4 Simple Steps to Clean Up Your Product Backlog

3 Rapid Backlog Estimation Methods to Supercharge Your Backlog Prioritization

Backlog management and clear prioritization are the keys to successful product management. This is why backlog management is a core competence of a Product Owner.

It happens so fast! Even if you are a very experienced Product Owner, your Product Backlog structure can get out of hand.

On the other hand, a clean product backlog will enable you to make decisions and prioritize more easily and argue them better with stakeholders, while at the same time it will help you to better implement your product strategy.

But don’t worry, I’ll show you

• 4 simple backlog management steps to significantly improve your backlog and
• 3 quick backlog estimation methods

you can use in such situations.

Let’s dive into it with the 4 Steps of cleaning up your Backlog:

• Step 1: Inspect the Backlog
• Step 2: Clean up the Structure
• Step 3: Choose a Reference Item and consider the Definition of Done
• Step 4: Re-Estimate the restructured Backlog

Step 1: Inspect the Backlog

The first step is to inspect the Product Backlog.

In an ideal case, the backlog looks something like this:

Idealized Product Backlog

The perfect Product Backlog looks like the one above, prioritizing one product goal at a time (green box) with different sections of Backlog Items. Each section represents a different type and quality of Backlog Items.

• The first section is reserved for a handful of refined small tickets with top priority. The items are prioritized with a system in mind and objectified with concrete, tangible numbers. They fulfill the Definition of Ready and are small enough to be planned in one of the next Sprints.
• The second section of the backlog consists of bigger, unready items. The difference to the tickets in the first section is that these items still need work to fulfill the Definition of Ready.
  Some of them might already have a rough…