Manage the portfolio backlog

The use case Portfolio Backlog Management helps organizations plan, prioritize, and govern work at the highest level by maintaining a clear, ordered view of strategic initiatives. It provides a prioritized list of potential solutions, initiatives, and investments, enabling informed decisions about where to allocate resources.

The portfolio backlog serves as a holding area for business and enabler epics that support strategic themes and span multiple teams or agile release trains (ARTs). As epics are approved and refined, they flow into the program backlog, where they are decomposed into features for a single ART and then into stories delivered by agile teams. By connecting strategy to execution through a structured flow of epics, features, and stories, portfolio backlog use case ensures investments align with business priorities and keeps the organization focused on delivering the highest-value solutions to customers.

• An epic is a container for a significant solution development initiative that is made up of features. Typically epics have a considerable scope and therefore should have the definition of a minimum viable product (MVP).
• An epic group bundles epics for purposes of organization and analysis.
• A feature is a tangible product, solution functionality, or improvement that provides business value and contributes to the realization of an epic. Features can be further broken down into user stories which are implemented, tested, and released incrementally. Features are structured to be delivered in a program increment (PI) by an agile release train (ART).
• A story is a small piece of desired functionality that contributes to the realization of a feature. A story may be of the type User Story, which provides value to the end user, and Enabler Story, which describes the necessary work work to fulfill technical, architectural, infrastructure, or compliance needs. Stories are delivered in the context of an iteration by an agile release train (ART).