BH-01
Zombie Item — Excessive Open Age
Backlog Health
Default severity: medium
Product BacklogPrioritizationOutputRiskEffort
What it detects
An issue has been open beyond the configured zombie threshold without resolution or cancellation.
Detection formula
zombie_threshold = config.backlog.zombie_days // default: 365d IF issue.status NOT IN config.workflow.terminal_statuses AND issue.age_days >= zombie_threshold THEN FLAG zombie IF issue.age_days >= config.backlog.critical_zombie_days // default: 400d THEN CRITICAL Report: age_days, planning_events_carried = COUNT(planning periods since creation)Examples in practice
- A team shows an issue has been open beyond the configured zombie threshold without resolution or cancellation while zombie days is set to 365d.
- Example signal: An issue has been open beyond the configured zombie threshold without resolution or cancellation.
Suggested response
Refine or prune ageing, imbalanced, or inconsistently closed backlog items.
Coaching playbook
Symptom
An issue has been open beyond the configured zombie threshold without resolution or cancellation.
Why it matters
When "Zombie Item — Excessive Open Age" keeps appearing, the team is signalling a repeatable process gap. Left unexamined, the pattern hides where work really stalls and makes improvement metrics harder to trust.
What you can achieve
Refine or prune ageing, imbalanced, or inconsistently closed backlog items.
Facilitation questions
- What system change would stop "Zombie Item — Excessive Open Age" from firing again?
- What do the cited issues have in common — same root cause or same workaround?
- Who owns the two-week experiment and how will we verify on the next import?
Run this rule against your own tracker data with Flow Analyzer.