The Escalation Map
The Escalation Map records what must reach a person, which person, and what that person receives when it does. It is the map that decides whether an exception becomes a correction or an incident — and for anything that acts while nobody is looking, it is not optional.
The template
One page, filled in with the people who do the work.
Print this page, or copy the prompts into your own sheet. Nothing here needs a tool, an engineer or a licence — only the people who already know the answers, in one room, writing them down in the same place.
The situations that must always reach a person — listed as situations, not thresholds alone.
For each: which named person (a role and a name, not a team), and their deputy.
What the person receives: the case, the evidence, what the system already did, and what it wants to do next.
The stop: who at the working level can stop the work immediately, without building a case first. A stop right that requires escalation is a request form.
The strange-case question: what does this arrangement do at 2am on a bank holiday when the case fits no rule?
Role lenses
The same map, read six ways.
One sheet serves the whole team, but each Transformer role is looking for something different on it. Take the line for your role and mark that first.
Owner
which single situations must reach you the same day, regardless of process.
Organizer
which conflicts you resolve, and which go up.
Creator
when a rights or brand doubt outranks a deadline.
Implementer
what halts a deployment, and who is called.
Tester
what a failed check triggers, every time, without discussion.
Maintainer
what wakes a person, and which person.
The other maps, and the two working sheets that ship as printable PDFs, are in the Toolkit.