If your product isn’t close to the end of its life, you have a backlog. That’s a reality for nearly every product owner. Even when the backlog isn’t neatly captured in Jira or Notion, it’s there: feature requests, bug reports, roadmap leftovers, technical debt, and stakeholder what-ifs.
The problem is that you can’t build all of it. Some things are too expensive. Some conflict with others. In addition, time, as always, is never on your side.
That’s why you need to prioritize certain items over others. In this blog, we’ll walk through proven product backlog prioritization techniques and show you how to actually use them—step by step—to move your backlog from deck to delivery.
What is a product backlog?
A product backlog is a prioritized list of all the work needed to support product development. It includes feature requests, bug fixes, infrastructure tasks, and technical debt—every work item that contributes to the product’s value.
In agile software development, the backlog is owned by the product owner, but the contents of the backlog aren't determined by the product owner alone. Other stakeholders (such as business leaders), the software development team, the product manager (if there's one), the design and UX teams, etc., are all involved in defining the backlog's contents.
The backlog isn't static. It changes over time, evolving continuously based on customer feedback, business goals, and team input. Product backlog items may be parts of a new product or may be updated to an existing one. Regardless of which case it is, each item in your backlog should be clear enough to estimate and actionable enough to build.
With a well-thought-out backlog, the product development team can plan each sprint, track progress toward the product vision, and focus on delivering outcomes.
The key to getting these things done, however, is to prioritize your product backlog effectively so that the team is always working on the right thing at the right time. Reviewing the backlog regularly to ensure that it stays aligned with changing priorities is also important.
What is product backlog prioritization?
Product backlog prioritization is the process of ranking and re-ranking items in the backlog to decide what gets done first and why. If a backlog is a to-do list, then backlog prioritization means sorting tasks on that list in order of imports. It's how decision-makers make sure that their day-to-day decisions facilitate the bigger goals of product delivery, customer satisfaction, and business value.
Prioritization helps determine what to build, when to build it, and how to allocate resources effectively, given the amount of work ahead. A prioritized backlog helps product teams stay focused when change requests pour in or technical constraints evolve.
But prioritizing the product backlog isn't a one-off activity. It's continuous. According to a 2020 industrial survey of 69 Polish Agile professionals, 74% of teams revisit prioritization during sprint planning, and 39% continue refining mid-sprint. These regular revisions become necessary as business goals shift, requirements change, or delivery risks emerge.
This constant recalibration relies on more than gut instinct. The survey also found that 88% of teams prioritize based on business value, while others factor in complexity, technical dependencies, and stability. This goes to show that when prioritizing a backlog, you can't consider a single metric. Backlog prioritization is a multi-criteria process that must balance scope, feasibility, and impact.
In practice, product backlog prioritization means comparing each work item by how much value it brings and how much effort it will take. Most teams use story points, simple scales, or tools like Jira to support that judgment. The goal is to bring the right items to the top, that is, those worth building now.
Who decides what to prioritize? According to that 2020 survey, 55% of final prioritization decisions are made by the product owner, but that decision is rarely solo. Input from developers, analysts, scrum masters, and customer reps is common, because it balances business needs with technical realities.
7 ways to prioritize your product backlog
In agile development, knowing what to build next isn’t always obvious. Teams deal with changing goals, inconsistent inputs, and backlogs that fill faster than they’re cleared. Product backlog prioritization techniques help teams decide what to build next when the list of possible work keeps growing.
Below are 7 ways to prioritize your product backlog. No single technique is applicable in every context, so sometimes, a combination of two or more techniques will deliver the most value.
1. Weighted shortest job first (WSJF)
WSJF prioritizes backlog items by dividing the cost of delay by duration. It’s a way to identify which backlog items should be tackled first by comparing how much value will be lost if they’re delayed versus how long they’ll take to complete.
This method supports effective prioritization by making trade-offs explicit and quantifiable. It works best when teams can estimate effort and understand the business impact of deferring a task. WSJF is especially useful during backlog grooming, particularly when preparing for the next sprint.
2. Kano classification
The Kano model groups feature into three types: essential (“must-be”), performance, and delight. It helps teams evaluate how each feature affects customer satisfaction and then use that insight to guide prioritization. In a German insurance company case study, teams used a Kano-based tool to classify stakeholder needs before feeding them into the shared backlog.
