We All Need our Broccoli: Rethinking Priorities in Your Backlog

As Product People, we fret about The Backlog. We groom it. We prioritize it. We haggle about if it should have points yet or not, if bugs belong there. It can become messy and unwieldy. Things get pushed to the mushy middle and forgotten about like last year’s birthday present from Aunt Matilda. We worry we don’t have Everything In the Backlog. We worry we have Too Much in the Backlog. Let’s face it - we probably spend as much time figuring out how to Deal with the Backlog as actually doing the work of dealing with the backlog.

So what’s a Product Person to do?

I have no magic wand. I cannot provide you with The One Crazy Thing You Can Do that will fix it all - poof! - like a Fairy Godperson from a Disney film. I can however, introduce you to a framework I used with one of my teams that allowed us to rethink relative effort and priority. It involved food and metaphors (so I was all in). Broccoli is involved. Yes really. But mostly it was about the conversation and the reframing that allowed us to, at least for a good long time, tame the Backlog Beast.

Join me (Anna) as I talk you through That One Crazy Thing my team did. It may or may not work for you - hopefully it will at least get us all cogitating on Learning New Ways to Stop Worrying and Love the Backlog.