A prioritized list of features, enhancements, and fixes that serves as the single source of requirements for product development, typically used in Agile and Scrum methodologies. Teams use it to align stakeholders, track progress, and adapt to changing requirements throughout the project lifecycle.
Product Backlog
Product Backlog is the ordered, evolving list of everything a team might do to a product - the features, enhancements, fixes, and technical work that make up the single source of requirements in Scrum and other Agile practice. It is not a frozen plan but a living queue, continually reordered as priorities and understanding change. The top of the list is what the team commits to next; the bottom holds ideas still taking shape.
- Prioritized - Items are ordered by value, risk, and readiness so the most important work surfaces first.
- Single source of truth - One list, rather than scattered documents, holds the outstanding work.
- Emergent - The backlog is refined continuously as the product and its market evolve.
- Estimated - Items carry sizing that informs planning and forecasting.
- Owned - A product owner is accountable for its content and ordering.
For an API product, the backlog is where I hold the pipeline of change to the contract and its ecosystem - new endpoints, versioning, deprecations, documentation, and governance fixes. Each Product Backlog Item becomes a deliberate change to an OpenAPI definition or its supporting artifacts, and the ordering of the backlog is effectively the API’s roadmap. Keeping it honest and prioritized is what lets a team ship an API as a managed product rather than reacting to whatever comes in.
Referenced on the API Evangelist blog
Where this standard shows up across sixteen years of my writing at apievangelist.com — how it fits into API design, governance, and the agentic turn.
I Like The Apicurio Road Map
2017-06-09
Gather Feedback For Your API With UserVoice
2013-03-05
