I’m watching this video on how you shouldn’t keep a backlog and they made an interesting point.

No other industry sees a backlog as a good thing.

They all want to reduce it.

Except software dev.

Why is it different? Or is it not?

Reviewing all the tickets for an entire week and expecting everyone to be able to have enough context on everything is a ridiculous way to plan your week.

Instead: Work smaller. Have the courage to speak up and say “I can’t care about all those things right now. I need deliberate attention and focus on the thing right in front of me right now and everything else is a distraction. I’ll give the same amount of attention to all those other things when I’m working on them.”

That’s not to say you shouldn’t be aware of the bigger picture and know what else is going on.