"Backlog" is a lie we tell ourselves. I have yet to see the development team with so much free time that they can pull from backlog rather than addressing the current "do this right now because the house is on fire!" stuff from product owners, users, the business, etc. Backlog is a lie to make people be quiet and go away. "I put it on the backlog, leave me alone". And yeah, all of the effort put into it is a big waste too! When backlog is most-OK, is when the user stories are nothing more than 1 - 2 sentences. "We need a way to share this report with co-workers." If the need is so obvious that this needs to come off of backlog and actually be worked on, THEN you put the effort into actually writing a full user story.

The other time I see lots of backlog are in professional services engagements, which are *almost always* "Waterfall with sprints". And before the Agile folks get all angry, that's because that is how PS work is done at a contractual level, and it is what the client asks for too. The contract says up-front in the SOW the major features that will be done and the timeline, so the initial discovery phase just gets a better understanding and creates backlog to represent what the contract asks for, and everyone moves on. Yes, yes, it's not Agile, don't argue with me, but it's how the world of PS works... And then I struggle to call it "backlog" because it's serving a very different purpose from "backlog" as it's meant.

J.Ja