Is ‘Backlog’ a dirty word?
And other etymological ramblings
This is a random one, but it recently occurred to me what a bad choice of word ‘backlog’ is: It’s loaded with counter-lean / agile connotations. But bare with me, it gets funnier…
Backlog
While backlog is defined as ‘work that needs to be completed’ the web says that it is synonymous to ‘logjam’ and ‘pile up’ which — independent from what the Urban Dictionary or the (NSFW link>) Big Lebowski may have to say on the matter — are for my taste for too close to bottleneck…
Stack rather than backlog?
In no way am I advocating to change the word, ‘a rose by any other name’ and all that, but what we really want (to think of) is a stack of work items (prioritised by value and dependencies) rather than a pile up.
In practice we do two things with it
we work the backlog top down, starting with the current top priority items and so on
we add items to the backlog as they arise inserting them at the relevant priority / dependency position, pushing all lower priority items down
Somewhere then, if you are managing your backlog well, along this stack, there is a floating line, indicating your (next) release. Anything above is in, anything below is out.
More random terminology ramblings
Maybe I am becoming too PC these days, but don’t get me started on the activity we call ‘grooming’ (thought at least that might just be considered bad taste rather than being contextually confusing).
Having said this, I know of a case where ‘war room’ was disputed as an acceptable term, teams got offended by being classified as pigs and chickens (I’m can understand why), and now I am wondering whether ‘tracer bullet’ should be replace by ‘steel thread’ (though in this case the metaphor works just too well).
Not sure, but while the DDD, DSL and ubiquitous language fans amongst us are all about getting it right within the domain, maybe we should also focus on process related language, or do we all need to loosen up a bit — and be it just for the ridiculousness of it?