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 the Investment Allocation column in the Team Allocation table — giving leaders a clear picture of what kind of work the period actually went into.
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?
Users with the Owner or Admin access level — both hold the permission this page checks. At any other level, 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.
Where the classification shows up
Once work items are mapped, the split appears in the Team Allocation table, in its Investment Allocation column: a stacked bar per row showing the share of the period's tasks by work item type. Hover a bar to see its breakdown, or open the heat map from the column header to compare across teams, collaborators or projects.
The Bug classification also feeds bug rate and the rework split in AI Impact.
The column respects the filters in effect — date range, projects, work items and teams.
Where you find the Team Allocation table depends on your organization: it's a tab of a view in Context, or the Team Allocation Detail section of Project Financials if your sidebar still lists it separately.
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 column will immediately reflect the split.