Clean up your backlog and boost your productivity

Backlogs are commonly used to keep track of various items, including ideas and client requests. The approach can quickly lead to problems, such as:

• Team people got fatigued by the giant list.
• Some items stay there for months or years making managing hard because it doesn’t make sense anymore.
• It makes planning harder since people take a look at the backlog to plan the next steps.

In order to revert that we need to be methodic, first, let’s define what characterizes a good backlog:

• It pictures the future of the business because on that resides the next steps.
• It contains only well-written tasks.
• It contains only updated tasks.
• It facilitates the development of the new cycle.

With that definition, we conclude that a backlog should not be an archive of files, should not be a place to record every single stuff or even note things your client told to you, it’s a place where well-written tasks leave, tasks that are expected to be done. If you look at some task in your backlog and you don’t see the perspective of ‘when that is going to be done’, consider removing it without hesitation.

So I’ll leave some tips to improve your backlog.

First of all, don’t ‘log’ new stuff. Start with older issues, if it’s been there for more than 6 months, throw it away, if you are afraid to do so, write the task down on a personal note or any other place, because the importance of a task is the perspective of DONE.

After cleaning up your workplace don’t let chaos come back. Keep things well maintained and contribute to your mental health and the productivity of your team.

I work at Ateliê, and programmers here have autonomy on the project, so anyone can talk directly to the client and contribute to managing topics.
But what if you can’t just do that? Maybe you are a software developer who could not just clean things up, in that case, don’t give up, talk to your team and project manager about this.

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