About the author: Panu Hällfors is a product leader with extensive experience leading product teams both small and large, across corporations and smaller companies. Panu is also the founder of Droplyn, the visual AI platform for pre-backlog management.
Your backlog is drowning in noise. Every stakeholder request, every "quick win," every half-formed idea gets dumped straight into your development queue. The result? Teams spend more time managing the backlog than building features that matter.
The solution isn't better backlog management—it's pre-backlog management and better structured discovery phase.
Any modern product management book that you read tells the same: keep your backlog small, focused, and actionable. We've seen that this is sometimes easier said than done; this playbook is our attempt to make it easier. We lay out a three-stage process you can follow to keep your backlog small, focused, and actionable while capturing every valuable insight in a structured pre-backlog system as part of your discovery phase.
The Case for Small Backlogs
A small, focused backlog isn't just a nice-to-have — it's essential for high-performing product teams. Here's why we think so:
- Faster decision-making — With fewer items to evaluate, prioritization becomes clearer and faster
- Reduced cognitive load — Teams can focus on execution rather than constant context-switching
- Increased velocity — Less time spent in planning meetings means more time building
- And especially: Less wasted time by the product management going throgh you "ice box" part of your backlog
The Pre-Backlog as a Strategic Buffer
Think of your pre-backlog as a strategic buffer between raw ideas and committed development work. It's where you capture, refine, and validate ideas before they enter your development pipeline.
The Two-Tier System
Pre-Backlog: Raw ideas, customer feedback, stakeholder requests, and strategic initiatives that need evaluation.
An item in pre-backlog can anything from a few words about "better customer onboarding" to a detailed 10-page research report into optimizing your backend processes. The key is, that it's raw input, to which you don't want to put too many format restrictions - it would be waste of time.
Backlog: Refined, validated, and prioritized items ready for development.
Your backlog is a queue for things to get done. Anything in your backlog should be clear enough so that the team can start considering and planning how to address it. Here, it cannot be just three words, but it also needs proper background of Why it's needed, Who needs it, and other information relevant for the implementation planning.
The Pre-Backlog Funnel Process
Effective pre-backlog management follows a funnel process that transforms raw insights into actionable development work. It's all about making the top part of the funnel super easy and avoiding wasting time; and then making sure that only the relevant stuff goes to your backlog. Here's how to set it up:
1. Capture All Insights (also repeating ones!)
Set up an easy way to capture everything: emails, messages, notes, surveys, feedback from teams and stakeholders. Make it so effortless that nothing gets forgotten — because let's face it, we're all a bit lazy, aren't we? Collecting all the inputs ensures that you a) don't miss anything and b) gather information about recurring themes and patterns, so that you can justify a priority of items which keep recurring.
2. Define Processing Cadence
Agree on who will process items in the pre-backlog and how often. This creates accountability and ensures nothing gets stuck in the funnel indefinitely.
- Assign ownership — Who is responsible for processing pre-backlog items?
- Set frequency — Weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly review cycles
- Time-box sessions — Especially if sessions are done in a team - keep processing sessions focused and efficient
3. Design Your Categorization System
Set up ways to categorize your pre-backlog for clarity. Choose categories that help you work fast, not ones that create more overhead.
- By priority — Critical enablers, low-hanging fruits, waste of time items
- By theme — Especially useful if you have multiple backlogs to push items to
- By status — Needs research, ready for evaluation, waiting for dependencies
- Keep an eye on these — Items that aren't backlog-ready yet but need monitoring (dependencies, regulations, time-triggered items)
4. Plan the process of moving items from Pre-Backlog to Backlog
Agree on a way and cadence to export items to your actual backlog. This should be planned in accordance with your cadence of pulling items from the backlog into active development — have the backlog contain enough, but only relevant items.
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Export criteria Set clear criteria for what gets promoted to backlog. You should at
least consider:
- Strategic alignment - does this support our product strategy and business goals?
- Problem validation - is this solving a real problem for real users?
- Business impact - does this have a positive impact on the business?
- Export cadence — How often do you review and promote items? Who is responsible for this?
- Quality gates — Ensure items are detailed enough for the team to start considering and planning how to address it. Do not over-specify the details, but add enough details to help the team to understand what we are doing here.
