How do you determine the health of the engineering or product backlog?

A healthy product backlog is well-defined, prioritized, and actionable. Key indicators include:

• Clear Prioritization: Items are ordered by business value and strategic importance.
• Actionability: Each backlog item is detailed with user stories, acceptance criteria, and effort estimates, enabling engineers to pick them up easily.
• Flow and Completion: Minimal items are returned from sprints due to incomplete work or bugs, and a consistent number of items are moved to 'Done' each sprint.
• Regular Refinement: The backlog is actively managed and refined to ensure relevance and readiness.