Short definition
A Jira backlog is the ordered list of issues that aren't yet in an active sprint - the team's queue of upcoming work. The backlog is ranked top-to-bottom by priority, so the next sprint can be planned by pulling from the top until story-point capacity is reached. Every Scrum board has a backlog view; Kanban boards can enable one optionally.
What the backlog contains
A Jira backlog includes every issue that matches the board’s filter and is not in a closed sprint and not in the currently active sprint. New stories, bugs, and tasks land in the backlog by default; they graduate into a sprint via the planning view, where the team drags or right-clicks “Move to sprint.”
The backlog view is split into three sections on a Scrum board:
- Active sprint at the top - the work the team is doing right now.
- Upcoming sprints in the middle - sprints created but not started. Useful for two-sprint planning horizons.
- Backlog at the bottom - everything else, ranked.
Backlog refinement
Healthy backlogs are refined, not just filled. Backlog refinement (sometimes called grooming) is the ongoing work of:
- Adding acceptance criteria and estimates to issues near the top.
- Splitting oversized stories into sprint-sized slices.
- Closing stale issues that no longer match the product direction.
- Re-ranking based on new information.
Most teams reserve 1-2 hours per week for refinement, often co-located with sprint planning.
Backlog and the Rank field
Jira’s rank is a global ordering: an issue ranked above another in one board is ranked above it everywhere. This is why two boards that share issues can’t have independent priority orders - they share the same Rank field. If two teams need independent ordering, they need independent issue sets (different projects or labels), not just different boards.
Kanban backlogs
Kanban boards don’t have a backlog by default - new work just appears in the leftmost column. To enable a backlog on a Kanban board, an admin opens board settings, picks Columns, and configures the leftmost column to come from the Backlog. This is a useful pattern when a Kanban team’s upstream queue is too large to fit on the board.
Common questions
What is the backlog in Jira?
The backlog is the ordered list of issues that aren't yet in an active sprint - the team's queue of upcoming work. The backlog is ranked top-to-bottom by priority, so the next sprint can be planned by pulling from the top until story-point capacity is reached. Every Scrum board has a backlog view; Kanban boards can enable one optionally.
What's the difference between the product backlog and the sprint backlog?
The product backlog is everything the team might do, ranked but uncommitted. The sprint backlog is the slice the team has committed to deliver in the current sprint. Issues move from product backlog into sprint backlog at sprint planning.
How is the Jira backlog ranked?
Jira stores rank in a special Rank field. When you drag issues up or down in the backlog view, Jira updates this field so the order is preserved across users and boards. You can query and report on it via JQL using `ORDER BY Rank`.
Should bugs go in the backlog or be handled separately?
Most teams put bugs in the same backlog as stories, ranked alongside feature work. This forces explicit prioritization. Some teams reserve a fixed percentage of every sprint for bug fixing instead, but separating the queues tends to hide debt rather than manage it.