KEY ARTEFACTS

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Key Artefacts

Ideas Backlog

The shared Jira Product Discovery backlog used to capture, triage and progress product opportunities before they move into platform delivery backlogs.

ArtefactJira Product DiscoveryBacklog
How this works: The Ideas Backlog is the shared Jira Product Discovery space where Product Owners capture potential opportunities, link supporting tickets or evidence, and move ideas through discovery before they become delivery backlog items.

Purpose

The Ideas Backlog is the single place to capture, organise and track potential product opportunities before they are committed for delivery. An idea is a placeholder for a possible solution or opportunity where the team can capture the problem, supporting insights, expected value and whether it is worth prioritising.

Ideas can originate from service desk tickets, discovery workshops, platform owner conversations, stakeholder meetings, customer feedback, data insights or informal business requests. The backlog prevents teams from jumping straight from a request into build, and gives Product Owners a controlled place to decide whether an item should remain in the parking lot, move into discovery, be assessed for impact, or become ready for delivery.

One shared spaceAll platforms use the same Jira Product Discovery space rather than separate platform spaces.
PO-ownedIdeas should be created and maintained by Product Owners only.
Evidence-ledIdeas should capture the problem, owner, linked work item and evidence before moving forward.

Who's involved

  • Product Owner: creates ideas, owns the idea record, updates status, captures evidence and decides whether the idea should move into discovery, impact assessment or delivery readiness.
  • Service Desk Team: triages incoming tickets and routes non-incident, non-BAU requests that represent potential product opportunities to the relevant Product Owner.
  • Platform Owner: helps clarify business value, priority, stakeholder impact and whether the idea aligns to platform direction.
  • Reporter / requester: provides the original context, problem statement, user impact and supporting examples.
  • Engineering / Tech Lead: contributes early feasibility, complexity, dependency and technical risk input when an idea reaches discovery or impact assessment.
  • Scrum Team: supports refinement once an idea has been validated and is ready to move into the delivery backlog.

Input

Every idea should have enough information for the Product Owner to understand the opportunity without relying on hallway knowledge or an unsupported request.

Source: Service desk ticket, meeting discussion, stakeholder request, customer insight, data finding, compliance need or platform opportunity.
Summary: A short, understandable title that describes the problem or opportunity.
Description: Context, user need, current pain point, expected outcome and any known constraints or assumptions.
Idea Owner: The Product Owner accountable for progressing, parking or closing the idea.
Linked work: Related service desk ticket, Jira issue, discovery output, evidence link or previous delivery item.

Output

The output is a maintained idea backlog that gives leaders, platform owners and Product Owners visibility of what is being considered before work is committed.

Parking Lot

Default status for a newly created idea. The idea is captured but not yet prioritised or fully understood. These items can come from team members, customers or other stakeholders and are stored for future consideration.

Discovery

The idea has been prioritised and is being explored. The team validates the problem or opportunity through research, user input, workflow mapping and assumptions testing.

Impact

The idea has been validated in discovery and is being assessed for value, feasibility, priority, roadmap fit, risks and dependencies.

Ready for Delivery

The idea has been prioritised, validated and assessed for impact. This is the transition point into delivery; an epic should be created and added to the platform backlog.

Delivery

The idea is actively being designed, developed, tested and deployed by the delivery team.

Done

The work has been implemented and launched. Success, adoption and feedback can now be measured.

All IdeasSingle view for every idea across platforms.
Grouped by PlatformUsed to review ideas by owner and platform.
Platform ViewsCommercial, Corporate, Data, Event, HR, IT and Marketing views.

Responsibilities

  • Product Owner: create the idea in Jira Product Discovery, ensure the summary and description are clear, populate the Idea Owner field, link related work items and maintain status accuracy.
  • Product Owner: use Product Owner triage to decide whether the idea remains in Parking Lot, moves into Discovery, progresses to Impact, becomes Ready for Delivery, or is stopped.
  • Product Owner: create the epic and add it to the platform backlog once the idea reaches Ready for Delivery.
  • Service Desk Team: triage tickets quickly to identify incidents, BAU requests and potential product ideas; hand off potential ideas to the Product Owner rather than creating ideas directly.
  • Platform Owner: confirm business relevance, relative priority, stakeholder alignment and whether the idea should be discussed in platform roadmap or planning meetings.
  • Engineering / Tech Lead: provide feasibility, complexity and dependency input before an idea is committed for delivery.
Download creating ideas guideOpen Product Discovery guidance