The everyday problem
A provider may be expected to address old work while keeping pace with new incoming tasks. Those workloads can have different information quality and effort. Combining them without distinction makes progress difficult to interpret and can create disagreement about priorities.
A practical approach
Define backlog and new work separately, including the starting inventory and rules for prioritization. Agree how progress will be reported for each. Make dependencies visible so that stalled backlog items do not silently consume the attention needed for current operations.
Try this with your team
Create separate sample reports for backlog reduction and ongoing throughput. Include unresolved blockers and the internal actions needed to release them.