How to Optimize Backlog Management? 10 Helpful Tips
How to manage a product backlog correctly? This can be challenging even for the most experienced product owners.
We’ve found some useful tips in Hygger blog. All of them will be helpful in working with your product backlog effectively.
Set the right focus
Focus your backlog on the upcoming release as it’s a strategic tool where all product details, epics and user stories that have to be implemented are described.
Keep your backlog manageable
Sometimes the backlog may include 100+ items and look uncontrolled and hopeless. It’s quite logical that it’s not easy to say where the product is heading towards. Try to avoid this problem.
Apply a roadmap
Complement the backlog with a smart roadmap – a kind of basement for successful backlog management.
The roadmap will help to state the upcoming releases with their crucial goals or benefits.
Collaborate
The collaboration with the development team is the important aspect of backlog management. Involve your team members in the product backlog discussions. It will help to discover technical risks and dependencies.
Share the backlog with Stakeholders
Make it transparent to the Stakeholders so they can check the last status and provide useful feedback.
Do not forget about grooming
Your Product Backlog will be healthy if you regularly groom and refine it. Product grooming is critical in product management because this process increases the chances of creating a product that users really want and it keeps the product backlog up to date.
Look beyond user stories
User stories are crucial and they are surely required but they are usually not enough. Do not hesitate to consider the user interaction, nonfunctional qualities of the product, and the user interfaces and fix them in the backlog.
Review your roadmap
Review and adjust it regularly between every 3 weeks to every 3 months. It depends on how young your product and how dynamic the market is.
Prioritize
Prioritization is the key point. Addressing uncertain items early allows to test the ideas and learn how to continue.
Comparing the combination of Value and Efforts of each task will help you prioritize the tasks better and choose the most important tasks for development.
Visualize
You can simply use a paper-based backlog and put it on the wall. However, there are smart ready solutions for visualizing, for example, the Backlog Priority Chart in Hygger. The tool defines important and less important tasks.
Do you agree with such tips? What are your own secrets that help you to manage a backlog?