Glossary
What is a backlog? Definition and upkeep
The backlog is the ordered list of everything not yet started. What belongs in it, how it is sorted, and why an unmaintained backlog does harm.
The backlog is the ordered list of all work not yet started. The word that matters is ordered: a backlog is a sequence, not a collection. What sits at the top is next and described accordingly; what sits at the bottom is allowed to stay a vague idea.
What belongs in it
Anything that still creates work: features, bugs, technical tasks, research. What does not belong is anything nobody will ever do — the most common failure is a backlog as a graveyard, holding a thousand entries nobody has read in two years. A backlog you can no longer survey stops being prioritised and starts being searched.
How it is maintained
By refinement: regularly walking the top entries, resolving open questions, estimating in story points, splitting anything too large. An epic deliberately stays coarse until its turn comes. Whatever sits at the top should already carry its acceptance criteria.
Who sorts it
One person owns the order — in Scrum, the product owner. That is not an instrument of power but a way of avoiding a failure mode: when several people sort at once, everything ends up „high priority“ and the list stops saying anything.
In Zuuna
The backlog is its own view beside the board, ordered by dragging, with a separate refinement board for preparing work. From the sorted backlog you then plan the sprint.
FAQ
How large may a backlog be?
Large enough that you can still survey it. A workable rule of thumb: what nobody has touched in six months will not be done in the next six either — deleting it is more honest than leaving it there.
Does a Kanban team need a backlog?
Yes. Even without sprints it has to be clear what gets pulled next. Only the portioning into iterations falls away.
How is a backlog different from a To-do column?
The To-do column on the board holds what is committed for the current period. The backlog holds everything before that — unplanned, but sorted.