Value stream mapping
Deal aging / WIP report
Deal aging / WIP report is licensed CC BY 4.0. Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com).
Customise with AISkill file ↓1 · What it is
What it is
A stalled deal sitting in a pipeline stage is work-in-process the same way an unfinished part sitting in a queue is — capital tied up, risk accumulating, and a signal something's blocking it specifically. This tool measures one thing per open deal: how many days it's been in its current stage. From that it computes each stage's average age and names which deals are aging at least twice their stage's average — those are stalled, not just aging normally through a slower stage.
2 · When to use it
When to use it — and when not to
Use it when
- You can pull real per-deal stage-entry dates from the CRM for every currently-open deal in a bounded segment.
- You want to know which specific deals need a check-in now, not just an overall sense that the pipeline feels slow.
- You suspect a small number of deals are stuck and skewing how the pipeline looks in a snapshot review.
Not when
- You want completed-deal cycle time, not currently-open deals — that's the sales funnel value stream map.
- You only have a pipeline value total with no per-deal stage-entry dates — there's nothing to compute an age from.
- The pipeline segment blends deal types with genuinely different natural stage durations — scope down to one comparable segment first, same discipline as every other VSM-family artifact.
3 · How to fill it in
How to fill it in
- Scope
- Which deal source or segment, as of what date? Keep it to one comparable segment — a blended pipeline produces stage averages that describe neither.
- Open items
- List every currently-open deal with its current stage and the date it entered that stage. Pull real dates from CRM stage-history, not a gut-sense estimate of how long a deal has felt stuck.
- Stage averages
- Each stage's average age among its currently-open deals — computed for you, nothing to enter here.
- Overall summary · Stalled items
- The overall average age, the single oldest open deal, and which deals are flagged as stalled (aging at least twice their stage's average) — all computed for you.
- Narrative
- Drafted from the stall flags and your observation notes — what the rep or RevOps has actually seen about why a specific deal is stuck.
- Countermeasures
- What will you do about the stalled deals, ranked by impact and effort, owned and dated? A countermeasure not tied to a named stalled deal is a coaching failure mode, not a real action.
4 · What good looks like
What good looks like
The example below is an outbound mid-market pipeline's deal aging: real stage-entry dates per deal, stage averages with the arithmetic shown, one deal correctly flagged as stalled at more than 2x its stage's average, and a countermeasure that traces directly to that specific deal rather than a generic 'work the pipeline harder' push.
Same example, as a downloadable xlsx workbook.
Download .xlsxWIP aging report · as of 2026-03-16
Outbound mid-market pipeline — deal aging
Jordan Ellis, Sales Manager · 2026-03-16
Team: Priya Anand, RevOps · Sponsor: Renee Okafor, VP Sales
Scope
Scope covers every open outbound mid-market deal as of 2026-03-16, same segment as the sales funnel value stream map — excludes closed-won and closed-lost deals.
Open items
| Item | Stage | Entered | Age (days) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Meridian Corp | Proposal | 2026-03-10 | 6 |
| Blue Harbor Inc | Proposal | 2026-03-08 | 8 |
| Fenwick & CoStalled | Proposal | 2026-01-20 | 55 |
| Ashgrove Ltd | Negotiation | 2026-03-05 | 11 |
| Redline Systems | Negotiation | 2026-02-25 | 19 |
| Kestrel Group | Discovery | 2026-03-14 | 2 |
Stage averages
| Stage | Items | Average age (days) |
|---|---|---|
| Proposal | 3 | 23 |
| Negotiation | 2 | 15 |
| Discovery | 1 | 2 |
Overall summary · Stalled items
Average age
16.8 days
Open items
6
(6 + 8 + 55 + 11 + 19 + 2) / 6 = 16.8 days
Oldest item
Fenwick & Co (Proposal)
55 days
Stalled items
- Fenwick & Co — 55 days is at least 2x this stage's average of 23 days — this item is stalled relative to its peers.
Narrative
Fenwick & Co is the one stalled deal, sitting in proposal for 55 days against that stage's 23.0-day average — roughly 2.4x, and the oldest open deal in the pipeline. The rep's note about the champion's extended leave points to a specific, named blocker rather than a proposal-stage process problem, since the other two proposal deals are both under two weeks old. Overall pipeline average age is 16.8 days across 6 open deals.
Countermeasures
Have the rep identify and reach out to a backup contact at Fenwick & Co directly, rather than continuing to wait on the original champion's return.
Linked finding: Fenwick & Co — stalled at 55 days, roughly 2.4x the proposal stage average
Impact: high · Effort: low · Owner: Jordan Ellis · Due: 2026-03-23
Set a standing check-in trigger for any proposal-stage deal with no logged activity for 20+ days, so a Fenwick-shaped situation surfaces automatically instead of relying on the pipeline review to catch it.
Linked finding: Fenwick & Co — 55 days with the champion unreachable since late January
Impact: medium · Effort: low · Owner: Priya Anand · Due: 2026-03-30
5 · Common mistakes
Common mistakes
Treating every open deal with a nonzero age as worth a check-in.
Same vital-few discipline as the rest of this catalogue — one deal genuinely stalled relative to its stage-mates beats a list of every deal that isn't brand new.
Comparing a deal's age against the overall pipeline average instead of its own stage's average.
A naturally slower stage (negotiation vs. a quick discovery call, say) will always look 'stalled' against the overall average even when every deal in it is moving normally — the comparison has to be within the stage.
Estimating stage-entry dates from memory instead of pulling real CRM stage-history.
Reps' recall skews toward memorable deals, not typical ones — the CRM's actual stage-transition timestamps are the ground truth here, same as every other data-driven artifact in this catalogue.
6 · What it connects to
What it connects to
upstream
Sales funnel value stream map
The same stage-level thinking, applied to completed deals instead of currently-open ones — useful together when a stage is both slow on average and producing stalled outliers.
downstream
Deal A3
Once a stalled deal is named, a deal A3 is where you'd run root cause analysis on why that specific deal is stuck, if it isn't already obvious from the observation notes.
7 · Where AI helps
Where AI helps
Judgement — stays yours
- Deciding whether a stalled deal needs immediate rep escalation or can wait for the next pipeline review
- Committing to which countermeasure to act on first
Analysis — AI helps
- Drafting the narrative from rep/RevOps observation notes and the stall-flag findings
- Pressure-testing whether a proposed countermeasure actually addresses the named stalled deal
Drudgery — automated
- Computing every deal's age, each stage's average, and which deals are stalled, with the arithmetic shown
- Identifying the single oldest open deal in the pipeline
- Exporting to xlsx in the house format
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