Every messy backlog I've been handed had the same root cause. It wasn't lazy grooming and it wasn't the wrong tool. It was entry points. Requests came in through Slack threads, sales calls, founder DMs, support escalations, hallway promises. Each one became a ticket, because turning something into a ticket is the polite way to say yes without doing anything.

Do that for a year and you have 400 tickets, of which maybe 60 are real.

The fix I install in every team is boring: one intake channel. Every request, from the CEO's shower idea to the angriest customer, enters through the same door. It gets a short triage against the same priority tiers as everything else, and it either earns a slot or gets a written "not now" with a reason attached.

The first two weeks are uncomfortable. Sales feels slowed down. The founder feels slowed down (I say this kindly, founders are usually the worst offenders). Then something shifts. Requests arrive half-formed less often, because people know they'll be asked what problem it solves and for whom. Planning gets shorter because the arguing already happened at intake. And the engineers stop treating the backlog as noise, which is worth more than any prioritization framework I know.

This doesn't take a new tool. It takes one rule, and somebody willing to enforce it on the people who signed their paycheck.