You wake up to a crisis. 1000 tickets are overdue. Customers are angry. Leadership is asking questions.

So you do what feels right: throw everyone at the backlog. All hands on deck. Clear the pile.

Here's what happens next:

While your entire team is heads-down on old tickets, new tickets keep coming in. They wait. They age. They become overdue.

You clear the backlog. You look up. There's a new backlog.

You've just traded one crisis for another.

When you have a backlog, you're dealing with two different problems:

Stock: The pile of old stuff that's already delayed.

Flow: The new stuff coming in right now.

Most people treat these as one problem. They're not. They need different strategies.

Step 1: Split your team.

Don't put everyone on the backlog. Split into two groups:

The ratio depends on your situation. Maybe 50-50. Maybe 70-30. But never 100-0.