One of the essential things agile teams must know how to do perfectly is prioritizing urgent tasks. The development team and the product manager must always work together to guarantee a good quality product that gets delivered right on time.

To help in these tasks, people created a document called product backlog to help in your to-do list. It’s a tool designed to separate high-priority items from the rest.

The product backlog is directly derived from the product roadmap, a tool used by the entire team involved in a project to keep track of when the project progresses and its priorities. On the other hand, the product backlog is typically used just by the development team of a product or project. Another difference is that in the product backlog, the dev team is the one pushing the pace of it instead of the product owner.

Much more than just organizing the tasks by priority level, the product backlog can also help the development team to make a more organized and complete job, especially when the project manager thinks it out well. Another reason why creating a product backlog is indispensable for projects to keep their relevance is that these backlogs also help in approaching stakeholders.

The stakeholders will have suggestions for improvements and potential new product features. By doing this, you create a connection that can provide suggestions to improve your product and elevate sales numbers.

Here are the main groups that use the product backlog and the essential part of it for each one:

Team Member

For the team members, the most important information in the product backlog is the user stories and which story to work on next. Along with that, the backlog also helps them better understand the impact of their work on the overall progress.

Product Owner

For product owners, the product backlog is an important tool for many reasons, especially to keep track of the development process of the product’s features. With this information, the owners can do the necessary product backlog refinement and all the necessary backlog grooming.

Project Manager

As a manager, the most valuable information is the overall project process and its estimated end date. You might also be interested in the to-do list and the development of the project.

Stakeholders

For the stakeholders, only one piece of information is critical: When it will be ready. More than that, nothing interests this group, and they can’t acquire any other benefits.

Now it is time to learn how to build your own product backlog template effectively. More than just knowing what to include, you will also understand concepts like user stories and technical debt. 

These are important data featured in most product backlog examples available on the internet. Understanding them is a vital part of creating an effective template.

Build a Product Roadmap

Although they are not the same, creating one is the first step for your product backlog template. It is basically the foundation for the project. 

This item is important because the roadmap is basically a long-term plan for the project that will be turned into action by the developers. With it, it is easier to understand what needs to be changed and refined.

List the Items of the Product Backlog

Now it is time to list the product backlog items. Their priority doesn’t matter in this step.

This part will feature both the most important items and the more dispensable ones. Communicating with stakeholders and listening to users is also a great way to generate more ideas and items to include in this phase of the process.

Prioritized List

Here your document will begin to look like a well-organized product backlog. The product owner, along with the manager and other team members, will begin to sort the backlog items by their priority.

From longer-term items to near-term ones, they must follow a specific order to be effective. The criteria for this may vary depending on the kind of product, the iteration planning, and its due date.

Be sure to analyze your case to make the best list for your backlog items. It will directly impact the delivery time and the optimization of them.

Here is a suggestion for when prioritizing your items and tasks:

• Big Ideas - Less priority due to the time needed for refinement. 
• Complex and Important Ideas - Top priority items, normally sprint-sized and ready to be worked on.

Update Regularly

Your product backlog won’t work unless it is updated regularly. From the product owner to third-party people involved, everybody must write the latest updates as soon as possible.

The main reason is to make it easier for the team to evaluate their performance and the time needed for each user story. Updating doesn’t mean only completing items. Since it is a living document, you also need to be quick when discovering new problems that need to be worked on.

When searching for a product backlog example, you may find many different terms regarding the product backlog world. Here we will show the main ones and their meaning:

User Stories

This term, also referred to as “Feature,” is basically a function of the product. These user stories are the basic items of your product backlog and are usually suggested by stakeholders.

They are the main tasks you need to look at when doing the product backlog prioritization process. More complex stories are also referred to as epics sometimes.

Technical Debts

It is pretty similar to financial debt. In technical debt, the interest is often accrued when ignored.

To avoid this, the team members must stay organized. Doing small daily increments and keeping a good work pace can also prevent this from happening.

Knowledge Acquisition

The term regards all the information acquired, used to accomplish tasks in the future. It can be considered a desk or field research to gather the needed information. All the features that need to be studied will be assigned along with a knowledge acquisition task. Prototypes, experiments, and all these things can be knowledge acquisition in your product backlog.

The sprint term frequently appears when searching for backlog examples. Many people think that sprint and product backlog are the same, but they are not.

Sprint backlogs usually have a shorter deadline and are focused on fulfilling only the sprint objective. The sprint is nothing more than a subset of the product backlog.

When it comes to product backlog creation, there are tons of options available online. But the most recommended one is Microsoft Excel.

The software has an enormous set of features and tools to help you build any kind of product backlog. Along with that, it makes it possible for the team to access it wherever they are on almost any type of device, regardless of the operational system.

If you don’t have a Microsoft Office activation key, you can buy one at RoyalCDKeys for a considerably lower price when compared to Microsoft Store. By doing this, you receive all the software of the bundle and also save money.

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