Why a backlog surprises you
A backlog only moves one way: by the gap between what comes in and what gets finished. If 12 come in and 10 get done, the pile grows by 2 every week, every week, even though everyone is busy. Busy is not the same as keeping up.
The numbers to use are counts, not feelings. Pull them from your job list, inbox or tracker for the last four weeks and take the average.
- New per week: requests, jobs or orders that arrived.
- Finished per week: the ones your team actually closed.
- Waiting now: everything open today that nobody has finished.
Run your forecast
What to do with the answer
You have three levers: finish more per week, take in less, or make each job take less time. Hiring is the slow lever. The fast one is usually the time each job loses to re-typing, chasing and waiting on answers.
Try the busier case too. If a 20 percent busier month turns a steady pile into a growing one, you are running with no slack, and the first sick day or big order will show it.
To see where each job loses time, the intake bottleneck scorecard grades one flow in two minutes.
Want more finished each week without hiring?
Tell me your three numbers and the step that eats the most time. I will tell you what can come off your team's plate and what it takes to build.