What is a backlog?
A backlog is the list of work you have written down but not started. In fenbs it is the To Do lane, and the healthiest thing you can do to it is delete from it.
Last checked
A backlog is the list of work that has been written down and not yet started: ideas, requests, bugs, things somebody said in a meeting. Its job is to be the one place a piece of work can wait so that it is not lost and does not have to be carried in anyone’s head. Its failure mode is the same as its job: it becomes the place work goes to be forgotten.
The one habit
Read it, regularly, and delete from it. A backlog of four hundred items is not a plan; it is an archive with ambitions. Anything you would not do in the next three months should go, and if it matters it will come back. The teams that get the most from a backlog are the ones whose backlog fits on one screen.
In fenbs
The backlog is the To Do lane. Next Up is what you have committed to, which is a different thing and deliberately a different lane. Every task in the backlog is a Feature, an Enhancement or a Bug with a priority from 1 to 10, so a backlog can be sorted by what kind of thing it is full of. An AI assistant on the board can be asked to read it and suggest what to delete — and, with a role that allows it, do so, signed.