Opportunity Backlog Review

Purpose: Keep candidate capabilities visible, comparable, and grounded in customer or operator need.

Cadence: Weekly

Duration: 30-45 minutes

Inputs Required

Maintained backlog of workflow opportunities
For each opportunity: user/customer problem, source material, possible first useful artifact, known risk
Capacity and decision context for the upcoming cycle

The Backlog

Each opportunity should be scoped with:

What is the customer or operator problem?
What source material exists?
What would the smallest useful artifact look like?
What would make it worth piloting or hardening?

This isn't detailed requirements—it's rough scoping to help the team understand what they're committing to.

Format

1. Present Opportunities (15 min)

Walk through backlog items. For each: what is the problem, who is the user/customer, what evidence do we have, and what could be built first?

2. Questions & Discussion (10 min)

Team asks clarifying questions. What's unclear? What's risky? What's exciting?

3. Selection (10 min)

Team picks what to frame, build, pilot, or stop. Be explicit about the next playbook.

4. Schedule Next Step (5 min)

When is the brief, build session, user review, or handoff conversation happening?

Outputs

Selected opportunities for the next cycle
Committed next steps and owners
Scheduled brief, build, pilot, review, or handoff sessions

Tips

The people close to the work should have a real voice. Ownership starts with choice.
It's okay to say "nothing here interests me this week." Surface that—it's signal about the backlog quality.
Rough scoping is enough. Detailed requirements come during the build.
If the same item sits in the backlog for weeks, either scope it smaller or kill it.
New opportunities can jump the queue if they are urgent, strategic, or unusually clear.

How It Differs From Weekly Build Planning

Weekly Build Planning is for prioritizing work in progress — reviewing feedback, adjusting priorities, and resolving blockers mid-stream.

Opportunity Backlog Review is for selecting new work — looking at the full menu of customer and operator opportunities and choosing what to frame next.

Both can happen weekly. Opportunity Backlog Review feeds into Weekly Build Planning.