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Hi everyone, here is Ricardo Vargas, and this is the 5 Minutes Podcast. Today, I would like to talk about a topic that I know is basically a nightmare for everyone. It's the backlog and the challenge we face when our backlog goes up to infinity. It means you, you know, your backlog only grows. Let me just explain. Backlogs are the tasks and the actions you need to undertake in a project. This is a very common term used in agile projects that you need to do in order to deliver the project, and what happens most of the time you start a project with, okay, 30 items in the backlog, but then when you do the discovery, when you do a design thinking process, when you do whatever you need to move with your project, what happens? 30 becomes 50. You do ten, then it becomes 70, and you do ten more, and then it becomes 80 instead of reducing the backlog. Your backlog, you know, like skyrockets. It's like a virus. It's only multiplied. And this creates massive stress because you are trying to move on with the project. But it seems that you know you are building sandcastles; you build a castle, and suddenly, the water comes and destroys your castle. So let me give you three tips that I use, and there are personal tips that I try to use in my daily life. I know it's not easy, Okay?
First tip: accept your human condition, and that is why I'm saying this. Because honestly, the day you die, your backlog will not be empty. It's like you are trying to fight your inbox for your emails. You answer your answer. You answer. The more you answer emails, the more emails come to you. It's impossible to say, oh, I have zero emails in my inbox. Maybe you can have it for five seconds, and then suddenly something comes up. So you need to accept that because by accepting this, you do not try to fight against something that is impossible because life is complex, and projects are complex. But of course, just by saying this, you will say, Ricardo, this looks like much more self-help than a project management tip. So let me go to the second one. That is very fact-based and very practical. Prioritize, but not a normal prioritization. What I want to tell you is to do a radical prioritization and why the word radical means a lot because most of the time when we do prioritization, we often struggle to leave things out. To remove things from our backlog. To give the right priority. Because we think everything that is in the backlog is important. When I say radical prioritization, I'm saying what truly, truly matters in your project? What is not gold plating? You know what you are doing in your project that just may look and shine like gold, but it's not gold, or it's a scope creep of your project.
And how do I do that? I use a very simple method, and most of you probably know that it's urgent and relevant to a task. For example, if a task. So imagine that you put not urgent and urgent and, for example, not important and important. So first, if you go to the top right quadrant, you have urgent and important. These are the tasks you must do, and you must do them now. This will be the focus of your next sprint. But for those who are important and not urgent, you will say, all these I will do in the next sprint, or These I will do in the next week, or These I will do in two weeks from now. The third group is not important but urgent. You need to do something. It needs to be done, not what you need to do, but it needs to be done. But it's not important. This means delegate. Find someone else to do it. Take this out of your backlog and put it in someone else's backlog. Because this is not important, but someone needs to do it. And those who are not important and not urgent. Get rid of them. Get rid of them. They are irrelevant. And this drives me to the third point. It controls what you bring to your backlog. What happens? Put things in the backlog.
Let's take a physical representation. It's just taking a post-it note, right? And put it in the column of your backlog. Right. If you are using, for example, Kanban, this is easy. This takes you 30s. But to move from the backlog to complete may take two weeks. May take three weeks. So what is my suggestion? Do a radical prioritization when even considering something for your backlog. So before you put something in the backlog, make sure it's relevant. It's important. If it's not important, you don't even put on your backlog. You put it on someone else's backlog. And if you are not sure this is what I do and what I did, and explain it in my YouTube video about Kanban, you create a new column or a new area called Parking Lot. This area is a free-flow area, so if I want to remember something, I may need to add it to my backlog, but I'm not sure what I do. Instead of putting them on the backlog, I put them on this parking lot, and this parking lot can go to infinity. I don't care because this is just a repository of ideas, potential tasks, and everything that is in my mind around that project, and I move from the parking lot to the backlog. Those who I truly need to do so if I'm using Jira, if I'm using Asana, or something like that, I will put it in the backlog.
Those tasks are that are required. So, instead of getting your backlog to grow to infinity, you get your parking lot to go to infinity. But being in the parking lot does not mean that you need to do it. In all my projects, I do that. I have a parking lot. I have a parking lot; for example, in my personal life of ideas, I have a parking lot of books. I have a parking. I'm not saying I will read that book, but if I'm talking to you, for example, I meet you somewhere, and you give me a tip about AI in Project Management. What I do is take a note and put it in this parking lot. And every week, every other week, when I have time before going to bed, I go to that parking lot and say, do any of these 200 things make sense for me to be in my personal backlog for my next two weeks or my next? I do a plan every week, but I plan for next week. Yes or no? And if it's no, it's no. And this parking lot will never be empty. It will never be. Because, by concept, it will never be empty. But you control your backlog. So, most of the time, we put everything on the backlog. And then you become a victim of the pressure of moving from the backlog to complete. So you need to be mindful.
So just to wrap up, be aware that this is a normal condition of life. So, you know this is life. Life is far more complex than we think. And this is why we manage projects. Second, do radical prioritization. Not only a normal prioritization but a radical one. You need to cut things. One example I would like to show you is just for didactical purposes. So what do you prefer? Do you prefer to cut your arm or to cut your throat? You may say, oh no, I don't prefer to cut anything, but let's suppose you don't have this option. It's better to cut your arm than to cut your throat because if you cut your throat, probably your arm will become useless. So just think about that. This is radical prioritization. In the end, reduce the number of things on your backlog. Be very critical of what comes inside your backlog. And just my final tip: be mindful. Projects are not easy, and this is why we make our living out of them. Because if it was easy, we would not be leading it. Let's always keep this in mind because if it's easy, why are we doing that? Okay, someone else may do so. It's hard work, and we need to be aware of and prepare for that. I hope you enjoyed this podcast and see you next week with another 5 Minutes Podcast.
