RA-04
Underutilised Team Member — Low Assignment and Worklog Activity
Resource Allocation
Default severity: medium
ProcessOutputRiskEffort
What it detects
A team member has significantly fewer active assignments and logged hours than the team average — they are underutilised. This may indicate deliberate capacity protection (e.g. learning sprint), skill mismatch (assigned work outside their capability), or planning oversight (work not routed to available capacity).
Detection formula
FOR each_person P (WHERE active in period): issues_assigned(P) = COUNT(issues WHERE assignee=P IN current sprint) hours_logged(P) = SUM(worklog.time_spent WHERE author=P IN current sprint) team_avg_issues = AVG(issues_assigned, all_team_members) team_avg_hours = AVG(hours_logged, all_team_members) IF issues_assigned(P) \< team_avg_issues * config.ra.underutilisation_threshold // default: 0.50 AND hours_logged(P) \< team_avg_hours * config.ra.underutilisation_threshold THEN FLAG underutilised_member Report: person, issues_assigned, hours_logged, team_avg_issues, team_avg_hours, utilisation_pctExamples in practice
- One person owns a disproportionate share of critical-path or high-WIP work.
- Delivery risk rises when a single expert becomes the throughput bottleneck.
- A team shows a team member has significantly fewer active assignments and logged hours than the team average while underutilisation threshold is set to 0.50.
Suggested response
Reduce single points of failure—spread critical skills and lighten overloaded contributors.
Coaching playbook
Symptom
A team member has significantly fewer active assignments and logged hours than the team average — they are underutilised. This may indicate deliberate capacity protection (e.g. learning sprint), skill mismatch (assigned work outside their capability), or planning oversight (work not routed to available capacity).
Why it matters
When "Underutilised Team Member — Low Assignment and Worklog Activity" 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
Reduce single points of failure—spread critical skills and lighten overloaded contributors.
Facilitation questions
- What system change would stop "Underutilised Team Member — Low Assignment and Worklog Activity" 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.