Originally written in French. Translated by AI — the meaning has been preserved, not the prose.
Short definition
The collective space holding the subjects several people are ready to work on together. It carries the action to be taken, not the memory of what has been thought, requested or refused.
Full definition
In ordinary usage from the agile methods, the backlog is the ordered list of everything left to do on a product — which in practice licenses dropping into it an idea, a customer request, a non-urgent defect or an exploratory thread alike.
In the articles on this blog, the word designates a tool for action and nothing else. Its perimeter is set by a rule of entry: a subject figures there from the moment it stops being an individual thought and requires the collaboration of a developer, a designer, a data analyst or support. What hasn't crossed that threshold lives elsewhere — the Product Manager's personal space, a base of signals, notes, a register of decisions and refusals. It is bounded, revised, and disposable: an item serves until delivery.
Layer added by "The Backlog Is Not a Dumping Ground: It's a Tool for Action" (2026-06-03).
Usage in the field
Prioritization, upkeep of the roadmap, preparing a daily, arbitration between defects and features, discussions about a team's load.
Synonyms and variants
Work queue · ticket list · product backlog · sprint backlog (the subset committed to an iteration).
Not to be confused with
- Customer signal — information coming from a customer, which is kept and connected without committing any work.
- Roadmap — a short view of the major subjects retained over a horizon, ordered by degree of commitment; it selects, where the backlog carries the subjects already ready to be worked on.
- Product memory — what the team knows about the product and its decisions, which survives delivery.
- Archive — preservation with no commitment to act; the backlog, by contrast, implicitly promises handling.
Examples
A subject requiring a feasibility study enters the backlog: it mobilizes a developer.
A three-line hunch dropped in "so as not to forget" doesn't enter it: it mobilizes no one yet.
Ambiguities / debates
Ordinary usage makes it a universal container — "at least everything is visible" — which turns it into an inventory and makes the queue illegible.
A second wobble: should there be one backlog per nature of work (product, technical, bugs, support, discovery) or a single one per prioritization space. Separation is convenient for filing and prevents comparing loads against one another.