Basisbacklog

Basisbacklog is a project management concept that designates a dedicated subset of a product backlog containing foundational work required to support ongoing development. It is used to distinguish core infrastructure, architecture, tooling, and standards work from user-facing features that deliver short-term value.

The basisbacklog provides a stable base for future work, reduces risk, and improves long-term maintainability by isolating enabler tasks from feature work. By framing these tasks as a separate backlog, teams can plan capacity and track progress on foundation efforts without conflating them with customer-visible delivery.

Items in the basisbacklog are usually cross-cutting, long horizon, and high impact but not tied to a single user story. They are often larger in scope, require coordination across teams, and may span multiple releases. They are revisited periodically rather than sprint-by-sprint.

A basisbacklog owner or governance group tends to prioritize and groom items, ensuring alignment with architecture strategy and non-functional requirements. Items are decomposed into actionable tasks and linked to architectural runways or enabler backlogs when applicable.

Basisbacklog work is typically scheduled during release planning or quarterly planning sessions. Dependency management with the product backlog is important to ensure foundational work enables upcoming features without delaying delivery.

Examples include migrating the codebase to a new framework, implementing automated testing infrastructure, upgrading build and deployment pipelines, establishing coding standards, and improving telemetry, security, or data governance. In agile discourse, basisbacklog resembles enabler work and the idea of an architecture runway.