What Leo saw at Apache, 4. The backlog one team had already solved
In 2019 dozens of Apache projects watched their issue backlogs grow, while one, Beam, had already fixed its own with a shared triage queue. Leo saw both in different leads' reports. In 2022 the projects took another path, and Leo's card keeps their reason.
The most useful thing an organisation can learn is often already known by one of its own teams. We gave Leo the Apache Software Foundation's 2019 board minutes, with each project chair as a person of their own. This story is about a fix one team had found that the others never heard about.
The Apache Software Foundation had no part in this
We used the foundation's board minutes because they are public. The ASF did not take part, and nothing here is the ASF's view of Leo. Every quote below links back to the minutes it came from.
The claims, and where to check them
| Claim | Where to check it |
|---|---|
| In 2019 many projects opened issues faster than they closed them; one opened about 790 more than it closed in the year | The 2019 board minutes (archive) |
| One project kept its untriaged issues under 100 by sending every new issue to a shared triage queue | The same minutes |
| In 2022 projects began moving from Jira to GitHub Issues, giving their reason: "This should simplify the creation of issues and patches" | Minutes, 21 Sep 2022 |
| In 2023 one project closed about 300 old tickets by vote | Minutes, 18 Jan 2023 |
The work as it was
Every Apache project tracks its work as issues. In 2019, project after project reported more issues opened than closed, quarter after quarter. One opened "about 790 more opened than closed across the year." Another added about 335 to its open pile in six months. Each chair counted and reported their own figures, by hand.
One project, Beam, had done something different. Every new issue went into a shared Needs Triage queue, so the community sorted them together rather than leaving them until someone happened on them. Its untriaged issues stayed under 100.
What Leo saw
Leo heard from more than 130 chairs about their issues. It saw the backlogs growing, and it saw Beam's queue, in a different chair's report.
The way forward
- Redesign: one intake step for everyone. Every new issue gets a default Needs Triage status, the way Beam did it, so triage is shared from a queue.
What happened next
The foundation did not adopt Beam's queue. Its projects took another path.
- 2021. Backlogs kept growing, and even Beam said its untriaged pile was now being ignored.
- 2022. Projects began leaving Jira for GitHub Issues. One explained why: "This should simplify the creation of issues and patches, and should also increase the engagement with new contributors."
- 2023. More followed. One project closed about 300 old tickets by vote: "We ended up closing about 300 tickets but we still have a lot of stale issues."
On Leo's card this is recorded as a path Leo did not offer, with the reason in the projects' own words. It is a fair choice: moving to where contributors already work answers a different question than sharing a queue.
What this does not show
The minutes do not show whether GitHub Issues shrank the backlogs, or what Beam's queue would have done elsewhere. They show the same problem in dozens of places, one team's answer sitting in plain sight, and the path the organisation took instead, with its reasons.
Leo learns how an organisation really runs by hearing from each of its people, then lays out the ways the work could go, side by side, and keeps the choice with the people who make it. When they take a path, its card records it, including one Leo did not offer.