The agile todo-list.

The backlog should be a pretty familiar concept to most agile practioneers. Although it most commenly used in Scrum, all methods have some notation of a backlog. The product backlog is simply the team's todo-list. Some teams prefer to eliminate backlogs in favor of Kanban.

Typical traits of the backlog

• Each item on the backlog is expressed in a user story, or other simple requirement terms.
• The order of priority are the items are top-first, bottom-last.
• Priority is maintained by the Product Owner. Sometimes also business points are set on each task.
• The team is responsible for estimating each item's complexity (not using hours, but Gummy Bears).
• Each item consists of several tasks that can have an attribute of "hours remaining". This if for producing the burndown-chart.
• Each Sprint planning eats a manageble number of items off the backlog and assigns them to the sprint.

Weaknesses of the backlog

• It usually builds up a long tail of items that are never done.
• It is often misunderstood to be a place for technical tasks as well, but items that focus on quality tend to be pushed down by the business side.
• Backlogs are not nurtured as much as they should be, meaning estimates are not remade, duplicate tasks are not removed, etc.
• It can be hard to integrate the backlog with existing project management toolkits (GANNT charts, etc)
• Priority can loose its connection to value. It's important for the product owner to define values and measure these (see Evo), and maintain priorities accordingly.

Resouces

• Scrum - Scrum for beginners presentation
• http://www.infoq.com/presentations/prioritizing-your-product-backlog-mike-cohn