From Chaos to Flow - Part 1: Managing Multiple Work Streams Without Losing Flow
Traditional backlogs collapse when real-world demands like programmes, tech debt, and bugs collide. Real product flow starts with one backlog, visible priorities, and honest capacity management. Surviving chaos is not about speed, it is about creating real flow.
Signal Boost: “Go With the Flow”, by Queens of the Stone Age
The goal is not to control everything. The goal is to move through it, with intent, without drowning.
Everything Urgent, Nothing Meaningful
It starts slowly.
A few funded programmes running alongside business-as-usual change ... A small pile of bugs ... A few platform improvements nobody quite has time for.
Then it builds.
Multiple demands flood into disconnected backlogs ... Urgent always beats important ... Capacity assumptions crumble ... Priorities fight each other ...
The work starts to rot.
Everyone is busy. Nobody feels like they are moving anything forward.
This is not failure. In my experience, this is what happens when you try to run modern product work through old project pipelines.
Why Traditional Backlogs Break
Traditional backlogs were built for small, stable product teams focused on single domains. They struggle the minute you introduce:
- Multi-year programmes
- Cross-team dependencies
- Parallel discovery and delivery
- Significant tech debt remediation
- Shared platform improvements
- Bug storms from legacy systems
They cannot breathe. They cannot flex. They collapse under pressure.
It is not a backlog problem. I see it as a flow problem.
The Real Challenge: Flow Fragmentation
When different types of work (programmes, BAU, bugs, tech debt) get split across different backlogs or tools, three things happen:
1. Prioritisation becomes political.
Everyone fights for attention because there is no shared view of value or risk.
2. Capacity becomes a lie.
Each backlog assumes it can use 100% of team effort. In reality, teams are spread thin across all demands.
3. Delivery becomes random.
Teams constantly switch context. Discovery work gets starved. Tech debt grows in the shadows.
It's not that teams are bad at delivery. It's that the system breaks flow.
The Shift: Building for Product Flow
Real product flow comes when you:
- Merge all work into a single backlog per product
- Prioritise based on outcomes, not categories
- Make discovery and delivery visible together
- Protect resilience work (tech debt, bugs) inside regular capacity
- Forecast effort bands, not pretend full capacity
Instead of hiding complexity, you surface it. You work with it. You make flow visible and manageable.
What It All Comes Down To
If you are drowning in competing backlogs and firefighting delivery chaos,
the problem is not your team's speed. It is your system's design.
You do not need faster delivery. You need better flow.
The journey from chaos to flow starts with seeing the real work clearly and all of it, not just the pieces that fit into neat project plans.
In the next post, we will dive into how to design a real-world backlog that can survive programmes, bugs, tech debt, and small change without losing sight of product outcomes.
