How to Reduce the Product Backlog Size
While it’s normal that a product backlog changes, some backlogs grow too big and become overly long and detailed, which makes them difficult to update, prioritise, and refine. The following tips help you simplify such a backlog so you can manage with it more easily.
Split the Product Backlog
Faced with an overly long and detailed product backlog, investigate if it does describe one cohesive product. Over time, products can serve an increasingly heterogeneous market and provide a large number of different features, some of which may not be used by all users.
If that’s the case for your product, then reduce the product backlog size by unbundling one or more features and releasing them as products in their own right, like Facebook did with Messenger in 2014. The company unbundled the messaging functionality originally included in its Facebook mobile app and made it available as a stand-alone product.
To use this technique to make your product backlog smaller, create a separate backlog for the new product and move the unbundled features from the old to the new product backlog.
Reduce the Product Backlog Scope
Your second option is to limit the scope of your backlog. To do so, choose a clear, specific, and measurable goal for the next three to six months, for example, acquire x number of new users or increase engagement by y%. Then use the goal to focus your product backlog: Remove all backlog items that do not help meet the goal. While this approach may sound radical, it ensures that your product backlog is concise and focused. It avoids looking too far into the future, having speculative items on the backlog, and turning the product backlog into a wish list.
If you complement your product backlog with a product roadmap, you can do two things: First, you can use the upcoming roadmap goal to scope your backlog. Secondly, you can capture important backlog items that do not serve the goal as coarse-grained features on the roadmap (together with their appropriate goals). This way, they are not forgotten or lost. But don’t make the mistake of overloading your product roadmap with features and don’t add any epics or user stories to your product roadmap. Otherwise, the roadmap will become overly detailed and volatile.
Read On …
To read the rest of this article and access the remaining tips, please head over to my website: https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/how-to-reduce-the-product-backlog-size/
Learn More
You can learn more about effectively working with the product backlog by attending my Product Owner Masterclass and reading my book Agile Product Management with Scrum.
Source: https://www.romanpichler.com/blog/how-to-reduce-the-product-backlog-size/
