Shadow work refers to untracked, informal, or invisible tasks that consume significant time and effort but aren’t reflected in official plans, metrics, or ticket systems. These tasks are essential for team success but often go unnoticed in capacity planning and performance reviews. Sometimes called 'Glue work'.
Why it matters
Why it matters
- Hidden capacity loss: teams appear to have full bandwidth, but shadow work can eat up 30–40% of time.
- Burnout risk: Senior quality engineers often shoulder the bulk of invisible work.
- Promotion barriers: work that isn’t documented rarely counts toward career progression.
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Misalignment: business thinks engineering is slow; engineering feels misunderstood.
Three types of Shadow Work
Invisible production support
Invisible production support
- Investigating alerts and errors
- Answering ad-hoc support questions
Fixing issues outside ticket flow
- Impact: wasted hours on recurring problems, skipped Quality steps, stability risks.
Technical glue work
Code reviews, mentoring, documentation, coordination
Code reviews, mentoring, documentation, coordination
- Impact: critical but undervalued; creates bottlenecks for senior quality engineers.
Shadow backlog
Off-the-record fixes and improvements outside the official roadmap
Off-the-record fixes and improvements outside the official roadmap
- Impact: broken capacity planning, creeping misalignment, trust erosion.
Shadow work isn’t bad, it’s often the work that truly matters. The problem is when it’s invisible. Make it visible, plan for it, and recognise it.
