Collaboration & Process › Agile & Delivery Process

Backlog

The prioritized list of work that hasn't started yet.

Also known as: product backlog, work queue

A backlog is the list of work the team might do but hasn’t started. Items are ordered, so the most valuable or most urgent ones sit at the top, and the team picks from there. Items can be features, bug fixes, technical tasks or research.

Backlog (ordered)
1. Let customers save a card for next time
2. Fix crash on the order history page
3. Migrate session storage to Redis
4. Investigate slow search on large catalogs

The order is a judgement call that someone has to own. In Scrum, the Product Owner orders the backlog. In other teams, a product manager or the team does it together.

The classic mistake is letting the backlog grow without limit. Old items that nobody plans to do bury the ones that matter and make the list hard to trust. Review it regularly and remove or archive what’s no longer relevant. Items near the top should be clear enough to start, which is the job of backlog refinement.