How to manage an issue tracker's backlog
- by Josh Kelley
We've been dutifully using Trac for several years now, and our "active tickets" list has grown to almost 200 items. These include bugs that are too low priority and too complicated to fix for now, feature requests that have been deferred, issues that have never really generated complaints but everyone agrees ought to be fixed someday, planned code refactorings and other design infelicities that we don't want to lose track of, etc.
As a result, with almost 200 of these issues, the list is almost overwhelming; it's no longer useful as a source of what needs to be worked on right now.
What's the best way to keep track of issues of this sort?
Part of the problem is that some of these issues are such a low priority that they may never get done. I hate to lose track of these items (similar to not wanting to throw something out of my house in case I might need it someday); do I need to throw them out regardless (by marking them as wontfix) and assume I can find them in the future if I ever do need them?
