Lesson 5 is where Product Owners’ abstract thinking becomes concrete. In Lessons 3 and 4, learners shaped a clear product vision and mapped their stakeholder ecosystem. Here, they translate that strategic understanding into the artifacts that steer day-to-day work: the product backlog and the user story.

The lesson begins by defining the product backlog as a living, ordered list of possible changes that could improve the product. The backlog is not a static requirements document or a dumping ground for every idea—it is a curated, evolving narrative of how the team might move closer to the vision. Learners contrast this with common anti-patterns: backlogs that are purely technical, endlessly long, or disconnected from user outcomes.

Backlog, Vision, and Ecosystem

Learners revisit their one-sentence product vision from Lesson 3 and their key stakeholders and tensions from Lesson 4. They consider the backlog as the bridge between these elements: each high-priority story should clearly serve specific users or stakeholders from their ecosystem while pushing the vision forward in a tangible way.

Using a few sample backlogs, learners ask: “If I only saw this list, would I know who the product is for, what problem it is solving, and how success is defined?” This framing establishes that backlog quality is not just a technical concern but a clarity and alignment concern.

Strong vs. Weak User Stories

The class then shifts focus to user stories. Learners study examples of weak items—such as “Fix login bug” or “Implement analytics pipeline”—and compare them to stronger, user-centered stories that follow patterns like “As a [user], I want [capability], so that [outcome].” The goal is not to worship the template, but to understand how it forces Product Owners to name a user, clarify intent, and articulate a meaningful outcome.

The INVEST criteria—Independent, Negotiable, Valuable, Estimable, Small, and Testable—are introduced as a diagnostic lens. Small groups sort sample stories into “stronger” and “weaker” sets, then annotate which aspects of INVEST each story satisfies or violates. Through discussion, learners notice patterns such as stories that are valuable but not small, or testable but not clearly tied to user value.

Rewriting Stories for Users and Vision

With the lens in place, learners turn to their own contexts. Each participant selects or drafts a handful of raw backlog items—either from their real work or from prompts aligned with their chosen product. For each item, they identify the primary user or stakeholder, what that person is trying to achieve, and how the item relates to the product vision.

They then rewrite these raw items as user stories, using or adapting the familiar pattern. Peer review helps surface where language is still technical, where outcomes are vague, or where the user is missing altogether. Learners perform an INVEST check on each story, noting which qualities are strong and which need improvement.

Defining “Done” with Acceptance Criteria

The lesson next focuses on acceptance criteria. Learners distinguish internal tasks (“Add new table to database”) from user-facing outcomes (“Users can see their three most recent transactions within two seconds of opening the activity tab”). For each of their stories, they draft two to four acceptance criteria that describe observable behavior and can be tested as true or false.

Facilitated examples highlight how good acceptance criteria make the story more estimable and less ambiguous, while weak criteria can hide scope or invite misalignment. Learners are encouraged to imagine how users, support staff, and stakeholders would experience the feature when it is truly complete.

Anchoring Stories in Vision and System

Throughout the work, learners are asked to write brief notes explaining how each story moves the vision forward and which stakeholders it primarily serves. This reinforces that the backlog is not a neutral list of tasks but an expression of strategic choices in a complex ecosystem.

The lesson closes with a short reflection on how their view of the backlog has changed and which INVEST quality remains most challenging in their context. This sets up the later mastery studio (Lesson 5.1), where learners will stress-test, prioritize, and present their stories in a more realistic backlog clinic.

Mastery for Lesson 5

A learner demonstrates mastery of Lesson 5 when they can define the backlog and user story in their own words, diagnose strong and weak stories using INVEST, rewrite vague items into user-centered stories, draft acceptance criteria from the user’s perspective, and explain how their top stories move the product vision forward for specific stakeholders in their ecosystem.

In a single sentence, mastery sounds like: “I can turn my vision and stakeholder map into concrete, well-formed stories and acceptance criteria that give my team a clear, testable path to move the product forward.”