What is Work Classification?
Work Classification lets your organization define how engineering work is grouped above issue types. You create Categories and Subcategories, then map your project management work item types to those subcategories.
Once configured, the classification drives two charts inside Project Financials: the Investment Allocation Trend and the Budget Breakdown — giving leaders a clear picture of where engineering effort and cost are actually going.
Common use cases include applying an investment balance framework (e.g., KTLO vs. Feature vs. Improvement vs. Productivity) or grouping work by accounting or business categories that are relevant to your organization.
Who can access it?
Only users with the Admin role. If your role is not Admin, Work Classification will not appear in Settings.
Classification is configured at the organization level — settings apply to all users and all views.
Where to find it
Settings → Work Classification
The Categories tab
This is where you define your classification structure. Each Category groups a set of Subcategories.
Roadmap (Default) is a system-wide category that ships with Leanmote. Its subcategories map directly to standard issue types: Bug, Epic, Feature, Improvement, Research, Support, Task, and Other. This category cannot be deleted.
To create your own category:
Click + Add category in the top right.
Give it a name (e.g., "Financials").
Under the new category, click + Add subcategory to define the buckets that matter to your organization (e.g., KTLO, Build new stuff, Improve existing, Increase productivity).
Custom categories are tagged Organization to distinguish them from the system default.
The Work Item Mapping tab
Once your categories and subcategories are set up, use this tab to map each work item type from your project management tools to a subcategory.
Select a Board from the dropdown (e.g., your Jira or Linear board).
For each work item type (Bug, Epic, Story, Task, etc.), choose the subcategory it maps to.
Work item types left unmapped will appear as Other in the charts.
You can map the same work item type to multiple subcategories if needed.
How it shows up in Project Financials
Once work items are mapped, two charts in Project Financials become fully data-rich:
Investment Allocation Trend — a stacked bar chart showing how cost allocation across subcategories evolves over time (Weeks / Months / Quarters). Use it to track where your team is investing effort — between feature work, bug fixing, support, research, and more — and how that mix shifts over time.
Budget Breakdown — a donut chart showing the share of cost each subcategory takes within the selected period. Use it to see at a glance which work types are consuming the most budget in the current view.
Both charts respect the active filters (Date range, Projects, Work items, Teams) set in Project Financials.
Common setup: Investment Balance Framework
A common pattern is to configure Work Classification following the Investment Balance Framework (pioneered at Dropbox). Under a "Financials" category, create four subcategories:
KTLO (Keep the Lights On) — maintenance, on-call, bug fixes, dependency updates
Build new stuff — new features and product capabilities (~60% target)
Improve existing stuff — quality, performance, customer satisfaction (~20% target)
Increase productivity — internal tooling, automation, technical debt (~20% target)
Then use the Work Item Mapping tab to assign your issue types to these four buckets. The Investment Allocation Trend will immediately reflect the split.