Is Single Product Backlog the Answer?

In an organization, they decided to set up ONE backlog to manage all of the works across teams. The idea is that all of the teams won’t have their own backlog and only work on the items from one shared list.

The reason behind this approach is that

• The leadership feels the lack of visibilities about the work progress
• There is challenge to prioritize the work across the organization

With the single backlog approach, they believe that they can force the ruthless prioritization through the strict ranking in one list, and they can trace the work status across the hierarchy of the work-breakdown structure in a centralized list.

Single product backlog is a good practice which has been included in LeSS. It is recommended because LeSS establishes the operating model around a clearly defined customer centralized product. All the other recommended practices are established based on. The single product backlog means ONE product!

If we do have a clearly defined product, one backlog will make more sense because it gives the whole story of what the product we are going to build. It also make sense to set up priorities strictly based on the value of the features for one product.