What is a backlog?
A backlog is the list of work you have not started. It holds ideas, bugs and requests you might do one day. It is a place to park them, not a promise.
Every team has one, written down or not. Most backlogs grow until nobody reads them. This post shows why that happens and how big a backlog should be. It is one of the plain explainers on our blog.
An example
Ana is a freelancer with three clients. One of them is a bakery that wants an app. The bakery owner sends her new ideas every week. Loyalty points. A dark mode. A new photo of the cakes. A way to order for Sunday.
Ana does not put these in To do. To do is for work she will start this week. So the ideas go in the backlog. On Monday she reads it, picks the two that matter most, and moves them to To do.
Once a month she goes through the rest. If the owner has not mentioned an idea in three months, Ana archives it. If it matters, it will come back.
How big it should be
A backlog grows because adding is cheap and removing feels risky. Each idea takes ten seconds to write down. Nobody wants to be the one who threw it away. So the list only grows.
A useful size is what you can read in ten minutes. For a small team, that is about 30 to 50 tasks. Past that, the bottom half is not a plan. It is a pile.
One more test helps. Will you start this in the next three months? If not, it does not need to be in the backlog. Archive it.
The top of the backlog feeds your next release. A release is a batch of work that ships together. What a release is explains how to pick one.
Common mistakes
- Treating the backlog as a to-do list. To do is what you will start soon. The backlog is what you might start.
- Sorting the whole backlog. Only the top ten needs an order. The rest can wait.
- Putting everything in To do. Then To do stops meaning anything. On a kanban board, that column should stay short.
- Never throwing anything away. A backlog of 400 tasks hides the five that matter.
How devBoard handles it
A new devBoard project starts with three columns: To do, In progress and Done. There is no backlog column at first, but you can add one. Each column has a category, and one of them is backlog. That way the app knows those cards are not started yet, even if you rename the column. When a task is dead, archive it. devBoard has no delete for tasks. An archived task leaves the board, and a saved view with the archived filter finds it again if you need it back. Boards in devBoard shows how columns work, and the guide to planning a release shows how to pull work out of the backlog.
Questions people ask
Should the backlog be a column on the board?
It can be. A Backlog column on the left works fine for a small team. If it grows long, it pushes the real work off the screen, so keep it short.
How often should we clean the backlog?
Once a month is enough for a small team. Take ten minutes and archive what nobody will do.
Is it safe to throw old ideas away?
Yes. A good idea comes back when it matters. In devBoard you archive a task rather than delete it, so you can still find it later.
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