OW-01
In Progress Issue Without Assignee
Ownership
Default severity: medium
ProcessOutputQualityRisk
What it detects
An issue in any active In Progress status has no assignee — active work with no named owner creates an accountability gap, prevents escalation, blocks proper WIP tracking per person, and means the work is invisible in capacity planning. This is a stricter and earlier-firing version of DV-01 (which has a 24h grace period) — for In Progress issues, zero grace is appropriate.
Detection formula
IF issue.status IN config.workflow.active_statuses AND issue.assignee IS NULL THEN CRITICAL — no grace period for In Progress without owner Report: issue, status, time_in_active_status, last_status_change_actor (who transitioned it without assigning) Automatic escalation: flag the actor who made the last status transition for this issueExamples in practice
- A team shows an issue in any active in progress status has no assignee while active statuses is set to Configured per workspace.
- Example signal: An issue in any active In Progress status has no assignee — active work with no named owner creates an accountability gap, prevents escalation, blocks proper WIP tracking per person, and means the work is invisible in capacity planning.
Suggested response
Clarify ownership at handoffs and ensure active and done items have an accountable assignee.
Coaching playbook
Symptom
An issue in any active In Progress status has no assignee — active work with no named owner creates an accountability gap, prevents escalation, blocks proper WIP tracking per person, and means the work is invisible in capacity planning. This is a stricter and earlier-firing version of DV-01 (which has a 24h grace period) — for In Progress issues, zero grace is appropriate.
Why it matters
When "In Progress Issue Without Assignee" 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
Clarify ownership at handoffs and ensure active and done items have an accountable assignee.
Facilitation questions
- What system change would stop "In Progress Issue Without Assignee" 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.