Within

agile project management Agile management is the application of the principles of Agile software development and Lean Management to various team and project management processes, particularly product development. Following the appearance of '' The Manifesto for Agile So ...

, product backlog refers to a prioritized list of functionality which a product should contain. It is sometimes referred to as a

to-do list Time management is the process of planning and exercising conscious control of time spent on specific activities—especially to increase effectiveness, efficiency and productivity. Time management involves demands relating to Employment, work, I ...

, and is considered an 'artifact' (a form of documentation) within the

scrum Scrum may refer to: * Autozam Scrum, a microvan and pickup truck sold in Japan by Mazda * Line of scrimmage, line separating football teams before a play * Media scrum, an impromptu press conference, often held immediately outside an event such a ...

software development framework. The product backlog is referred to with different names in different project management frameworks, such as ''product backlog'' in scrum, work item list in disciplined agile, and option pool in

lean Lean, leaning or LEAN may refer to: Business practices * Lean thinking, a business methodology adopted in various fields * Lean construction, an adaptation of lean manufacturing principles to the design and construction process * Lean governmen ...

. In the scrum framework, creation and continuous maintenance of the product backlog is part of the responsibility of the

product owner Scrum is an agile team collaboration framework commonly used in software development and other industries. Scrum prescribes for teams to break work into goals to be completed within time-boxed iterations, called ''sprints''. Each sprint ...

. A sprint backlog consists of selected elements from the product backlog which are planned to be developed within that particular

sprint Sprint may refer to: Aerospace * Spring WS202 Sprint, a Canadian aircraft design *Sprint (missile), an anti-ballistic missile Automobiles *Alfa Romeo Sprint, automobile produced by Alfa Romeo between 1976 and 1989 *Chevrolet Sprint, a rebadged v ...

. In scrum, coherence is defined as a measure of the relationships between backlog items which make them worthy of consideration as a whole.Scrum Glossary , Scrum.org
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Outline

The agile product backlog in scrum is a prioritized features list, containing short descriptions of all functionality desired in the product. When applying the scrum or other agile development methodology, it is not necessary to start a project with a lengthy, upfront effort to document all requirements as is more common with traditional project management methods following the

waterfall model The waterfall model is a breakdown of developmental activities into linear sequential phases, meaning that each phase is passed down onto each other, where each phase depends on the deliverables of the previous one and corresponds to a speciali ...

. Instead, a scrum team and its product owner will typically begin by writing down every relevant feature they can think of for the project's agile backlog prioritization, and the initial agile product backlog is almost always more than enough for a first sprint. The scrum product backlog is then allowed to grow further throughout the project life cycle and change as more is learned about the product and its customers. A typical scrum backlog comprises

features Feature may refer to: Computing * Feature recognition, could be a hole, pocket, or notch * Feature (computer vision), could be an edge, corner or blob * Feature (machine learning), in statistics: individual measurable properties of the phenome ...

, bugs, technical work and knowledge acquisition.

References

{{software-eng-stub Computing terminology Agile software development