| title | Use backlogs to manage projects |
|---|---|
| titleSuffix | Azure Boards |
| description | Learn about how to plan, track, and organize user stories, features, and bugs using backlogs and multiple teams in Azure Boards. |
| ms.custom | boards-backlogs |
| ms.service | azure-devops-boards |
| ms.assetid | 28C02AE8-CF8D-4B6E-8301-F46A5622E6C4 |
| ms.author | chcomley |
| author | chcomley |
| ms.topic | overview |
| monikerRange | <= azure-devops |
| ms.date | 12/22/2025 |
[!INCLUDE version-lt-eq-azure-devops]
With backlogs, you can plan your project by adding user stories or requirements to your product backlog. With your plan in place, you can start driving code development efforts.
If you're a project administrator, see Configure and customize Azure Boards, which shows you how to define area and iteration paths and customize your work item types. When you create a project or add a team, Azure Boards automatically creates a backlog. Each team has access to their own product, portfolio, and sprint backlogs. For more information, see About teams and Agile tools.
An Azure Boards backlog is a prioritized list of work items that guides your development team's effort. A backlog helps manage project scope and facilitates effective communication and collaboration throughout the software development lifecycle.
Use backlogs to do the following tasks:
::: moniker range="<=azure-devops"
- Define user stories, product backlog items, or requirements
- Reorder your backlog
- Add details and estimates to your backlog items
- Bulk update
- Drag items to a sprint
- Map backlog items within a hierarchy
- Review the hierarchy or portfolio of work assigned to multiple teams
- Forecast work
- Display rollup progress, counts, or totals
::: moniker-end
[!INCLUDE note setup backlog]
Backlogs present work items as lists. A product backlog represents your project plan, the roadmap for what your team plans to deliver. It also provides a repository of all the information you need to track and share with your team.
In Agile methodologies, a portfolio backlog lets you group and organize your backlog into a hierarchy. You can display high-level initiatives, epics, or projects that your organization plans to work on over a longer period of time. These initiatives are often too large or complex to fit in the scope of a single team's backlog. They require coordination and planning at a higher organizational level.
:::image type="content" source="../work-items/media/about-agile/view-backlogs.png" alt-text="Screenshot of Boards Backlogs.":::
[!INCLUDE note add backlog]
Each backlog is associated with a team and the team configuration settings determine the work items that appear on the team backlog. The team administrator does the following tasks for their team:
- Select the Area Paths that are active for the team. Only work items assigned to these area paths appear on the team's backlog.
- Set the default Area Path and Iteration Path used when defining work items from the team backlog.
- Select the Iteration Paths that are active for the team.
- Determine which backlog levels are active for the team.
- Define how bugs get treated, as requirements or as tasks.
For more information, see the following articles:
- Define iteration (sprint) paths and configure team iterations
- Define area paths and assign to a team
- Select backlog levels
- Show bugs on backlogs or boards
[!INCLUDE tip configure backlog view]
Question: Can you define a backlog configuration that multiple teams can subscribe to? Answer: No. Each team controls their own team settings and backlog configurations independently.
::: moniker range="azure-devops"
Because each user can configure their own Column Options and View Options, there's no way to configure a common backlog view for all teams. Also, there's no default column options that can be set for each team.
::: moniker-end
::: moniker range="< azure-devops" Because each user can configure their own Column Options and View Options, there's no way to configure a common backlog view for all teams. You can, however, define the default column options for all team members by editing the process configuration. To learn how, see Process configuration XML element reference, Set default columns. ::: moniker-end
Build your project plan by creating a backlog of work items. These items represent the features, requirements, user stories, or other work to complete. Portfolio backlogs provide support for organizing work in a hierarchical fashion. They help track major product initiatives or scenarios that rely on many stories or requirements. Different types of work items help you track different types of work, such as user stories, tasks, bugs, and issues.
