Fix the process nobody owns

Every company has a process that sits between two teams. Each team thinks the other one owns it. So nobody does.

I have found the same pattern in three jobs in a row. It is also the most valuable work you can pick up.

Two examples

At MINEMAN Systems, writing UAT test cases from backend SQL logic took 45 minutes a ticket and nobody owned the bottleneck. I built an AI assisted generator. Prep dropped to about 15 minutes, across roughly 60 features a month.

At the same company I rebuilt the help documentation. Nobody owned it either. After the revamp, onboarding support tickets fell by about 180 a year, around 260 hours.

Neither task was in a job description. Both were obvious once I looked at where work slowed down.

Why unowned work pays

• It has no defender, so nobody pushes back when you fix it.
• The pain is spread across teams, so the gain is too.
• Nobody is measuring it, so a small fix is a visible win.

How to take it without stepping on anyone

1. Say out loud that you noticed the gap. Do not announce that you are fixing it. 2. Ask the two teams who they think owns it. The silence is your answer. 3. Propose a small version and run it yourself first. 4. Hand it over with a written owner, or keep it and say so.

The skill is not working harder. It is seeing the gap before it becomes a complaint.