CH-01
Ghost Story — Never Activated
Content & History
Default severity: medium
Product BacklogProcessQuality
What it detects
An issue created beyond the configured inactivity threshold remains in its initial status with no changelog activity beyond creation, no worklog, and no comments.
Detection formula
IF issue.age_days > config.content.ghost_min_age_days // default: 30d AND COUNT(changelog_entries) \<= config.content.ghost_max_changelog_entries // default: 1 AND issue.time_spent = 0 AND COUNT(comments) = 0 AND issue.status IN config.workflow.initial_statuses THEN FLAG ghost_never_activatedExamples in practice
- A team shows an issue created beyond the configured inactivity threshold remains in its initial status with no changelog activity beyond creation, no worklog, and no comments while ghost min age days is set to 30d.
- Example signal: An issue created beyond the configured inactivity threshold remains in its initial status with no changelog activity beyond creation, no worklog, and no comments.
Suggested response
Protect narrative quality: write items before work starts and avoid late or empty edits.
Coaching playbook
Symptom
An issue created beyond the configured inactivity threshold remains in its initial status with no changelog activity beyond creation, no worklog, and no comments.
Why it matters
When "Ghost Story — Never Activated" 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
Protect narrative quality: write items before work starts and avoid late or empty edits.
Facilitation questions
- What system change would stop "Ghost Story — Never Activated" 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.