What is a backlog?
The backlog is the ordered list of all work the team could do in the future. The top is small, scoped, and ready to pull into a sprint. The bottom is rough ideas that may never ship. Two flavours exist:
- Product backlog — everything across all sprints. Owned by the product owner.
- Sprint backlog — the slice the team committed to for the current sprint.
Backlog grooming (refinement)
Grooming is the ongoing work of keeping the backlog ready: writing acceptance criteria, splitting big tickets, dropping dead ones, ordering by priority. The top 10-15 items should always be sprint-ready.
Grooming happens before sprint planning, not during it. If your team is debating whether a ticket is even valid in the planning meeting, the backlog wasn't groomed.
What a healthy backlog looks like
- Top 10-15 items are sprint-ready (acceptance criteria + sized + understood)
- Items are ordered by priority, not date added
- Stale items (>3 months untouched) get reviewed or deleted
- Duplicates are merged
- No item is bigger than 13 story points without being split
Common backlog mistakes
- Hoarding — every idea gets a ticket. The list grows unmanageable. Delete liberally.
- No prioritisation — "everything is P1." Force-rank against business value.
- Grooming during planning — turns a 60-min meeting into a 3-hour one.