:::image type="content" source="media/overview/gs-planning-define-stories.png" alt-text="Diagram titled Define stories conceptual image of tasks."::::::image type="content" source="media/overview/gs-planning-organize-backlog.png" alt-text="Diagram titled Organize backlog conceptual image of tasks."::::::image type="content" source="media/overview/gs-planning-manage-bugs.png" alt-text="Diagram titled Manage bugs conceptual image of tasks."::::::image type="content" source="media/overview/gs-planning-manage-issues.png" alt-text="Diagram titled Manage issues conceptual image of tasks.":::
Where you add or move the items on the page determines the sequence of items on each backlog. For more information, see Reorder your backlog.
As you drag items within the backlog list, a background process updates the Stack Rank (Agile and Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) processes) or Backlog Priority (Scrum process) fields. The system uses these fields to track the relative ranking of items on the product, feature, epic, or other portfolio backlog. By default, these fields don't appear on the work item form.
:::image type="content" source="media/create-backlog/cyb-order-backlog.png" alt-text="Screenshot showing how to reorder work items.":::
Don't use the bulk modify function to change the value of the backlog priority field. While you can assign a value to these fields, you assign the same value to all items that you select for bulk edit.
The preferred method for bulk edit is to use multi-select to move items to the top, bottom, or specific position within the page. If you must edit one of the backlog order fields in bulk to get a large number of work items in the priority order you want, use Excel. You can export a query that contains the backlog items, update either the Backlog Priority or Stack Rank fields, and then publish your changes.
Backlogs are designed to display work that corresponds to a Proposed, In Progress, or Resolved category state. When you complete work and its state enters a Done, or Closed state, it falls off the backlog view. You can always create a query to view completed work, or view the Recently completed pivot from the Work Items page. For more information, see View and add work items.
In general, you display all items that are in the In Progress category state, which corresponds to the Active and Committed states. To focus on work that is proposed but not in progress, you can toggle the backlog view to turn off In Progress. This toggle is useful when forecasting your product backlog.
If your backlog is missing items, check whether the In Progress view is turned off. For more information, see Workflow states and state categories.
When you have many initiatives your teams are working on, you might want to group the work according to these initiatives. By defining features and epics, you can group your work into a three-tiered hierarchy consisting of epics, features, and backlog items.
For example, here the Customer Service team organized several backlog items under two features and one epic.
::: moniker range="<=azure-devops"
:::image type="content" source="media/overview/customer-service-backlog-parents-on.png" alt-text="Screenshot of Backlog that shows parents and multi-team ownership.":::
::: moniker-end
[!INCLUDE velocity]
[!INCLUDE display rollup]
When you have several teams, your hierarchical views can show items that belong to other teams.
Your team's product backlog lists only those items whose area path matches items assigned to your team. If you show parents, you see the parent epic of the features and backlog items, even if another team owns the epic or feature.
::: moniker range="<=azure-devops"
Other team-owned items appear with an information icon :::image type="icon" source="../../media/icons/info.png" border="false":::.
:::image type="content" source="media/multi-ownership/customer-service-backlog-parents-on-s155.png" alt-text="Screenshot of backlog items and parent items owned by other teams.":::
Tip
Add the Node Name field as a column to identify the area path/team associated with the work items.
::: moniker-end
For more information, see Define area paths and assign to a team.
Here's another example that shows the Epics backlog for the Management team. Drilling down, you can see all the backlog items and features, even though they belong to one of three different teams: Customer Service, Phone, and Web.
::: moniker range="<=azure-devops"
:::image type="content" source="media/multi-ownership/management-team-backlog-epics-s155.png" alt-text="Screenshot of view Epics and child items owned by other teams.":::
::: moniker-end
From these views, you can reparent items that you own and items other teams own. You can't reorder items that another team owns.
This organization enables management teams to focus on high-level features and epics, and development teams to focus on just the backlog items they're responsible to deliver. For example, you can create a team structure similar to this one with two management and three development teams. For more information, see Create or add a team.
:::image type="content" source="media/ALM_OB_MultiTeam_C.png" alt-text="Diagram shows backlogs and multi-team ownership with a division between management and development teams.":::
For more information about hierarchical team and backlog structures, see Manage your product and portfolio backlogs.
