One of the most difficult tasks of a software manager is to take stock of their backlog.
What needs to be pruned?
What needs more data?
What needs to be turfed?
What is valuable?
What is duplicated and needs to be escalated?
An organized team has a decent backlog. You don’t need to be quoting ticket numbers and requests, but when you open it, it’s organized, it’s clear. The value proposition of what is in there makes sense.
What you want to avoid is having a backlog that is bloated and filled with unknowns. When this happens, the team won’t want to go near it, they’ll want to avoid it and chances are they will miss something, something key that might help them with what they are doing now.
It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does need to be useful.
