{"head":{"title":"What Is a Product Backlog? Definition and Example | OceanLab","description":"A product backlog is the ordered list of work still to do on a product. What goes in it, who orders it, an example and the mistakes that make it useless.","canonical":"https://oceanlab.in/glossary/backlog"},"crumbs":[{"name":"Home","path":"/"},{"name":"Glossary","path":"/glossary"},{"name":"backlog","path":"/glossary/backlog"}],"slug":"backlog","term":"Backlog (product backlog)","aka":["product backlog"],"category":"Running a build","short":"The ordered list of everything still to be built or fixed in a product, with the most important work at the top.","body":[["The Scrum Guide calls the product backlog an emergent, ordered list of what is needed to improve the product, and the single source of work for the team. In practice it holds ",{"href":"/glossary/user-story","text":"user stories"},", bugs, technical work and research tasks."],["Only the top of the backlog needs detail. Items near the top are small, estimated and have ",{"href":"/glossary/acceptance-criteria","text":"acceptance criteria"},". Items further down can be one line, because they will change before anyone works on them."]],"why":["A backlog makes trade-offs visible. When a new idea arrives, it goes into the list and someone decides what it is more important than. Without one, priorities live in chat threads and the loudest request wins, which is how ",{"href":"/glossary/scope-creep","text":"scope creep"}," starts."],"example":["A logistics team has 140 backlog items. The top ten are ready for the next ",{"href":"/glossary/sprint","text":"sprint"},": proof-of-delivery photos, an offline retry for failed uploads, and a fix for a timezone bug. Route optimisation sits at number forty, with one line and no estimate, until the team learns more."],"inBuild":["On a time and materials or embedded engagement the client usually owns the order of the backlog and the engineers work from the top. Someone on the client side has to make those calls each week."],"mistakes":[["Treating it as a wish list that only grows. Close items that will never be built."],["Detailing everything up front. Effort spent on item eighty is usually wasted."],["Having two backlogs, one for the team and one for the business, that never match."]],"related":[{"href":"/glossary/user-story","label":"User story","detail":"A short description of a feature from the point of view of the person who needs it, and why they need it."},{"href":"/glossary/sprint","label":"Sprint","detail":"A fixed time box, one month or less and often two weeks, in which a team builds and shows a working piece of the product."},{"href":"/glossary/product-roadmap","label":"Product roadmap","detail":"A plan showing what a product team intends to build over the coming months, and the goal behind each step."},{"href":"/glossary/scope-creep","label":"Scope creep","detail":"The slow growth of what a project must deliver, without a matching change to its time or budget."}],"tools":[],"links":[{"href":"/embedded-engineers","label":"Embedded engineers","detail":"OceanLab engineers working inside your team."},{"href":"/software","label":"Software by industry","detail":"Systems we build per industry, with guides and tools."}],"sources":[{"title":"The Scrum Guide (Schwaber and Sutherland, 2020)","url":"https://scrumguides.org/scrum-guide.html","checkedAt":"2026-10-25"}],"legal":false,"updatedAt":"2026-10-25"}