Idea Funnel Backlog
Prioritise and focus your backlog while keeping ideas fluid.
About the Idea Funnel Backlog Template
An idea funnel backlog can help you and your team prioritize a list of features, bugs, technical work, and knowledge building. These are elements you should identify and keep updated to make your product or service more functional.
Treat your idea funnel backlog as both a roadmap and backlog. The combination of a Kanban Board and backlog helps you and your team prioritize as you approach near-term or end-of-quarter dates.
Although you can work on a product backlog and 5-day design sprint process separately, this template conveniently combines the two artifacts.
What is an idea funnel backlog?
An idea funnel backlog allows product managers to convert their idea pool into a product backlog, to inform planned feature implementations or user stories.
Product backlogs typically comprise three layers:
Raw requests and ideas (sourced from customer support, product owners, or product teams)
User stories (converted from requests or ideas by a product owner, based on current product strategy or request popularity)
Planned state for user stories (these live on a Kanban Board)
An idea funnel backlog can help you pick new ideas to prioritize for your next sprint. Ideally, the funnel structure helps you turn a large number of ideas into manageable, relevant stories or features to implement.
Teams needing a framework to get out of a reactive sprint planning cycle or task-focused thinking can benefit from an idea funnel backlog. The structure helps teams focus on longer-term goals to gain predictability in tackling idea backlogs.
When to use the idea funnel backlog template
An idea funnel backlog can benefit product teams who need help:
Maintaining costs: queues of unvalidated ideas can often become costly, so product teams need to groom and prioritize backlogs regularly.
Focusing on high-value tasks: prioritizing your ideas leads you to work on user stories or features with potentially more significant impact — and minimizes ideas not being actioned.
Encouraging innovation: try to balance validating ideas with maintaining the potential value of anything behind the queue, and not forgetting anything going to the back of the queue.
How to use the idea funnel backlog template
Making your own idea funnel backlogs is easy with Miro's template. Get started by selecting the idea funnel backlog template, then take the following steps to make one of your own.
Start adding user stories or product features to your backlog. Click the Sticky Note icon on the toolbar or press “N” on your keyboard to enable the tool, to add more Sticky Notes. Don’t worry about prioritizing for this first step — your main goal is to add your team’s relevant ideas to the board as needed.
Give each of your ideas an age limit. For your user story or product feature backlog to stay relevant and timely, agree with your team on an expiration date (for example, three months). If an idea isn’t prioritized in the timeframe, it should disappear from your list over time.
Prioritize your “Must Do” tasks. On this default template, tasks can be organized by “Could Do,” “Should Do,” and “Must Do.” Does your team have their own way to describe and categorize user stories and features? Perhaps “Later,” “Soon,” “Next,” “Now”? Edit the text boxes with your preferred wording.
Add your most urgent or popular backlog items to the sprint area. Add your “Must Do” items to the sprint area on the board, and tackle them in order of “Next,” “Doing,” “Done.”
Continue to maintain your backlog and prioritize through rapid growth periods. This funnel is your idea management system: it keeps your team aligned and sharing a centralized place for tangible, validated customer feedback, prioritized product feature ideas, and committed product roadmap items for a development pipeline.
Get started with this template right now.
Burndown Chart Template
Works best for:
Project Management, Agile Workflows, Mapping
Whoa whoa whoa, pace yourself! That means knowing how much work is left—and, based on the delivery date, how much time you’ll have for each task. Perfect for project managers, Burndown Charts create a clear visualization of a team’s remaining work to help get it done on time and on budget. These charts have other big benefits, too. They encourage transparency and help individual team members be aware of their work pace so they can adjust or maintain it.
All-in-one PI Planning
Works best for:
Agile
The All-in-one PI Planning template streamlines the SAFe Program Increment (PI) Planning process by providing a comprehensive framework for teams to collaboratively plan and align on objectives and dependencies. It integrates essential elements such as PI Objectives, Team Breakouts, and Program Board, enabling teams to visualize, prioritize, and coordinate work effectively. This template empowers Agile Release Trains to deliver value predictably and efficiently, driving alignment and synchronization across the organization.
User Flow Template
Works best for:
Desk Research, Flowcharts, Mapping
User flows are diagrams that help UX and product teams map out the logical path a user should take when interacting with a system. As a visual tool, the user flow shows the relationship between a website or app’s functionality, potential actions a user could take, and the outcome of what the user decides to do. User flows help you understand what a user does to finish a task or complete a goal through your product or experience.
Research Topic Brainstorm Template
Works best for:
Desk Research, Brainstorming, Ideation
Coming up with a topic for a research project can be a daunting task. Use the Research Topic Brainstorm template to take a general idea and transform it into something concrete. With the Research Topic Brainstorm template, you can compile a list of general ideas that interest you and then break them into component parts. You can then turn those parts into questions that might be the focus for a research project.
Product Discovery Kick Off Workshop
Works best for:
Product Managament, Planning
The Product Discovery Kick Off Workshop template accelerates the start of product discovery initiatives. By facilitating collaborative workshops, defining objectives, and establishing timelines, this template ensures that product discovery efforts are structured and focused. With sections for defining user personas, articulating problem statements, and setting success criteria, it guides teams through the initial stages of product discovery, laying the foundation for successful product development. This template serves as a catalyst for aligning teams and kick-starting product innovation journeys.
UML Class Content Management System (CMS) Template
Works best for:
UML
The UML Class Content Management System CMS Template simplifies documenting and designing the architecture of a Content Management System. It allows for the creation of UML class diagrams to visualize the structure of a CMS. Teams can efficiently map out key classes and their interactions, such as how users create, manage, and publish digital content. The template's integration into Miro's collaborative platform allows for real-time teamwork, customization, and easy sharing of feedback. This streamlines the documentation process and is valuable for software development projects aiming to develop or refine a CMS.