>unstuck engine

Handbook / 17 · How We Compound Value

> Our ClickUp setup

The goal: invisible infrastructure. You think about work, not the system tracking it.

Ivan Kovpak — CEO & Co-founder of Unstuck Engine
Ivan KovpakCEO & Co-founder
3 min readLast reviewed May 7, 2026

The goal: invisible infrastructure. You think about work, not the system tracking it.

One Folder, One Standard

14 Small Team lists (Product, Outbound, Content, Video, Earned Media, Partnerships, Sales, CX, UI, QA, Data & Analytics, SEO, Paid Ads, PeopleOps) plus a few multi-team lists (Experiments, AI Agents). Each team gets one list. Second list only exists when workflows can't coexist without chaos.

No nested folders. No hierarchies. Everything in one place. If you can't find a task in 3 seconds, we failed.

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Same Statuses Everywhere

Backlog → Planned → In Progress → Paused → Review → Completed / Cancelled

Every team uses identical statuses. Product's "In Progress" means the same as Marketing's "In Progress." Jump into any list and understand current state instantly.

Labels Over Everything

bounty / standard (task type)

R1 through R6 (release cycle)

feature / improvement / bug (category)

Labels show up everywhere automatically - every view, every dashboard, every filter. No configuration needed.

Automation handles tagging: template creation = standard, manual creation = bounty. Zero manual labeling.

Templates Are The System

Every repeatable task exists as a template. Task templates, subtask templates, checklist templates, Strategic Leverage Review templates.

Templates come pre-loaded: assignee structure, date scaffolding, time estimates, subtasks, checklists. Someone creates from template, fills specifics, ships.

Progress % auto-calculates from subtask and checklist completion. No manual updates.

This is how we enforce standardization without enforcement. Templates make doing it right easier than doing it wrong.

Views: Six Lenses on Same Work

Every list includes:

List View - All tasks sorted by status. Daily triage.

Board View - Kanban columns. Visualize flow, spot bottlenecks.

Timeline View - Calendar view with start/due dates. Capacity planning, deadline conflicts.

Workload View - Team capacity vs. time estimates. Catch overload before burnout.

Gantt Chart - Dependencies and critical path when coordination matters.

Dashboards - Custom metrics per list when numbers drive decisions.

Every team uses every view. Marketing checks Timeline before committing launch dates. Engineering toggles Board to see sprint flow. Leadership uses Workload to prevent burnout.

Same tasks, six angles. Each view reveals what others hide.

Strategic Leverage Review Runs Automatically

Complete a bounty task → ClickUp auto-creates Strategic Leverage Review task with 9 subtasks (one per dimension). Task auto-labels leverage.

Assignee audits all 9 dimensions, documents any leverage found, converts findings into new standard tasks with documented hypotheses ("saves 3h/week" or "generates $15K revenue").

Standard tasks trigger the same Review monthly. Audit looks for template refinement opportunities - can this be faster, clearer, automated further?

3 Dashboards, Zero Manual Reporting

Task Time Dashboard: Average completion time for standard tasks over 90 days. Should trend down as templates improve. Flat or rising = templates degrading.

Bounty/Standard Ratio: Task count by label over time. Month 1 might be 70/30, Month 12 should be 20/80. Ratio not shifting = not systematizing learning.

Strategic Review ROI: All leverage tasks with documented hypotheses, actual outcomes, completion rates. Below 70% completion = Reviews became theater.

All three update automatically from labels, time tracking, and completion data. No manual entry. No weekly report meetings. Dashboards show reality.

Why This Works

New team member joins, inherits working system day one. Same statuses, same labels, same templates, same automation, same views. Contributes to real goals week one, not month 3 after "learning our process."

The system serves SLM. Strategic Leverage Reviews extract value from every completed Bounty. Templates improve through repeated use. Dashboards show whether methodology works or degraded into process theater.

Scaling means more people using the same simple system. Not adding complexity to "manage growth."

The best systems disappear. You focus on the work. ClickUp just tracks it.