Product backlog
The product backlog is a prioritized list of the features, requirements, enhancements, and product defects that the team may addressed in the future. It is one of the agile methodology artifacts. The product owner is responsible for prioritizing the product backlog items according to their value to the organization, with high priority requirements appearing at the top and low priority requirements appearing at the bottom. The backlog should evolve to reflect the most recent understanding of the product.
The Role of the Product Owner
The product owner is only responsible for the product backlog. In other words, he is the one who decides which backlog item must be more on top so the developers can take those items and work on them in the next sprint.
The item can be related to the functionality of the product or service, a need or objective of the stakeholders’ business, or a user need. The team must not consider the requirements that are not on the product backlog. The requirements that are in the backlog must represent the total scope of the project. The product owner must refine those items by the end of each sprint. He also must refine the product backlog after collecting stakeholders’ feedback.
The product owner must organize the items by priority. The developers must work on the items that are on the first row of the list. In this way, it maximizes the value delivered to the client. Like this, the items on the top must be more worked and have a more detailed description. This is to guarantee that there will be no doubts about how to achieve their objectives and how they must be performed.
Moreover, the backlog is never closed. In other words, he is in constant mutation, absorbing all improvements received by the users and clients. That is to say, the team is always changing the backlog items. As a result, items can leave the backlog on one side. And, on the other side, the team can add new items to the backlog, regarding the needs and sprint evolution.
Finally, the scrum team is normally the one who use this list. However, any framework or methodology can use it.