Made a list of some backlog gotchas and challenges for a friend.

Keep an eye out for these things. Without the right love, backlogs can cause more problems than they solve.

• Unclear sense of commitment level for a task or goal.
• To-do, to-consider, to-try, to talk about, to achieve? All valid in context
• Unclear distinction between problems to solve, solution ideas, guesses, and goals/measurements. Unclear distinctions between why, who, what, and how
• Inflexible to the idea of experimentation (multiple experiments w/one learning goal)
• Unclear relationships between items (nesting, siblings, etc.)
• “Project” vs. “product” issues. Is this a “project backlog”?
• Spec masked as backlog. Might as well write a spec :)
• Different scopes for prioritization (dumping ground, vs. ordered list)
• Overlaps with roadmap, user story map, one-pagers, and other artifacts
• “I’ll add it to the backlog” can be completely meaningless
• Inconsistent use of progressive decomposition
• Obscures multiple queues, classes of work, etc. Should be multiple queues (but prioritized in one list apples-to-apples)
• Pressure to solution vs. describing goals and JIT brainstorming. Can encourage premature convergence. Obscures the original objective, and decreases opportunity to contribute new ideas
• Easy to add items. Should add items only as fast as team finishes work
• Becomes dumping ground for notes, research, and reminders
• Quality should be constant priority … not a shuffle-able concern
• Does item align with team mission? How? Backlog != vision or mission
• People outside team can easily misinterpret backlog
• “The backlog” is just too simplistic for modern software product development