BH-02

Single-Owner Concentration

Backlog Health

Default severity: medium
Product BacklogPrioritizationRiskEffort

What it detects

One person owns more than the configured maximum share of all issues in a team — no shared ownership culture. owner_share = COUNT(issues WHERE assignee = top_assignee) / COUNT(all_team_issues)

Detection formula

IF owner_share > config.backlog.owner_concentration_warning // default: 60% THEN FLAG IF owner_share > config.backlog.owner_concentration_critical // default: 80% THEN CRITICAL

Examples in practice

  • A team shows one person owns more than the configured maximum share of all issues in a team while owner concentration warning is set to 60%.
  • Example signal: One person owns more than the configured maximum share of all issues in a team — no shared ownership culture.

Suggested response

Refine or prune ageing, imbalanced, or inconsistently closed backlog items.

Coaching playbook

Symptom

One person owns more than the configured maximum share of all issues in a team — no shared ownership culture. owner_share = COUNT(issues WHERE assignee = top_assignee) / COUNT(all_team_issues)

Why it matters

When "Single-Owner Concentration" 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 "Single-Owner Concentration" 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.

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BH-02: Single-Owner Concentration — FlowAnalyzer