Why a Kickoff Parking Lot Is Not a Software Backlog

I have been in kickoffs that ended with a parking lot longer than the request. Someone writes “follow up on the Friday export” on a sticky note, photographs the wall, and calls it a backlog. It is not. It is a confession that the week never made it onto a page.

A parking lot feels responsible because the note is visible. Visibility is not priority, ownership, or enough context to estimate. I still treat a photographed wall as unfinished intake.

A leftover is not a story

If the person closest to the work cannot write what happens today, who is stuck, and what better looks like, you do not have an item. You have a rumor with a marker. I have never seen a parking lot invent those three facts. I have seen parking lots become a second source of truth that nobody opens.

Do not file the leftover to look tidy. Send it back as a request. The Anti-PMO playbook for software intake is blunt: preferred vendors wait. Architecture opinions wait. The sticky note waits until the week is written.

Write the leftover as a week

Use software project intake so the leftover becomes a paragraph a stranger can retell. The submitter is the clerk who still emails the spreadsheet, not the facilitator who held the marker.

One offsite that produced thirty parking-lot items and zero owners. We spent the quarter “grooming” the photograph. The spreadsheet is still emailed on Friday. When every sticky note arrives as urgent, use a written method for prioritizing project requests before the wall quietly chooses for you.

Meet only when the leftover can stand alone

When the page is understandable, a meeting can decide a yes, a no, or a not yet. The software delivery management features path is review, questions, estimate, decide. None of those need a wall if the first page already exists.

If you need a kickoff to empty the parking lot, you scheduled the wrong event. Cancel it. Ask for the paragraph. I have thrown away more parking lots than I have regretted.