As a engineer I always know what we're going to do next, if your engineering team does not know what's next from the top of their heads, it means they don't understand the product which means you have a bigger problem. Having to help business people maintain backlogs, doing endless sessions of estimations, thats a waste of engineering time on things that most likely will never get prioritized. It's a big source of frustation because they know what needs to be done, they just want business ppl to gtfo so that they can get back to work, it's a motivation killer.
Backlogs exist as a way for product managers to avoid difficult conversations and shift blame, but they are harmful because they generate waste, elongate cycle-times, increase the chance of picking up a "rotten" task, create noise, diminish visibility, and demand significant effort from the product team, ultimately leading to a slow and expensive processing rate.
