Get the most out of the Backlog Page

The Backlog page allows teams to sort, manage, and prioritize work before it is fully defined and ready to be put in an active Workflow. The Backlog offers powerful filtering to adjust the view to what matters most to you depending on how you are prioritizing work. Various Group By options allow teams to also bundle the Backlog for prioritization with sorting to shuffle Stories across Iterations for easy planning. 

 

Reviewing new Stories

Review your Backlog daily to ensure new Stories are prioritized accordingly and it's kept up-to-date with the most relevant information. Having a dedicated person or group on your team to review new Stories and ensure they have accurate priority relative to already prioritized work helps ensure that the backlog doesn’t get messy and overwhelming.

One way to make this process easier is to use Workflow States to make it clear what has been reviewed. For example, you could have Unreviewed and Reviewed or Planned and Unplanned states so that the reviewer can mark the Story has been looked at.

Workflow States

One way to make this process easier is to use Workflow States to make it clear what has been reviewed. For example, you could have Unreviewed and Reviewed or Planned and Unplanned states so that the reviewer can easily demonstrate the Story has been looked at. Admins of the workspace can update the available Workflow States via Workspace settings. 

 

Labels & Advanced Custom Fields

Another way to create a review process is to use Custom Fields or Labels. With this strategy, you can create a Label such as Reviewed or Unreviewed.  

This strategy makes sense if you have decided to stick to a simple Backlog States such as one Backlog state; however, there can be more human error remembering to add or remove a Label or Field than update a Workflow state.

Now you can sort this page by Labels so you could view everything reviewed or could use labels to find unreviewed Stories.


Similarly, you could use Advanced Custom Fields to create similar options such as Reviewed and Unreviewed.

Scheduling Work

Scheduling Stories to be worked on is another main function of the Backlog. Let’s look at how grouping and filtering can make scheduling an easy process. 

Adding Stories to Iterations

Adding Stories to upcoming Iterations is a great use of the Backlog page. There are a number of ways you could do this but this is a popular way to filter things down.

Filter the page by Epic so you can see the work in the Backlog for the work you are focusing on. Then click Group By > Iteration to sort by the Iterations upcoming. This presents a clear view of what work still needs to be assigned to an Iteration.

Click in-line to update the Iteration from the dropdown in the Iteration column, select multiple Stories and bulk edit to add them to an Iteration, or right click to see move to current/next Iteration.

Adding Priority

The best way to show priority is to use the Priority Custom Field. As part of the review process, we recommend assigning Priority. That way you can Group by > Priority and quickly go through to see what items should be worked on next.


This works well for Bugs. You can sort by Story type, Bug to filter your view to just the focused Epics, by priority that are Bugs. 


This makes it clear what needs to be picked up for review to be scheduled and what Bugs still need to be assigned a priority.

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