Glue work
The essential, under-recognised work that makes teams function (coordination, documentation, onboarding, unblocking), which tends to be done by people who are then not promoted for it. Alongside it sits office housework: notes, scheduling, cover.
Evidence grade: practice A widely adopted practitioner model with clear provenance.
Use it when
Auditing who does what; designing recognition and promotion criteria that do not punish the people holding the team together.
Where it stops working
The fix is to value the work and share it out, and eliminating it is no fix. A team with no glue does not become efficient. It gets stuck.
Where the standard uses it
- CC-3Inclusive practices and equitable opportunity distributionWho gets the stretch work, the visibility, and the benefit of the doubt.
Sources
- Tanya Reilly. The Staff Engineer's Path: A Guide for Individual Contributors Navigating Growth and Change. O'Reilly Media, 2022. In the bibliography
Used alongside it
- Diversity and decision quality contested
- Merger integration with cultural intent practice
- Opportunity and attention as scarce resources practice
- Proximity and promotion research
Cite this model
Chicago, BibTeX and licence →Engineering Management Academy. (2026). Glue work. In Engineering Management Academy Body of Knowledge (Version 3.1, TEC.glue-work). https://www.engineeringmanagement.academy/body-of-knowledge/techniques/glue-work