Important
You have the flexibility to establish child links with work items from different projects. However, if the processes differ between projects, the hierarchy isn't visible on the backlog for those child items that reside in the separate projects. Nonetheless, you can view all of the associated child items directly on the work item form.
All backlogs and boards support dragging to reorder and reparent work items. Updates made to one team's backlogs and boards are reflected in other team backlogs and boards that share the same area path. You might need to refresh the page to view the changes.
You can only use dragging to reorder or reparent work items assigned to area paths selected for your team. When the Parents view option is enabled, work items might appear on your backlog that your team doesn't own. Anything that appears with the :::image type="icon" source="../../media/icons/info.png" border="false"::: information icon can't be reordered or reparented because another team owns it.
:::image type="content" source="../plans/media/config-teams/information-message-owned-by-other-team.png" alt-text="Screenshot of information message on team ownership.":::
Sprint backlogs and Taskboards only show the last node in a same-category hierarchy, called the leaf node.
[!INCLUDE describe leaf node]
You can use the following controls to change or filter your product backlog view.
Important
If you turn the In Progress control off, items that are in the Active, Committed, or Resolved states or in the In Progress category workflow state don't appear in the backlog. For more information about category workflow states, see About workflow states in backlogs and boards.
::: moniker range="<=azure-devops" For more information about using each of these controls, see Configure your backlog view. ::: moniker-end
:::row::: :::column span=""::: Icon or Link :::column-end::: :::column span=""::: Control :::column-end::: :::column span="2"::: Function :::column-end::: :::row-end:::
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:::column span="":::
Backlog
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:::column span="":::
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Switch to backlog view
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::: moniker range="<=azure-devops"
:::row:::
:::column span="":::
Analytics
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Switch to Analytics in-context reports
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::: moniker-end
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:::image type="icon" source="../../media/icons/backlogs.png" border="false":::
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Backlog selector
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Switch backlog view
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::: moniker range="<=azure-devops"
:::row:::
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:::image type="icon" source="../../media/icons/view-options-icon.png" border="false":::
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View options
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:::column span="2":::
- Turn Parents on/off (Not available for top-level portfolio backlog)
- Turn Forecasting on/off (Only available on product backlog)
- Turn In Progress items on/off
- Turn Completed child items on/off
- Show Mapping (Not available for top-level portfolio backlog)
- Show Planning
:::column-end:::
:::row-end:::
::: moniker-end
:::row:::
:::column span="":::
:::image type="icon" source="../media/icons/filter-icon.png":::
:::column-end:::
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Filter
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Turn filtering On/Off
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:::image type="icon" source="../../media/icons/blue-gear.png" border="false":::
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Settings
:::column-end:::
:::column span="2":::
Manage teams and configure team tools
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:::image type="icon" source="../../media/icons/full-screen-icon.png"::: / :::image type="icon" source="../../media/icons/exit-full-screen-icon.png":::
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Full screen
:::column-end:::
:::column span="2":::
Enter or exit full screen mode
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:::image type="icon" source="../media/icons/expand_icon.png"::: / :::image type="icon" source="../media/icons/collapse_icon.png":::
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Expand/Collapse
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Expand or collapse one level of the tree hierarchy
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:::image type="icon" source="../../media/icons/actions-icon.png":::
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More commands
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- Set column options
- Create Query
- Send email
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:::row-end:::
Note
Even if you have the "Show Parents" option turned on, the Create Query and Email :::image type="icon" source="../media/icons/mail_icon.png"::: controls only list items at the currently selected level.
As a member added to the Contributors group of a project, you can use most features provided under Boards or Work. Users with Basic access have full access to all features. Users with Stakeholder access are limited to certain features. For more information, see Stakeholder access quick reference.
For more information about permissions and access, see Set work tracking permissions and Stakeholder access quick reference.
To add users to a project, see Add users to a project or team.
[!INCLUDE add portfolio backlogs and boards]
[!div class="nextstepaction"] Sign up for Azure Boards