Product Backlog Template for Excel (Free Download)

Backlog is a term used in agile software development to describe a list of prioritized tasks, requirements or work items. The concept is used outside agile project management and can be found in various industries and workflows, such as project management, manufacturing and more. Use this free product backlog template for Excel to manage supply chain demands and avoid bottlenecks.

What Is a Product Backlog Template?

A product backlog template is a prioritized list of features, enhancements, bug fixes and other work items that need to be completed for a product. It serves as the single source of truth for all planned work in an agile development process, particularly in scrum methodology, though, as noted above, it can apply to other methodologies.

The product owner maintains and continuously refines the product backlog template. They work with stakeholders to ensure the most valuable and important tasks are prioritized. Each item in the backlog is called a product backlog item (PBI) and typically includes user stories, technical requirements or improvements. The product backlog ensures that development teams work on the most valuable features first, helping to maximize efficiency and deliver customer-focused solutions.

ProjectManager’s free product backlog template for Excel

Why Use a Product Backlog Template?

A product backlog template is an essential tool for organizing, prioritizing and tracking work items in a structured and efficient way. Providing a standardized format helps teams maintain clarity and consistency when managing tasks such as user stories, bug fixes and new features.

One key advantage of using a template is that it ensures work items are documented and prioritized, allowing teams to focus on high-value features that align with business goals. It also enhances transparency by giving stakeholders a clear view of upcoming tasks, making collaboration smoother between product owners, developers and other team members.

Additionally, a product backlog template improves efficiency by eliminating the need to create a new structure from scratch, allowing teams to spend more time on execution rather than organization. Streamlining backlog management keeps agile or any processes running smoothly and reduces confusion.

Gantt charts can help manage a product backlog better than a template by visually representing tasks, deadlines, dependencies and resource allocation. This leads to better planning, tracking and communication of the project’s progress. That’s why those managing product backlogs use project management software.

ProjectManager is award-winning project and portfolio management software with robust Gantt charts that visualize the product backlog items as tasks on a timeline making it easier to see the overall project scope and timeline. Our Gantt also links all four types of task dependencies and identifies the critical path to sequence work logically. Scheduling tasks, resources and costs create a realistic schedule and can prioritize tasks. Plus, set a baseline to track progress in real time and identify potential delays or issues earlier. Get started with ProjectManager for free.

Gantt chart in ProjectManager to help manage project backlogs — ProjectManager’s Gantt charts help manage product backlogs. Learn more

Who Uses a Product Backlog Template?

A product backlog template is used by various team members and stakeholders involved in the development and management of a product. It serves as a central tool for organizing and prioritizing tasks, ensuring that work progresses efficiently. The following is a list of key users.

Product Owners: Responsible for managing and prioritizing the backlog to align with business goals and customer needs
Scrum Masters: Facilitate backlog refinement and ensure the team follows agile principles
Development Teams: Use the product backlog template to understand and execute tasks based on priority and requirements
Project Managers: Oversee backlog progress to track deliverables and ensure timelines are met
Stakeholders (Executives, Clients, End-Users): Provide input on backlog priorities to ensure product features align with business objectives

By using a product backlog template, these roles collaborate effectively, ensuring that development efforts remain focused and value-driven.

When to Use a Product Backlog Template

A product backlog template should be used whenever a team needs a structured and organized way to manage and prioritize work items for a product. It is especially useful in agile and scrum environments but can also benefit other project management approaches. Here are some examples of when to use it.

Starting a New Product or Project: Helps define initial requirements, features and tasks in an organized manner
Managing Ongoing Development: Keeps track of new feature requests, bug fixes and improvements in a dynamic and evolving list
Prioritizing Work in Agile Sprints: Ensures the team works on the most valuable tasks first by refining and ranking backlog items
Enhancing Team Collaboration: Provides a shared reference for developers, product owners and stakeholders to align on priorities
Scaling a Product: Helps manage a growing list of requirements and ensures a structured approach to continuous development

Using a product backlog template ensures teams stay focused, organized and aligned with business objectives, leading to more efficient and effective product development.

