Creative Team Challenges of an Extensive Product Backlog
Reduce Backlog Bloat to Enhance Product Development Team Efficiency
What Is a Product Backlog?
A product backlog is a list of work items development teams must complete to deliver a product. Backlog items are prioritised based on their importance and relationship to the product roadmap and requirements. Prioritising tasks gives a clear understanding of what to address first, and developers take on work according to their capacity and ability to deliver them effectively.
Why Keep the Backlog Small?
Maintaining small and easy-to-manage backlogs should be a primary goal for product teams. Overloaded backlogs can lead to issues such as:
- Wasting time searching for items
- Taking longer to prioritise
- Encountering duplicates
- Ineffectively tracking progress
In this article, I discuss the challenges designers face due to deprioritised items in a large development backlog.
Example
Imagine a scenario where a large backlog has created a one-plus-year gap between design and development. In this situation, outdated research, design, and documentation can become problematic when items are eventually prioritised and acted upon:
Pre-Development
- Invalid Research Insights: Solutions may require re-validation as consumer behaviours and anticipations of ‘good design’ evolve.
- Revisiting Designs: When collaborating with business analysts and developers to create requirements, the same designer may struggle with forgotten behaviours, interactions, and scenarios.
- Handover Challenges: A new designer taking over may need more information to support business analysts and developers, slowing down the process.
- Updated Collaboration Processes: Changes in development collaboration may lead to updated or new working methods, such as revised handover processes.
- New Accessibility Guidelines: Additional documentation may be needed to ensure development readiness.
Post-Development During Visual Quality Assurance (VQA)
- Forgotten Criteria: Acceptance criteria and ticket scope may no longer be on my mind.
- Time-Intensive Familiarisation: Designers and developers may spend significant time reacquainting themselves with behaviours, interactions, scenarios, spacing, states, type styles, and other related elements.
Tips for a Smaller Development Backlog
- Avoid Low-Priority Items: Keep the backlog focused on high-impact tasks.
- Product Owner Collaboration: Delete invalid tickets and maintain a manageable backlog.
- Periodically Review: Ensure the backlog is current and relevant.
- Separate Creative Tasks: Avoid adding design tasks to the development backlog.
Summary
Large backlogs can result in longer development cycles and team frustration due to a lack of delivery. Designers enjoy seeing their work released and real users engage with it — it’s part of the thrill of the job. By maintaining a lean and prioritised backlog, teams can ensure smoother workflows, faster development cycles, and improved morale. Addressing the issue of large backlogs is crucial for maintaining a positive and productive team environment.
Happy refinement!
