RA-05
Assignment Concentration — One Person Receives All New Work
Resource Allocation
Default severity: medium
ProcessOutputRiskEffort
What it detects
More than the configured proportion of newly created or sprint-added issues are being assigned to the same person — the team lead or senior member is being used as the default assignee. This creates artificial overload on that person and deprives junior members of growth opportunities. new_assignments = issues WHERE sprint_add_date IN current_sprint AND assignee IS NOT NULL assignment_counts = GROUP BY assignee, COUNT(new_assignments)
Detection formula
FOR each_person P: assignment_share(P) = assignment_counts\[P\] / COUNT(new_assignments) IF assignment_share(P) > config.ra.concentration_threshold // default: 0.40 THEN FLAG assignment_concentration IF assignment_share(P) > config.ra.critical_concentration // default: 0.60 THEN CRITICAL Report: assignment distribution pie across team; top-assigned person shareExamples 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 more than the configured proportion of newly created or sprint-added issues are being assigned to the same person while concentration threshold is set to 0.40.
Suggested response
Reduce single points of failure—spread critical skills and lighten overloaded contributors.
Coaching playbook
Symptom
More than the configured proportion of newly created or sprint-added issues are being assigned to the same person — the team lead or senior member is being used as the default assignee. This creates artificial overload on that person and deprives junior members of growth opportunities. new_assignments = issues WHERE sprint_add_date IN current_sprint AND assignee IS NOT NULL assignment_counts = GROUP BY assignee, COUNT(new_assignments)
Why it matters
When "Assignment Concentration — One Person Receives All New Work" 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 "Assignment Concentration — One Person Receives All New Work" 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.