This is pretty close to what I ended up doing. I've repeated this process elsewhere too, both for other companies and on my own projects... though the example

This is pretty close to what I ended up doing. I've repeated this process elsewhere too, both for other companies and on my own projects... though the example shown was among the most severe. In the essay, I'll try to be a bit more precise though, because in practice you might have a hard time with getting buy in on "Delete the issues" and an easier time with what I actually did on this project: "create a priority queue that only the product owner and CEO can touch, treat that as the new official backlog until the crisis is resolved, put a bunch of rules on what gets in there and how much it can hold, then track progress actively" More details will be shared in a couple days, can't wait to hear responses. :-) If you want the followup essay in your inbox, sign up here: https://tinyletter.com/programming-beyond-practices https://tinyletter.com/programming-beyond-practices