RA-07
Worklog Hours Mismatch — Assignee vs Actual Worker
Resource Allocation
Default severity: medium
ProcessOutputRiskEffort
What it detects
The person assigned to an issue is not the person who logged the most time on it — the work was done primarily by someone else while the assignee holds nominal ownership. This creates phantom accountability: metrics attribute delivery to the assignee but the actual effort came from someone else, distorting per-person capacity and bottleneck analysis.
Detection formula
FOR each_issue I WHERE time_spent > config.ra.min_hours_for_mismatch // default: 4h primary_worklogger = argmax(SUM(worklog.time_spent), BY author) IF primary_worklogger != I.assignee AND worklog_share(primary_worklogger, I) > config.ra.mismatch_dominance_threshold // default: 0.60 THEN FLAG assignee_worklog_mismatch mismatch_rate(team) = COUNT(mismatched) / COUNT(all_issues_with_worklog) IF mismatch_rate > config.ra.systemic_mismatch_threshold // default: 0.30 THEN CRITICAL — team-level: assignments do not reflect who does the work Report: issue, assignee, primary_worklogger, assignee_hours, worklogger_hoursExamples 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 the person assigned to an issue is not the person who logged the most time on it while min hours for mismatch is set to 4h primary_worklogger = argmax(SUM(worklog.time_spent), BY author).
Suggested response
Reduce single points of failure—spread critical skills and lighten overloaded contributors.
Coaching playbook
Symptom
The person assigned to an issue is not the person who logged the most time on it — the work was done primarily by someone else while the assignee holds nominal ownership. This creates phantom accountability: metrics attribute delivery to the assignee but the actual effort came from someone else, distorting per-person capacity and bottleneck analysis.
Why it matters
When "Worklog Hours Mismatch — Assignee vs Actual Worker" 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 "Worklog Hours Mismatch — Assignee vs Actual Worker" 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.