Once features were categorized, teams prioritized them by focusing first on unresolved must-be items, then weighing performance features against effort, and finally considering delighters if time and resources allowed. It’s a structured prioritization technique for balancing functional requirements with user expectations.
3. Stack ranking
Stack ranking is a technique where each user story is assigned a unique position in a single, prioritized list. No two items can share the same rank. To prioritize the backlog this way, teams evaluate items one by one, comparing them directly and deciding which should come before the other. The goal is to create a clear top-to-bottom order that reflects current priorities.
This approach works well when the backlog is small, and the trade-offs are obvious. But as the backlog grows, stack ranking becomes more difficult. When you use stack ranking, you're forced to compare and rank all backlog items against each other, regardless of type. That includes features (which add new value), bugs (which fix broken functionality), and technical debt (which reduces future maintenance pain).
These items serve very different purposes, so trying to put them into a single order (like saying, "This new login feature is more important than fixing this security bug") can be misleading or even risky. There's no shared scale between them, so you're often making comparisons without a clear basis.
However, when priorities are unclear, or the team isn't on the same page, stack ranking helps force the hard discussions. Just be ready to re-rank frequently as priorities or plans change.
4. Cumulative voting (100-dollar method)
The 100 Dollar Method is a prioritization technique that helps teams understand what stakeholders value most. Each person is given a virtual $100 to divide among a list of user stories or backlog items. They assign more money to the items they believe are most important.
When the results are added up, the total amounts show which items the group considers the highest priority. This method is useful when you need quick, structured input from multiple people. It works best when the items are clearly defined and tied to specific goals.
5. Category-based prioritization
Category-based prioritization is the opposite of stack ranking. Rather than score all backlog items in the same way, you determine the categories first, then apply the right logic to each. For example, rank bugs by severity, features by business impact, and technical debt by long-term risk. It’s a flexible, scalable prioritization process.
6. Redundancy filtering through clustering
A 2023 study showed that clustering algorithms could identify and group near-duplicate user stories, reducing the size of the backlog by 37%. The point is that you shouldn't try to prioritize a cluttered backlog. Remove duplicates and overlaps first. Whether you do this kind of filtering manually or with automation, it should be a routine part of your backlog refinement process. It helps teams avoid wasting time on redundant work and keeps the sprint backlog focused and manageable.
7. Role-based backlog integration
In the German insurance company case study, separate backlogs were created for different stakeholders. The backlog for each stakeholder focused on their area of responsibility, e.g., product features, technical infrastructure, or compliance. These separate lists were later merged into a single product backlog during structured discussions. This technique allowed the product team to prioritize items in different domains. The goal wasn’t equal say for everyone but to make sure the right people made decisions in the areas they knew best.
How to apply product backlog prioritization techniques (step-by-step)
Backlog prioritization techniques enable effective product management. However, applying any of these techniques isn’t about picking what sounds exciting. It’s about making clear, informed choices about what to work on next. We've found that hard to do when the backlog is cluttered, inputs are inconsistent, or team members are still guessing what users actually need.
To make sure we—and you—aren’t using prioritization techniques for the sake of it, we built a straightforward, step-by-step system to put them to proper use.
The steps below show how to prioritize a product backlog in the real world.
Step 1: Clean the backlog
Before you apply any prioritization technique, you need a backlog that’s worth prioritizing. That means you should:
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Delete items that no longer make sense or are now irrelevant.
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Merge duplicates.
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Rewrite vague items into actionable user stories.
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Mark unknowns for follow-up.
Example: You’re building a health-tracking app. You notice three tickets all related to syncing with Apple Health. You consolidate them into one clear story: “Allow users to sync step count and heart rate data from Apple Health." You also archive an outdated item about integrating with Google Fit, since its APIs are being phased out and will no longer be supported by June 2025.
Step 2: Sort the backlog into categories
Don’t pack everything into one big list. Bugs, features, infrastructure tasks, and technical debt serve different purposes and can’t always be judged by the same measure. A better approach will be to:
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Group similar types of work together.
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Label or tag them so they stay sorted as the backlog grows.
A 2020 case study (Herrmann & Paech) showed that large-scale agile teams use separate criteria for each type of work. For example, they ranked technical debt by long-term risk, not user value.
Example: You now have a clean backlog, including the Apple Health sync feature. You place it under “New Features.” You tag a crash-on-launch bug under “Bugs” and group a story about refactoring outdated API calls under “Technical Debt.” You’re not prioritizing yet. You’re making the list easier to reason through.
