The Product Backlog is the single source of all work a Scrum team performs. It is a prioritized list of all known requirements that evolves with every Sprint. No item may bypass the team into the Sprint Backlog without appearing in the Product Backlog first. The Product Owner is responsible for its content and ordering.
A good Product Backlog follows the DEEP principle: items at the top are described in detail and estimated, while items further down are deliberately kept rough. The list is emergent, meaning it changes continuously based on new insights. In practice, the top contains fully formulated User Stories with Acceptance Criteria, the middle holds features that will be broken down in the next Refinement, and the bottom contains broad Epics or ideas. This structure prevents both excessive upfront planning and chaotic work without direction.
The Product Backlog is defined in the Scrum Guide as one of the three Scrum artifacts. The DEEP acronym was coined by Roman Pichler and provides a useful checklist for assessing backlog quality.
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