Your backlog is not a roadmap. It is a graveyard of good intentions. It is where ideas go to rot, causing anxiety for your team every time they look at the ticket count.
At Ronin, we have a simple rule: If a ticket is older than 90 days, it is deleted. Automatically. No review. No "saving it for later." Gone.
1. The Hoarding Mentality
Digital hoarding is real. Product Managers are terrified of forgetting a feature request, so they shove it into Jira.
"Ticket #4021: Add dark mode support to the settings dropdown." Created: Feb 2023. Status: To Do.
That ticket isn't work. It's noise. It creates a false sense of debt. Your team feels like they are constantly behind, digging out of a hole that gets deeper every day.
(FOR A 10-PERSON TEAM)
2. If It Matters, It Comes Back
People ask: "But what if we delete a really good idea?"
If it's a good idea, it will come back. A customer will complain about it again. An engineer will bring it up again. The market will demand it.
Important problems are persistent. They don't need a Jira ticket to exist. They exist in reality. If a problem is silent for 3 months, it wasn't a problem. It was a distraction.
3. Bankruptcy as a Strategy
We practice "Bug Bankruptcy" every quarter. We select all open bugs marked "Low Priority" or "Medium Priority" that haven't been touched in weeks.
We hit delete.
The feeling is euphoric. The slate is clean. The team focuses on what matters today, not what mattered six months ago.
THE MENTAL COST
A backlog of 500 items is a cognitive load. It tells your team "You are failing."
A backlog of 10 items tells your team "This is the mission."
4. Jira is Compliance, Not Work
Jira is designed for managers who want to generate reports, not for engineers who want to ship code.
We use Linear. We keep one active cycle. If it doesn't fit in the cycle, it doesn't exist. We don't have a "Icebox." We have a trash can.
Stop hoarding tickets. Start shipping features.
WE HATE JIRA TOO
Come work at a place where "Project Management" isn't a full-time job.
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