From Roadmap to Product Backlog

Items on the roadmap are like groceries on your shopping list. They become effective only when really being worked on by teams which happens by turning them into items on the product backlog. As the nature of the backlog heavily depends on the delivery framework in use, we will only briefly touch on product backlogs here.

Near-Term Work Items for the Team

A product backlog is a list of the new features, changes to existing features, bug fixes, infrastructure changes or other activities that a team may deliver in order to achieve a specific outcome.

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It’s important to understand that the product roadmap and the product backlog are two different, yet strongly related artifacts:
  • While the product roadmap lists a number of product outcomes, the product backlog translates these into features which aim at delivering these outcomes.
  • While the product roadmap, as with quarterly rolling roadmaps, lays out a mid- and long-term strategy, the product backlog is more short-term and contains work items for the weeks and months ahead.
  • While parts of the product roadmap may live in the problem space, items inside the product backlog clearly describe potential approaches inside the solution space.
Depending on the framework used in product delivery, there might be different requirements for an item in the product backlog, such as whether or not it can be done in a single iteration. Also, backlog items come in a variety of formats, with user stories and user story maps being the most popular ones.
As a result, the product backlog is, e.g., a prioritized list of backlog items that goes into Scrum sprint planning or the backlog as the left-most column of a Kanban board. See Agile Frameworks for more details.

Nothing gets done by the team that isn’t on the product backlog. Conversely, just because an item is on the backlog does not guarantee it will be done — the selection of the items to be worked on is up for joint refinement and planning as part of the delivery process.

Further Reading

ProductPlan

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A product backlog is a list of the new features, changes to existing features, bug fixes, infrastructure changes or other activities that a team may deliver in order to achieve a specific outcome.

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From Strategy to Product Roadmap
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Process Overview
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Table of Contents

Part I: Introduction
Chapter 1:
Preface
Chapter 2:
The Four Key Risks
Chapter 3:
Focus on B2B
Chapter 4:
StartUp vs. ScaleUp
Part II: From Vision to Roadmap
Chapter 5:
Purpose & Vision
Chapter 6:
From Vision to Product Mission
Chapter 7:
From Mission to Product Strategy
Chapter 8:
From Strategy to Product Roadmap
Chapter 9:
From Roadmap to Product Backlog
Part III: The PM Process
Chapter 10:
Process Overview
Chapter 11:
Idea Collection
Chapter 12:
Problem Discovery
Chapter 13:
Problem Definition
Chapter 14:
Solution Discovery
Chapter 15:
Solution Validation
Chapter 16:
Delivery
Chapter 17:
Distribution
Chapter 18:
Optimization
Part IV: Life as a Product Manager
Chapter 19:
Archetypes of Product Managers
Chapter 20:
Traits of a Great Product Manager
Chapter 21:
Competency Assessment
Chapter 22:
Transitioning into Product Management
Chapter 23:
Business Acumen for Product Managers
Chapter 24:
Communication as a Product Manager
Chapter 25:
Implementing Customer Discovery – A Case Study
Part V: Product Leadership
Chapter 26:
From Individual Contributor to Product Leader
Chapter 27:
Onboarding New Product Managers