Sharath Kuruganty

Product people, what are your best practices for managing a backlog or roadmap?

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Ashley Cheng
Map your ideas with customer feedback/requests, this helped us to weigh the impact and urgency as well as evaluate how we're solving customer needs and if that fits the strategic direction. But first you do need some customer insights, which you can check out this tool for collecting different types of feedback http://usersnap.com/
Ivan Aristov
hm u r very interesting people!
robiul haque
Focus on goals, not features, Think product strategy first, Create a narrative your team buys into, Leave the details for the product backlog, Stay flexible and many more.
Rony Rom
Write everything that comes to mind, let it sit for a couple of days, get rid of what doesn't make sense anymore, talk about the remaining ideas with someone else and narrow it down
Isabel Nyo
The best practice is to have a system that allows work to flow in the right direction towards an impactful outcome. Let me share with you an outline of what this system looks like. It is broken down into three parts. It’s based on an OKR (Objectives and Key Results) system that is widely used amongst tech companies in Silicon Valley like Google. Top-level Goals Key Results Tasks List Then go by the following cadence. Top-level Goals are created yearly. Key Results are reviewed quarterly. Tasks List is updated monthly. Tasks List, therefore, serves as your To-Do list while making sure that you are only putting an effort into activities that are aligned with my top-level goals. You may check out the system I’ve personally used here on Product Hunt - I name it the Creator System but it's good for businesses too https://www.producthunt.com/post... I’ve populated the system with relatable goals, key results and tasks, as well as great resources for creators. You can see the outcome of the system by checking out my social media and website.
Samona
Oh, this question is really interesting for me too. Personnaly I wait for answers
Dan Gusz
The Basecamp strategy of not have a backlog (https://basecamp.com/shapeup/2.1...) is intriguing to me. I agree with the book that backlogs get stale and your team ends of spending a tremendous amount of time keeping things organized that may be out of date. Do others follow this methodology?
Ritvik Varghese
I think FigJam is a great tool for this
Pavel Kukhnavets
A roadmap in product management serves as a visual bridge connecting the company’s vision with the tasks required to lead that brand to the market. With its help, your development team will be able to better understand how their work contributes to the bigger picture, helps to make more intelligent prioritization decisions, and assists in persuading stakeholders. A well-prepared roadmap will demonstrate all your initiatives related to launching a new software solution. If you are looking for a intuitive roadmap template, consider GanttPRO template https://ganttpro.com/roadmap-tem.... It will help you to organize different components that go into your software solution launch.
Steve Saper

Great discussion! After years of wrestling with backlogs that grew faster than we could ship, here's what finally worked for me:

The game-changer was switching from manual prioritization to AI-assisted backlog management. I used to spend every Friday night until 11 PM moving tickets around, trying to connect them to strategy. Sound familiar?

Now I use a combination of:

1. Weighted scoring (as @michael_mitrakos mentioned) - but automated through AI that analyzes each ticket against our strategy

2. Continuous pruning - AI flags items that have been sitting for 30+ days without movement

3. Strategy alignment checks - Every ticket gets scored on strategic fit, not just urgency

We're actually launching PM33 on Product Hunt this Sunday (Sept 29) - it's an AI copilot specifically built to solve this backlog nightmare. It connects to Jira and literally runs on autopilot to keep your backlog aligned with strategy.

The best part? It takes 30 seconds to set up, not 6 weeks like traditional tools.