Hot Needle of Inquiry

On the leandevelopment list, there has been a bit of a discussion on how long the “backlog” should be, and why. This was triggered in part by a posting from Mary Poppendieck, in which she said:

It doesn’t matter who owns the backlog, the responsiveness of the development team to real needs of customers will be in direct proportion to the length of the backlog.  This is a supply chain issue, and in general, the shorter the supply chain, the faster its response. (more…)