Team workflows playbooks
Keep ownership, handoffs, and acceptance criteria clear. Choose a scenario, then the decision you need to make.
Unowned work item
Work without a clear owner drifts between queues, gathers duplicate discussion, and misses decisions that require a responsible person. Establish ownership boundaries and a next action while preserving the original scope and authority of the team involved.
Blocked handoff
A handoff can appear complete while the receiving person lacks context, access, a decision, or a dependency. Make the blocker explicit, retain the sending team’s evidence, and define the smallest action that lets work move safely.
Stale work status
A status can remain in progress, blocked, or ready long after the underlying work changes. Reconcile status with current evidence, recent activity, and the next decision so queues reflect reality without demanding performative updates.
Repeated work item reopening
Repeated reopening can indicate an incomplete outcome, a weak closure check, changing scope, or a status habit that treats uncertainty as done. Examine the recurrence pattern and clarify what must be true before the item closes again.
Overloaded reviewer
A reviewer with too many pending decisions becomes a queue bottleneck and may provide shallow or delayed feedback. Make review demand and decision cost visible, then redistribute or narrow work without weakening the required review boundary.
Dependency cycle
A dependency cycle keeps teams waiting on one another while each work item appears locally reasonable. Surface the cycle, choose a break point, and preserve the order and authority needed to move the shared outcome forward.
Duplicated work
Two people or teams can pursue the same outcome with different records, assumptions, or implementations. Detect overlap early, compare scope and evidence, and consolidate ownership without discarding useful parallel findings.
Lost decision context
A work item may retain a status and implementation notes while losing why a decision was made, which alternatives were rejected, or what assumptions remain. Reconstruct context from evidence and mark uncertainty instead of inventing rationale.
Mixed-scope work item
A single work item may combine a customer fix, platform change, investigation, documentation update, and unrelated cleanup. Split outcomes where ownership or acceptance differs so progress and risk remain visible.
Unclear acceptance criteria
Work stalls or reopens when collaborators interpret done differently. Convert the intended outcome into observable criteria, include meaningful rejection and edge states, and keep uncertainty explicit until the people who own the outcome agree.