This is the story of how we harnessed the power of the community, automation and good habits to reduce our issue burden and helped users be heard.

5 years into its life and with vast number of users users, Element - a Matrix messaging client available on most desktop platforms, Android and iOS - had a growing backlog of bugs and enhancement requests. This is a common challenge faced by projects as they mature. I will share some of our lessons learnt and good practices that we have developed, and how our enthusiastic community is helping catch bugs earlier and process our backlog. While we have made good progress, we recognise that there are still further improvements to be made and will share some of our ideas for the future.