Product Management - Just got here and already behind. How to juggle onboarding, strategy & backlog?

Recently, I spoke with a Sr PM who was deep into onboarding and already losing their mind over the size of the product backlog they just inherited.

Their first instinct was to prioritize “work ethic” and dive into every single card, absorb all the context, and make sure nothing gets overlooked AKA fast track to skip important parts of onboarding and burnout from the start.

Here’s the thing…the backlog isn’t just noise, but it’s also not a fully committed roadmap.

Some see a bloated backlog and ignore it. That’s a terrible move when you’re new. It signals that you’re ignoring history, skipping context, and dismissing work that - at some point - mattered.

How to approach it?
As a gift. A messy, chaotic, but valuable set of priorities, thinking, and assumptions. But don’t let it consume you:

1) Onboard first, backlog later
The first few weeks should be about understanding the business, customers, product, tech, and people. Deep-diving into backlog before you have this context is a waste of time and sends the wrong first-impression signal to other people.

2) Triage the backlog. Options:
✦ Solo: skim and tag items as 🔴 Critical, 🟡 Questionable, ⚪️ Low-Priority.
✦ Team: Have the team pre-sort what’s relevant and trust their judgment. Maybe extend the group to include other representatives and get them to vote: customer support, sales, legal, etc.

3) Align with today’s priorities
If not done as part of 2 - even if an item is objectively important, is it important right now? If it doesn’t align, archive it - don’t delete it.

Important: Never Delete. Backlog = History. What seems unimportant today might be critical in 6 months when priorities shift. A well-kept backlog holds past interviews, insights, and research that save teams from reinventing the wheel later.

You can’t review every ticket. You can’t ignore them all. So how do you figure out what truly matters? Share your tactics.

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