Your Backlog Has a Hierarchy Problem
ProdPad blog (undated, fetched 2026-09-08).
Summary
The flat backlog is a structural failure, not a clutter problem. When "replace the payment system" and "add a button to this page" sit in the same list as peer-level items, every prioritization conversation has to start from scratch — because no hierarchy says whether you're comparing apples to oranges, or oranges to aircraft carriers.
The piece opens with a Head of Product describing their backlog as "a graveyard with a search bar": 400+ items accumulated over two years, all tagged "ideas," from multi-quarter platform bets to vague sentences pasted out of Slack. Every sprint became a ritual of scrolling, arguing, and picking based on whoever made the strongest case that week.
The diagnosis: a flat backlog implies every item deserves the same kind of evaluation. It doesn't. Different-altitude work requires different stakeholders, time horizons, risk assessments, and evidence thresholds. Under flat conditions, teams fall into three dysfunctional patterns — volume-based prioritization (noise beats strategy), recency bias (the backlog becomes a queue), and false equivalence in scoring (RICE produces a number that looks like rigor but is "fiction dressed up as analysis").
The fix borrows Klaus Leopold's flight levels (strategic / coordination / operational) and maps them to three backlog tiers: objectives (where are we going), initiatives (what problem, what outcome), and ideas (how might we solve it). Prioritization happens at the right altitude — initiatives against initiatives, ideas against ideas within a parent initiative — so comparisons become like-for-like.
Two supporting moves: a two-backlog principle (a product/opportunity backlog upstream of delivery, separate from a committed delivery backlog), and a critique of delivery tools (Jira epics are "buckets," not strategic constructs, and pull the conversation downward into tickets and story points).
The closing thesis: a backlog is not a to-do list; it is a decision system. Hierarchy is the precondition for good prioritization — the thing that makes any scoring framework or roadmapping process effective in the first place.