Product Backlog
The requirements in the Product Backlog must be:
- Simple: expressed briefly, with one sentence for each, usually in user story format or similar.
- Estimated: the effort required to build each requirement has been estimated.
- Prioritized: ordered according to their importance to the customer or the person responsible for the list.
Description and characteristics
It is the prioritized list of the customer's needs, expressed as user stories. At the start of the project, it reflects the MVP (minimum viable product) or the initial vision.
- It is the inventory of features, improvements, technology, and bug fixes that must be incorporated into the product over successive sprints.
- It represents everything that the customer, the users, and stakeholders in general expect. Any work that the team must carry out must be reflected in this backlog.
- It is never considered complete; it is constantly growing and evolving. At the start of the project, it includes the requirements that are initially known and best understood, and it evolves as development progresses.
- Thanks to its dynamic nature, it reflects at all times what the product needs to incorporate in order to adapt to circumstances.
How it is built
- Before starting to iterate on the product, it is necessary:
- That the Product Owner has the vision of the business goal to be achieved, and shares it with the team.
- That the Product Backlog contains enough user stories to carry out the first sprint.
- It usually starts with the output of a "brainstorming" or "cross-fertilization" meeting, or an "Exploration" process (eXtreme Programming), in which the whole team collaborates, understanding and sharing the Product Owner's vision.
- The Product Owner keeps the backlog ordered by item priority. The highest-priority items are those that deliver the most value to the product or are, for some reason, most needed, and they determine the immediate development activities.
- The level of detail of the user stories in the Product Backlog should be proportional to their priority: the highest-priority ones must be detailed enough to be included in the sprint. Agreeing on a DoR can help.
- The Product Backlog items that can be brought into a sprint are called "ready" or "actionable," and they are the ones that can be selected at Sprint Planning.
Product Backlog format
Scrum prefers verbal communication or direct visualization over written communication. The Product Backlog is not a requirements document, but an information tool for the team.
If a list format is used, the minimum information usually included for each user story is:
- Description of the functionality/requirement, called a "user story."
- Priority.
- Estimate of the effort required.
And sometimes also a unique code or identifier for the story.
Depending on the characteristics of the project or the team, additional information may be included, such as:
- Notes.
- Validation criterion.
- Assigned person.
- Number of the sprint in which it is done.
- System module it belongs to.
Example
An example of what a Product Backlog format might look like:
Common mistake
Treating the Product Backlog as a fixed requirements document. The Product Backlog is not a scope contract: it is a living tool. If the Product Owner does not update it regularly (adding, removing, and reordering items as the product and the market evolve), it loses its role as a guide to real priorities and becomes a historical archive that the team ignores. The Product Backlog must reflect the best current knowledge about what needs to be built, not the knowledge that existed at the start of the project.
Resources
📄 Product Owner v.2.0 [in Spanish]Free download · Scrum Manager
🏦 Skill User storiesState of the art and development guide · Skill Arena
📄 Scrum Master v.4.0 [in Spanish]Free download · Scrum Manager
📄 Scrum Master en equipos con IA [Scrum Master in Teams with AI, in Spanish]Free download · Scrum Manager
See also
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