How to Stop Developers from Cherry-Picking the Backlog: A Guide For Product Owners, Business Analysts and Scrum Masters

As a Product Manager, your product backlog is a sacred list, yes sacred in every sense of the word. It is the heartbeat of your business and development team priorities, the strategy in motion. Yet, any seasoned product owner has likely encountered an issue that can quietly derail the most carefully crafted plans: software developers cherry-picking tasks from the product backlog. I have encountered this too many times but as I am working on the Product Management Mastery Playbook, I want to share some of my own experiences to help others. This subtle but damaging behavior of requirements cherry-picking often leads to mismatched priorities, delayed releases, and a fractured development team. How can a product owner or business analyst address this problem in a way that's meaningful and efficient?

I will explore a few suggestions and include some true stories, strategies and some dosages of reality, so here goes:

This is the All-Too Common Scenario

As a product owner at a thriving SaaS startup, managing a development team that prides itself on agility and quality output. The latest sprint has just kicked off, and as you review progress mid-week, something feels off. The critical tasks which are the core features your customers are expecting, are somehow untouched. Instead, the developers are knee-deep in smaller, more manageable tasks. They are essentially cherry-picking the "easy wins" and avoiding the more complex, high-impact work.

When you check in with some team members: “Hey, I noticed we haven’t made headway on the customer authentication feature yet. What’s the status there?”

You hear some variations of:

"Oh, I thought someone else was going to take that one."

"I’ll get to it after finishing this smaller bug fix. It just seemed quicker to handle."

"I wanted to make sure the codebase was clean before diving into the big features."

This is cherry-picking at its finest.

Why Does Cherry-Picking Happen

The reasons for cherry-picking by software developers are often understandable, even if counterproductive. Some developers prefer to complete quick, straightforward tasks because they feel more manageable or provide a sense of accomplishment. Others may avoid more challenging or ambiguous features because they're uncertain about the requirements or concerned about failing to deliver on time.

However, the result is that developers prioritize based on personal preference rather than the product's or customers' needs, and the entire roadmap starts to drift.

As a product owner or business analyst, the question is clear: How do you break this pattern and realign your team with the product vision?

Solution 1: Make the Why Unavoidable

When developers cherry-pick, it is often because the purpose behind the backlog items isn’t clear. Product owners & Business analysts need to clearly communicate the “why” behind each high-priority task. When your team understands how each feature directly impacts customers, growth, or long-term vision, it becomes harder to justify postponing them.

An example in real-world:

At a mid-sized fintech company, the development team was consistently skipping over security updates in favor of less complex User Interface improvements. The product owner scheduled a meeting to discuss recent customer feedback, highlighting instances of customers losing confidence in the fintech company's services due to security concerns. Once the development team were able to connect their work to real-world user pain, the security tasks stopped getting ignored.

Solution 2: Rank, Don't Stack

Many times, product backlogs are presented as stacks of tasks or user stories, where any backlog item can appear to be just as important as the next. You can shift your backlog to a ranked priority system; just make sure to align with your development team on ranked priority system used. That means everyone knows, without a doubt, what the most critical tasks are at each point in time and in what order they need to be implemented or addressed.

An example in real-world:

In a company, a product development team was overwhelmed by a sprawling product backlog, and they did not know which tasks to prioritize. Their product owner took charge by setting a rule: only the top three items could be worked on at any time. This change provided clarity, accountability, and ultimately, quicker delivery of impactful features.

Solution 3: Time-Box Regular Refinements

Product backlog refinement should not be an afterthought, it must be a pre-meditated and consistent activity. By establishing a regular cadence for backlog refinement, you can ensure that software developers are not skipping items because they are unclear or feel overwhelming. As a product owner, time-box sessions for clarifying requirements, resolving dependencies, and breaking down larger items into digestible tasks. This practice reduces the temptation for developers to avoid certain backlog items.

An example in real-world:

At a global e-commerce company, the product backlog was full of giant, ambiguous stories that nobody wanted to touch. The product owner set up a weekly refinement meeting where complex tasks were broken down into smaller, more manageable pieces. Once these intimidating stories were simplified, the team began pulling them into sprints.

Solution 4: Cultivate a Team-First Mindset

Cherry-picking often arises from a developer's individual preferences rather than the team’s goals. To address this, product owners, scrum masters or team leaders should encourage a mindset of shared accountability where the team collectively owns the backlog.

In practice, this means:

• Developers pick tasks as a team, or at least review who is tackling what to ensure that key items are getting attention.

• Everybody participates in sprint planning, backlog refinement, and daily stand-ups with an emphasis on team success over individual task completion.

An example in real-world:

At a digital agency, developers frequently cherry-picked bug fixes over new features. The product owner introduced a "team-first" sprint review, where developers collectively discussed their progress. By shifting focus from individual contributions to team outcomes, they naturally began to collaborate on bigger, more impactful features.

Solution 5: Balance Accountability with Autonomy

While it’s important to guide your team, micromanagement is never the solution. Give your developers the autonomy to choose tasks within a well-structured system of accountability. By introducing mechanisms like work-in-progress (WIP) limits and clear sprint goals, developers still have the freedom to decide how they’ll complete tasks, but with guardrails that prevent cherry-picking.

An example in real-world:

A SaaS company facing frequent backlog cherry-picking introduced a WIP (work in progress) limit, where only a set number of tasks could be open at once. This forced the team to focus on completing high-priority tasks before moving on to anything new.

Stopping Cherry-Picking Before It Derails Your Roadmap

In the grand scheme of things, preventing cherry-picking is about fostering clarity, accountability, and shared ownership of the product vision. By implementing these solutions, communicating the "why," ranking priorities, refining backlog items, cultivating a team-first mindset, and balancing autonomy with accountability, product owners can keep your team aligned with the product vision and goals, whilst ensuring that every sprint moves the needle forward.

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