5. Avoid Double-Tracking
Once items are in your backlog, they should only be tracked there. Double-tracking in both pre-backlog and backlog is usually just a waste of time and creates confusion.
- Single source of truth — Each item lives in one place at a time
- Clear handoff — When items are promoted, they're fully transferred
- Archive pre-backlog items — Keep them searchable but remove from active management
And when life happens (aka. solving the most common complications)
And then there's life... We've seen how real-world product management comes with complications that can derail even the best pre-backlog setups. It's not always so straightforward to implement pre-backlog management "by the book".
However, here's our take on how to handle the most common challenges:
Challenge: Legacy Backlog Overload
Problem: Your backlog is already huge with leftover items from previous releases, but new priorities keep coming in.
Our solution: Time-box legacy work. Allocate 20-30% of each development increment to clearing old items, with the rest focused on new priorities. This creates a predictable path to a clean backlog.
Challenge: Regulatory and Compliance Requirements
Problem: Upcoming regulations require tracking and planning, and you feel you should keep them in your backlog to be ready.
Our solution: Create a dedicated "Compliance" category in your pre-backlog. Track regulatory items separately but use the same evaluation process. Tag them clearly so they're visible in planning but don't overwhelm your main backlog.
Challenge: Dependency Management
Problem: Many items have complex dependencies that force you to track them in your main backlog.
Our solution: Treat dependencies like regulations — track them in pre-backlog with clear dependency tags. Only promote items to backlog when dependencies are resolved or when you're ready to commit to the dependency chain.
Challenge: Small Development Items
Problem: Lots of small items that threathen to fill your backlog with too many items.
Our solution: Keep small items in pre-backlog until you can combine them into meaningful themes. Use AI to identify patterns and group related small items into cohesive backlog entries.
Challenge: Team Visibility Needs
Problem: Your team needs to see what's coming up, so they ask you to add everything in the backlog.
Our solution: Provide access to pre-backlog for team members as well - but do not over-complicate the process there. When they have the need, they will be able to check your pre-backlog - with their own responsibility - and most of the time, they'll be just fine with the raw ideas. Only add details to items when asked, or when you're about to export the item to your backlog.
Challenge: Stakeholder Pressure
Problem: Stakeholders want to see their pet projects "in the queue" and get frustrated when they're not in the main backlog.
Our solution: Give stakeholders visibility into pre-backlog with clear status indicators. Show them where their ideas are in the evaluation process and what criteria you're using to promote items to backlog.
Challenge: Long-term Planning Requirements
Problem: The organization needs long-term planning and forecasting, and people expect to see the plans in the backlog.
Our solution: Plan at the strategic initiative level, not the backlog item level. Create high-level roadmaps and tag pre-backlog and backlog items based on which strategic initiative they support. This gives you both strategic visibility and tactical execution.
Challenge: Multiple Contributors
Problem: Many people have the right to add items to backlog, and it keeps growing uncontrollably.
Our solution: Give everyone the right to add to pre-backlog, but keep tight control over what gets promoted to backlog. Make the promotion process deliberate and criteria-driven.
Challenge: Existing Backlog Cleanup
Problem: Your backlog is already too big, and cutting it down would disrupt current development.
Our solution: Import your current backlog into pre-backlog, then empty your main backlog. Only promote back the items that are truly ready for development. This gives you a clean slate while preserving all historical context.
Getting Started
Ready to implement a pre-backlog system? Start with these steps:
- Audit your current backlog — Identify what's truly understood by the team and ready for development
- Set up your pre-backlog tool — Choose a solution that fits your workflow and volume of incoming ideas/request
- Establish evaluation criteria — Define your criterias of what gets promoted to backlog
- Train your team — Make sure everyone understands the process
- Start your planned cadence — Begin with something, improve as you learn
The Bottom Line
A well-managed pre-backlog system transforms your product development process. You'll spend less time managing backlogs and more time building features that matter. Your team will be more focused, your stakeholders will feel heard, and your product will be more strategic.
Ready to stop wasting time on backlog management? Try droplyn for frictionless pre-backlog management with AI-powered processing and visual organization.