How to Use a Product Backlog Template

A product backlog template is a structured tool to manage and prioritize work items efficiently in agile project management. It helps teams track tasks, features and bugs while ensuring that development efforts align with business goals. Each template component provides crucial details that enable teams to organize their work effectively. Those components are as follows.

Backlog Item ID: A unique identifier assigned to each backlog item for easy reference and tracking
Type of Backlog Item: Specifies whether the item is a user story, bug, technical task or feature request
Description: A brief explanation of the backlog item, outlining what needs to be done
Priority: Indicates the importance of the item, helping the team focus on high-value tasks first
Story Points: A relative estimate of the effort required to complete the item, often used in agile planning
Status: Shows the current progress of the backlog item (e.g., To Do, In Progress, Done)
Sprint: Identifies which sprint the item is assigned to, ensuring proper scheduling in agile iterations
Assignee: The team member responsible for working on the backlog item
Acceptance Criteria: Defines the conditions that must be met for the item to be considered complete and accepted

By consistently updating and refining the product backlog template, teams can maintain clarity, improve collaboration and ensure smooth project execution.

Free Backlog-Related Templates

The product backlog template is only one of over 100 free project management templates for Excel and Word that cover all aspects of managing projects across methodologies and industries. Here are a few that can help with product backlog.

Agile Sprint Planner Template

Open this free agile sprint planner template in ProjectManager to plan, organize and track tasks within a sprint. It helps teams define sprint goals, assign work, estimate effort and monitor progress. By using a sprint planner template, teams can ensure efficient sprint execution, improve collaboration and maintain focus on delivering high-value work within the sprint timeframe.

Product Roadmap Template

Download this free product roadmap template for Excel and use it to outline the vision, timeline and key milestones for a product’s development. It helps teams and stakeholders align on priorities, track progress and communicate the product’s direction. Using a product roadmap template enables better planning, coordination and transparency across teams.

Task Tracker Template

Use this free task tracker template for Excel to organize, monitor and manage tasks efficiently. It helps teams and individuals track progress, set deadlines, assign responsibilities and prioritize work. A task tracker template allows teams to improve productivity, stay organized and ensure timely completion of tasks.

How ProjectManager Helps Manage Product Backlog

Templates aren’t ideal for managing product backlog. The product backlog template is more a quick fix than a real solution. That’s because templates are static documents. They must be manually updated and are not designed for the collaboration that managing product backlog demands. As noted above, this work is better suited to project management software.

ProjectManager is award-winning project and portfolio management software that helps to organize, prioritize and track backlog items efficiently. Our flexible software can be used no matter which methodology is chosen to manage the project. We’ve already mentioned how Gantt charts help with sprint planning, scheduling backlog items and managing timelines efficiently, but there’s more.

Execute Tasks With Customizable Workflows

Our collaborative software has multiple project views that go beyond Gantt charts. There are task lists, sheet and calendar views. But most users will gravitate towards our kanban boards that define the stages of backlog management, such as to do, in progress and done. This allows for easy tracking of item status.

Sprint teams can also work together and manage their backlog as well as plan sprints. Product owners get transparency into their work, which allows them to spot bottlenecks and resolve them by reallocating resources to stay on schedule. There are also automated workflows to streamline tasks and task approval settings to maintain quality.

Track Backlog Progress With Dashboards and Reports

To ensure work is moving forward as planned there are a couple of features to use. For a high-level overview of the project to gain insights into backlog progress, team workload and spirit performance, toggle over to the real-time project or portfolio dashboard. There’s no setup required. It automatically collects live data and displays it on easy-to-read graphs and charts that show time, cost, workload and more. Customizable reports go deeper into the data, whether workload, variance, timesheet and more metrics. Each can be filtered to show specific data points or share more general information with stakeholders to keep them updated.

Product Backlog Template