What is a product backlog?
A product backlog is a scrum artifact that encapsulates the complete list of work that needs to happen as a part of an agile project. This includes features, feature updates, bug fixes and other technical work items that a team may accomplish. The entries in the scrum product backlog are prioritized in order of importance. These can be user stories or technical requirements. The product backlog is derived from the product roadmap and it’s requirements.
The product backlog is both an authoritative source of changes to be made to the product as well as a living document. Requirements in a backlog evolve constantly during the course of the project to ensure the product is competitive, useful and the right fit.
Our product backlog template is a simple and shareable tool to visually groom a product backlog. Conceptboard’s easy sharing features also enables the product owner to frequently work collaboratively with the development team or export the board as a PDF.
Advantages of a collaborative product backlog template
A collaborative product backlog template provides a high-level visual overview of all the work items. This makes it a great tool for stakeholder alignment. This also helps keep track of development time and ensure all work is accounted for.
An efficiently organized product backlog makes both release planning and sprint planning easier. Use our editable & shareable product template in order to create a product backlog that’s both easy to create and visualize.
How to use the product backlog template
Our template enables you to choose user stories from the product roadmap and order them in terms of priority. Each user story is broken down into tasks and subtasks and moved along the various columns depending on the stage of completion.
The tasks that belong to a user story can also color coded via digital sticky notes for easy visual clustering. In case your product backlog is in a spreadsheet, you can import your spreadsheet directly onto a board as sticky-notes.
The following steps outline how to create a product backlog in the quickest, most efficient way.
Step 1: Identify the epics
The product owner sits down with the product roadmap to identify epics that need to be prioritized. These epics are broken down into user stories that are then moved to the product backlog template in the story column.
Step 2: Prioritize user stories
User stories are prioritized by the product owner based on customer priority, ease of implementation or the importance of feedback. The most important stories are placed at the top so the team knows where to focus their resources.
Step 4: Identify the tasks
Each story is then broken down into tasks and subtasks. These are represented on the template along the horizontal axes. As and when these tasks are in progress or completed the sticky notes can be moved along the columns. Tasks from a user story are color coded.
Step 5: Share with your team
Conceptboard’s sharing feature makes it easy to share the template with the development team upon completion or to collaborate in real-time . Just click on the share button and invite all interested stakeholders into your board!
Product backlog refinement
Once the product backlog is built, it is important for product owners to consistently manage it in sync with the program. It needs to be reviewed periodically before each iteration planning meeting to ensure alignment on prioritization. It is also important that the feedback from the previous iteration has also been taken into account. This process of regularly reviewing is known as backlog refinement or backlog grooming and is pivotal to the success of the product being built.
For more information on other scrum ceremonies such as retrospectives and daily standups read our blog. Find out more about how Conceptboard helps your agile team seamlessly transition to remote.
