DV-01
Unassigned Issue in Active Status
Discipline
Default severity: medium
ProcessMetricsQuality
What it detects
An issue of a configured type has been in an active status for longer than the configured grace period without any assignee — active work with no owner creates invisible accountability gaps, blocks escalation, and prevents accurate workload reporting.
Detection formula
unassigned_grace = config.discipline.unassigned_active_grace_hours // default: 24h IF issue.status IN config.workflow.active_statuses AND issue.assignee IS NULL AND time_in_active_status > unassigned_grace AND issue.type IN config.discipline.assignee_required_types // default: all types THEN FLAG Severity escalates with time_in_active_status / avg_cycle_timeExamples in practice
- Assignee, field, hierarchy, or sprint hygiene rules are violated on active work.
- Issues miss mandatory fields or ownership while still in progress.
- A team shows an issue of a configured type has been in an active status for longer than the configured grace period without any assignee while unassigned active grace hours is set to 24h.
Suggested response
Enforce assignee, field, hierarchy, and sprint hygiene rules your team agreed on.
Coaching playbook
Symptom
An issue of a configured type has been in an active status for longer than the configured grace period without any assignee — active work with no owner creates invisible accountability gaps, blocks escalation, and prevents accurate workload reporting.
Why it matters
When "Unassigned Issue in Active Status" 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
Enforce assignee, field, hierarchy, and sprint hygiene rules your team agreed on.
Facilitation questions
- What system change would stop "Unassigned Issue in Active Status" 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.