The three clocks idea is the part I would steal first. One add-on for the month-end problem: put a freeze calendar on your stuck-work board, and tag every waiting item with the tester's name and a "needs testing by" date. When work lands in testing, send a five-minute test script instead of a vague "please test": three steps, the expected result, and a yes or no reply. Anything older than 10 days goes into your weekly leadership update with its age shown. Short, specific asks still get answered during quarter-end, and your data makes that conversation easy.
Can’t steal what’s freely given. 😄 Take the three clocks with my blessing.
And we ended up close to your idea: every piece of work carried the quick test steps for sign-off, checked on the way up, so we could hand over a short script instead of “please test.” We even tried screen-share videos. Showing the age in the weekly leadership update is the part I hadn’t done, and it’s a good nudge: a number on the page does the chasing for you.
The separate board makes the wait visible again. Does each waiting item have a named person responsible for the next step, or is ownership something you still work out at handoff?
Named, and set up front. The person who asked for the work owns the next step. I added an “approver” field that takes more than one person, because a change often touched more than one side of the business. For changes that didn’t touch sales, it was often just our product owner testing and signing off.
Then I tried to make saying yes as easy as possible:
An automatic comment tags the approvers as soon as the work hits our own testing, so they know it’s coming before it lands on them.
Every piece of work carries its release steps, including the quick checks needed for sign-off. Those get tested on the way up, so we can hand them straight to the approver instead of a vague “please test.”
We even tried short screen-share videos of the change, so people could approve without logging in at all.
A name on it means it isn’t a hand-off scramble. Making it easy for that person is what gets it unstuck.
The hard part: not everyone lives in our ticketing system. Sales works in their own tools, so reminders moved to Slack, and then the status got split across two places. I’m still working on that one.
Charlie from xSquads
Head of GTM @ xSquads (xsquads.ai)
The three clocks idea is the part I would steal first. One add-on for the month-end problem: put a freeze calendar on your stuck-work board, and tag every waiting item with the tester's name and a "needs testing by" date. When work lands in testing, send a five-minute test script instead of a vague "please test": three steps, the expected result, and a yes or no reply. Anything older than 10 days goes into your weekly leadership update with its age shown. Short, specific asks still get answered during quarter-end, and your data makes that conversation easy.