Product Backlog Detox

From January in every year it’s normally time to detox. Sure you can postpone such clean-up activities until spring so you can call it spring cleaning. Or you can do it between carnival and Easter as a part of the Lenting season. Time will come…

In the product backlog you may find awesome ideas, bugs, feature requests from customers, shitty ideas, things that got de-prioritized and pushed back out the current release or things that need more analysis work. Time to prune the backlog like trees and to clean out things that are no longer necessary.

Advantages

• The backlog becomes more clear
• Less waste
• Less loss of time because only relevant topics are left
• Focus on the things that are really important
• Chance to consolidate certain stories and summarize them.

Possible strategies

• Simply delete stories that have not been touched for a long time
• Delete incomplete stories which haven’t been touched for like 6 months
• Consolidate several small stories with low value to a story with higher value

What strategy do you pursue in grooming the backlog?

Photo by Vegan Liftz on Unsplash