Difference Between Product Backlog and Spring Backlog in Agile Methodology

In this post i am sharing what is product backlog and spring backlog and difference between them in agile methodology.

The product backlog is a priority list of user requirements, use cases to be done in order to create, maintain and sustain a product. Product Owner owns the product backlog,(s)he is the one who prioritize it based on the customers feedback or business value. All work items related to a product/project, ordered by a Product Owner.

Product owner makes sure that content of product backlog “user stories” are defined in detailed level

The product backlog acts as an input to the sprint backlog when comes to functionality

There are also bugs/issues, epic, user stories and themes are included in the product backlog

To put it short: 

The product backlog is the wish list for the product for the whole lifecycle. It defined with its detail nature what to be implemented.

Requirements never stop changing, so as a Product Backlog is a living artifact.

Sprint backlog is an output of a sprint planning meeting.

The sprint backlog is a list of tasks identified by the Scrum team to be completed during the Scrum sprint.Sprint backlog is a subset of product backlog

. During the sprint planning meeting, the team selects some number of product backlog items, usually in the form of user stories, and identifies the tasks necessary to complete each user story. Most teams also estimate how many hours each task will take someone on the team to complete.

In Sprint backlog, scrum team works on how the user stories would be implemented in a sprint by dividing it further into tasks and estimating it.

Assuming Product Backlog has stories: 1, 2, 3, 4 , 5 and 6. The team decides to do stories 1,2 and 4. As during sprint planning team realized that there still some question which is not answered well by the Product Owner, so they decided not to include the user story no: 3 and jump to user story no:4, which was defined well.

Sprint backlog is owned by the Development Team and contains what and how it get’s delivered

Lastly in sprint backlog team implementing (converting) the most prioritized product backlog items into working software. For each iteration (sprint) the team creates a new plan, based on what is in the top of the Product backlog when starting the sprint.