

A product roadmap is a high-level plan outlining the product’s vision, goals, and objectives. It serves as the foundation for the product backlog and helps ensure everyone is aligned and working towards the same goals. 

To build a product roadmap, define the product’s vision and mission. Then, identify the key objectives and goals that need to be achieved. Finally, break down the objectives into smaller, manageable tasks that can be added to the product backlog.

Once the product roadmap is in place, it’s time to start listing product backlog items. These items can include features, user stories, bugs, design changes, and technical debt. 

When listing product backlog items, include a clear description of each item and any relevant details, such as estimated time and resources required. It’s also essential to prioritize the items based on customer feedback, requests, and business objectives. This ensures the development team works on tasks that deliver the most value.

Effective communication is critical when creating a product backlog. The product owner should work closely with the development team to ensure everyone understands the product backlog and the priorities. The product owner should also communicate with other teams, such as sales and marketing, to ensure everyone is aligned and working towards the same goals. 

Regular meetings and updates ensure everyone is on the same page and that the product backlog is effectively managed.

Still need guidance? Check out the free product backlog template from Jira.

Backlog prioritization is essential for ensuring the development team focuses on tasks that deliver maximum impact. Here’s how to approach it:

Various backlog prioritization techniques, such as MoSCoW and weighted scoring, can help teams manage and order tasks effectively. The prioritization process involves regularly revising and realigning goals to adapt to a dynamic business environment.

• Identify features or fixes that will have the highest value for your users.
• Use customer feedback, surveys, or analytics to pinpoint priorities.

• Prioritize items that will generate actionable insights for the team or stakeholders.
• For example, testing a new feature early can save time and resources later.

• Balance your backlog by including quick wins and more complex, long-term projects.
• Weigh the effort-to-impact ratio to ensure resources are spent wisely.

• Identify tasks that must be completed before others can proceed.
• Streamline workflows by handling foundational work first.

Reliable tools that support backlog prioritization can streamline product development and enhance efficiency. While the product owner leads prioritization, involving the development team, designers, and stakeholders fosters a shared understanding of priorities. Regular discussions ensure alignment and improve decision-making.

Pro tip: Use prioritization frameworks like MoSCoW (Must-have, Should-have, Could-have, and Won’t-have) or weighted scoring to make objective, data-driven decisions. Teams can implement their own unique prioritization frameworks using the flexible prioritization feature in Jira Product Discovery.

Once the product backlog is built, it’s crucial to maintain it to keep pace with the program regularly. Product owners should review the backlog before each iteration planning meeting to ensure prioritization is correct and feedback from the last iteration has been incorporated. Regular backlog review, often called product backlog refinement in agile circles, ensures that tasks are aligned with stakeholder insights and prepares the team for the upcoming sprint (some use the term backlog refinement).

Once the backlog gets larger, product owners need to group the backlog into near-term and long-term items. Near-term items need to be fully fleshed out before they are labeled as such. This means complete user stories have been drawn up, collaboration with design and development has been sorted out, and estimates from development have been made. 

Longer-term items can remain vague, though it’s a good idea to get a rough estimate from the development team to help prioritize them. The key word here is “rough,” as estimates will change once the team fully understands and begins work on them.

The backlog serves as the connection between the product owner and the development team. The product owner can re-prioritize work in the backlog based on customer feedback, refining estimates, and new requirements. However, once work is in progress, changes should be kept to a minimum, as they disrupt the development team and affect focus, flow, and morale.

Pro tip: Once the backlog grows beyond the team’s long-term capacity, closing issues the team will never get to is okay. For future research, flag those issues with a specific resolution, like “out of scope,” in the team’s issue tracker.

Anti-patterns to watch for

• The product owner prioritizes the backlog at the start of the project but doesn’t adjust it as feedback rolls in from developers and stakeholders.
• The team limits items on the backlog to those that are customer-facing.
• The backlog is kept as a document stored locally and shared infrequently, preventing interested parties from getting updates.

Savvy product owners rigorously groom their program’s product backlog to create a reliable and sharable outline of the project's work items.

Stakeholders will challenge priorities, and that’s good. Fostering discussion around what’s important gets everyone’s priorities in sync. These discussions foster a culture of group prioritization, ensuring everyone shares the same mindset about the program.

A well-prioritized agile backlog clarifies what the team intends to spend time on, highlighting visible and internal tasks. The product backlog also serves as the foundation for iteration planning. All work items should be included in the backlog: user stories, bugs, design changes, technical debt, customer requests, action items from the retrospective, etc. This ensures everyone’s work items are included in the overall discussion for each iteration. Team members can then make trade-offs with the product owner before starting an iteration with complete knowledge of everything that needs to be done.

Pro tip: Product owners dictate the priority of work items in the backlog, while the development team dictates its velocity. This can be a tenuous relationship for new product owners who want to “push” work to the team. This article explains work-in-progress limits and flow.