> I’m an IC and get so many direct requests from my manager, other managers, my team members and people from other teams. I’ve been where you’re at and I get i

> I’m an IC and get so many direct requests from my manager, other managers, my team members and people from other teams. I’ve been where you’re at and I get it. Here is what has helped me get out of that. This is the essential basics of backlog grooming. Track you commitments, manage your capacity, negotiate your priorities. It’s a fact that one person can only do so much per time period, and reasonable people should recognize that. The process I’m recommending here acknowledges the fact that your capacity is limited and must be managed. So you keep a list of what you’re working on now and what’s coming up. You keep that list sorted in priority order. Each item on the list has a description and success criteria, to help you and other interested parties see the scope of the work so you can interleave other items into the list as needed. You have a plan of what you’re going to do with success criteria for each story going out kinda far, so it’s not just a big list of stuff it’s a rough plan of how it will come together. You also keep a task breakdown of how you will approach the items you’re working on this sprint. Together these two facts make it fast to put together a status report of what’s happening now what’s next and when you estimate it will happen. You collaborate with your stakeholders (all these people wanting things from you) to negotiate the relative priority of things on that list. If everyone thinks their item is on the top of the list, then negotiate or escalate, but the true reality is that only so many things can get done at once. It’s better and more professional to push back instead of over promise. Manage yourself to focusing on the things on the list and meeting your commitments as a sign of respect to your stakeholders, and in turn they will help you do what you need to do to manage your backlog and your planning. Once your work process is aligned like that you can focus better. Some say that doing the above is what a manager or technical product manager does for you. If you’re lucky you’ll have such people to take care of planning and management you. But being able to do it yourself is a good because it’ll boost your skills considerably.