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Escalation paths
Escalation paths are the designed routes for uncertainty: when a decision is blocked, when risk is unclear, or when cross-team impact is likely. Escalation is a feature. If it’s political, teams delay and problems surface at launch.
Definition
- An escalation path specifies: trigger conditions, who to involve, decision rights, expected response time, and how outcomes are recorded.
- Escalation is not a failure; it’s a safety mechanism for complex systems.
- In agentic workflows, escalation includes manual takeover and operator override.
Why it matters
- High-stakes products can’t rely on heroics. When uncertainty spikes, escalation prevents bad automation and unsafe releases.
- Multi-team programs require escalation to preserve coherence and avoid local optimisations that damage the whole system.
- Clear escalation increases speed: teams stop waiting for alignment that never arrives.
- Escalation is also a trust cue internally: when teams know escalation is safe, they raise issues earlier.
- In practice, this is where many digital programs fail: the concept is understood, but the operating discipline is missing.
Common failure modes
- Escalation as blame: teams avoid it, so issues go underground.
- No triggers: escalation happens only when someone shouts.
- No response time: blocked decisions stall delivery indefinitely.
- No record: decisions are escalated, resolved verbally, then re-litigated later.
- Escalation without authority: too many people join, nobody can decide.
- Escalation that bypasses the team: leaders intervene without context, creating dependency and learned helplessness.
How I design it
- Define triggers: policy uncertainty, cross-team impact, repeated failures, user harm risk.
- Assign clear decision rights: who can accept risk, approve exceptions, or force rollback.
- Make escalation usable: one channel, one template, one expected SLA.
- Record outcomes as decision artefacts: context, tradeoffs, and follow-up signals.
- Test escalation in rehearsals (incidents, drills) so it works under pressure.
- Make escalation bi-directional: leadership can also de-escalate by clarifying scope, constraints, and acceptable risk.
- Treat it as a repeatable pattern: define it, test it in production, measure it, and evolve it with evidence.
Related work
Proof map claims
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