Venkat@nindokag back when I was doing product management, I'd divide the backlog into three kinds of features, which I called stabilize/evolve/jump and allocated across them.
Stabilize = in production things into which we're integrating bug fixes and stuff
Evolve = incremental feature expansion things into next release that had low probability of destabilizing production
Jump = radical feature expansions that could destabilize the product, often on a branch
Risk mgmt = rebalance the 3.
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