--- name: deal-aging-report description: "Which open deals are stalled — how long each deal has sat in its current stage, each stage's average age, and exactly which deals are aging well past their peers. Use 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 for: 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." --- # Deal aging / work-in-progress report Which open deals are stalled — how long each deal has sat in its current stage, each stage's average age, and exactly which deals are aging well past their peers. Family: Value stream mapping · Format: .xlsx · Domain: commercial ## 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. ## When to use it 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. ## 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. - **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. - **stages** — Each stage's average age among its currently-open deals — computed for you, nothing to enter here. - **summary** — 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. ## 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. Full worked example, on-screen and as a downloadable .xlsx: https://www.katafacts.com/katas/deal-aging-report ## 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. ## What it connects to Upstream: - **Sales funnel value stream map** (`sales-funnel-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 — win-rate root cause analysis** (`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. ## Where AI helps Judgement — stays with you: - 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 --- Deal aging / work-in-progress report is licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com). ## Using this skill Apply this method as part of whatever broader task, instructions, or deliverable you're already working on -- it's a method to use, not a standalone conversation to start. There is no generation tool for this catalogue yet, so draft the artifact's actual content yourself, following the fields above, the same way a person filling this out by hand would. The canonical guide page and a downloadable worked example (.xlsx) are at https://www.katafacts.com/katas/deal-aging-report.