Quite often what happens in these cases is that people get paralyzed looking at the list of open things, and rather than just digging in and doing something to

Quite often what happens in these cases is that people get paralyzed looking at the list of open things, and rather than just digging in and doing something to chip away at the pile, there are meetings and discussions and noise which generates a lot of heat and sound and stress, but doesn't actually make any positive progress towards resolving the issues. An meanwhile things keep getting thrown on the pile.