How to Create a Product Backlog in Asana | Asana Tutorial for Project Management (2024)

A Product Owner is accountable for managing the Product Backlog. A Product Backlog is one of the most important Scrum artifacts and functions as it serves as the single authoritative source for project tasks.
It contains all of the features — requirements associated with the project deliverables in one place. It is an ordered dynamic list of everything needed in a product.

All requirements — features are broken down into user stories.

A product backlog should include both technical and non technical features that help with usability, reliability, security, scalability and performance. This includes:

• New features
• Bug fixes
• Feature improvements
• De-scoped improvements
• Design changes
• UX issues
• Technical debt

Product Backlog Example

The Steps you should follow to create the backlog in Asana are as follows:

1. Log in to Asana or create a new account.

Click here to access asana (When you sign up, your free 30-day Premium trial is activated).
Currently, April 2024 you can download and try Asana Premium for free.

2. Access the Asana Sprint Planning template.

Go to Projects and choose Create project. You have the option to either create a blank project or import a spreadsheet.
Click on Use a template to access the template library. In the left-hand menu, scroll down to the templates grouped under the category, Product & select the Sprint Planning template.

Alternately click here.

You will be then directed to the board view. Usually there are some tasks assigned, you can delete them and start creating your own from scratch.

3. Add user story titles to the Backlog column.

Select + or Add task and enter a user story title in the task card. Each user story title should have its own card.

Example User Story Titles:
-Low-maintenance options
-Plant Care tools
-Expert help and advice

4. Enter user stories as tasks per card.

Click on a task to open its task detail pane. Find the “Description” field and add a user story to the task description. As a reminder, each user story should follow this structure:

As a <user persona> I want to <action — task> so that… <benefit>

This represents the <who>, <what>, <why>

Example User Stories:
-As a potential customer, I want to learn which plants are easier to take care of so that I can purchase low-maintenance options.
-As a plant owner, I want to access care instructions easily so that I can keep my plant alive longer.
-As a plant owner, I want to get expert help and advice quickly so that I know what to do if my plant gets sick.

A User Story is an informal explanation of a software feature written from the perspective of end user — customer. They are generated in scrum meetings, where the development team describes requirements that need to be included in the backlog in a User Story format.

The development team (sprint members) are responsible for completing the user stories in the sprint. A single user story or “work item” can have many people involved , sometimes it happens in pairs but usually its individually.

Teams measure the complexity of their user stories with story points, helping them to accurately estimate how long a particular request will take.

5. Add acceptance criteria as subtasks.

Add two pieces of acceptance criteria and add them as subtasks for all the user stories you entered.

To create a subtask, click into a card to open the task detail pane. Select Add Subtask toward the bottom of the pane (you may need to scroll down to find the Add Subtask button).

Acceptance criteria are the conditions that must be satisfied for a product, user story, or increment of work to be accepted.

They clarify the expected outcome(s) of a user story in a concrete manner. It also gives developers and QA a clear-cut way to determine whether a story is “done.

Example of acceptance criteria for first user story:

-The ability to sort plants by beginner, intermediate, advanced
-The ability to search plants with similar care needs

6. Create a custom field for the epic title.

Custom fields let you share additional details to the tasks in a project. (Note, this step can only be performed using an Asana Premium account.)
In Board view near the top-right corner of your board click Customize, then select Add Field.

Under Field title type “Epic”. The Field type should be “Single-select”

Rename “Option 1” with your epic title “Plant Care Initiatives”, “Option 2” with “Bonsai Trees” etc
Select Create Field.

7. Add User Stories to the epic.

Epics are larger bodies of work that can then be broken down into smaller tasks and milestones, called user stories.

To assign a user story to an epic, open its task detail pane. Then select an epic from the dropdown option next to Epic.
You can also assign user stories to epics from List view by selecting an epic from the dropdowns in the “Epic” column.

Tip: If different tasks belong in the same Epic, you can select those user stories and right click to add to the same epic. To do so, click on the 3 dots, select edit fields and ad into the epic the title you have previously created.

Alternately, you can first create in Google Sheets your product backlog, download it as a CSV file and upload it to Asana. In your Google Sheets you should include the following columns:

• User Story Title
• User Story
• Acceptance Criteria
• Epic (a number of user stories)
• Value
• Estimation
• Dependency