I'm not an SWE and I don't work with them, but I have a backlog of a different type. I'm not sure it strictly qualifies as "backlog" for what the article's refe

I'm not an SWE and I don't work with them, but I have a backlog of a different type. I'm not sure it strictly qualifies as "backlog" for what the article's referring to. My backlog involves tasks that are blocked waiting on a coworker to take action. Therefore I can generate a personal backlog at a certain rate, and the requests are tossed into a queue that's common to the rest of my team, and waits for a senior member to investigate and sign off and direct us for the next step. My backlog grows as a certain percentage of the tasks I take on in a given week, and so it's proportional to the volume of incoming tasks in general. The backlog is cleared at a rate based on how much bandwidth the seniors have to process them, and there's only about 2 who are responsible for this aspect currently. So my backlog tends to grow and shrink, and it really shocked some other coworkers when they found out how deep it was! Sometimes the only way to shrink my backlog significantly is for me to stop working altogether until the seniors have a chance to catch up. I am, by far, the most prolific generator of requests compared to my coworkers, and I'm not sure whether that is a function of the percentage of tasks I take on, or if I have a much higher rate of flagging stuff than all of the rest put together. Anyway, there's no way for me to avoid generating this backlog. It's just a fact of life. So we deal with it. It's overall a good thing that we catch these things and filter them properly, even if it delays resolution by a few days apiece.