Step 3: Pick a technique that fits the situation
There’s no perfect method of prioritizing your backlog. You need to choose a technique based on the kind of trade-offs you’re making.
Here are some pointers:
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Choose WSJF if you can estimate the cost of delay and effort.
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Choose Kano if you want to focus on value to the customer.
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Choose stack ranking if you need a fast, forced order.
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Choose cumulative voting if many stakeholders and other teams must weigh in.
Data from that 2020 survey of 69 Agile practitioners confirms this: while many teams know advanced prioritization methods, most stick with simple ones that scale like basic scoring or MoSCoW.
Example: You’re trying to choose between syncing Apple Health, fixing the crash bug, and refactoring the old API. You choose the WSJF technique because you can estimate the effort and cost of delay, and the items vary widely in size and business impact.
Step 4: Estimate value and effort
Scoring-based prioritization techniques rely on two inputs:
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What the item will do for the business or user
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What work will it take to deliver
Teams usually estimate these on a simple scale, like 1 to 5, or T-shirt sizes. But scoring only works if the team agrees on what they’re evaluating. The problem, though, is that people often assign numbers to work they haven’t really understood yet.
In one study, researchers observed product teams at Pivotal Software for 29 months. One of their key findings was that teams didn’t jump straight into prioritization. They started with conversations, rough sketches, and tests—what the researchers called “sensemaking.” The goal wasn’t to sort the backlog, but to get clear on what was even being asked.
So if a story is still vague (like “Add device sync for Apple Health”), you don’t force it into a scale. You ask: What does “sync” mean? What data? For which users? Until the answers are clear, don’t score it.
Score only what the team understands. That’s how you get numbers you can trust, not just numbers you assigned.
Example: Your team estimates that syncing Apple Health will take 10 days and deliver high user satisfaction. Fixing the crash bug will take 1 day and is blocking 12% of users. Refactoring the API will take 7 days but won’t produce visible value immediately. You now have a rough cost/value picture to work with.
Step 5: Involve the right people
You need input from people who see different parts of the picture—product, tech, design, and support. Not everyone needs an equal say, but everyone’s context matters.
According to the Polish survey, developers (64%), analysts (62%), and even customer reps (39%) are commonly involved in backlog prioritization.
Example: The engineer explains that refactoring the API will prevent more bugs in the long term. The support lead notes that the crash bug is generating frequent complaints. A designer shares that Apple Health sync is one of the most requested features during onboarding interviews. You now have cross-role input to back up your earlier effort/value estimates.
Step 6: Apply the technique(s) and finalize priorities
Now, run the method. If you’re using WSJF, divide the cost of delay by estimated effort. If you’re using Kano, sort the items by user expectation. If it’s stack ranking, force comparisons until there’s a clear top-down order.
Once the scores or rankings are in, share the results with the team, and explain how the decisions were made: what was ranked high, what was dropped, and why.
Example: You calculate WSJF scores. The crash fix, though small, has a very high cost of delay. It comes out first. Apple Health sync, despite its effort, still ranks high because of user impact. API refactoring comes last since it’s important, but its value is harder to realize immediately. The priorities are now clear, and the team aligns on what’s going into the next sprint.
Step 7: Re-evaluate your priorities as changes
Prioritization isn’t a one-time move. A backlog reflects what the team knows at the time, and that can change fast.
In the 2020 Polish survey, 72% of respondents said they reprioritize their backlogs when requirements change. Other common triggers included:
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Changes in project scope ➡ 55%
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Shifts in business goals ➡ 54%
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Budget or schedule changes ➡ around 40%
So don’t assume the backlog you finalized in the last sprint still works. If conditions change, reapply the same prioritization techniques—WSJF, Kano, or stack ranking—and adjust the list before the next sprint, not halfway through it.
Example: You planned to implement Apple Health syncing next. However, the design team uncovered a UX flaw in onboarding, and new feedback shows users are dropping off early. You pause, re-estimate, and move the redesign ahead of syncing. You're not doing this because syncing became less important, but because your priorities are now clearer.
Conclusion
Backlog prioritization isn’t optional if you want your product team focused on the right work at the right time. Before you pick a technique to prioritize your backlog, make sure it matches the decision you need to make. Stack ranking won’t help if you're sorting different types of work. Cumulative voting won’t help if you’re the only one deciding.
And no matter what you choose, expect to reshuffle priorities when reality changes.
