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Glossary
What is horizontal work?
A cross-cutting concern that pulses into several delivery streams at specific gates — security review, legal, compliance, design, accessibility, privacy.
A horizontal is rarely a standalone deliverable; its function is to gate other teams’ progress. Its load is driven by other people’s schedules, which is why several streams reaching the same gate in the same fortnight is the most predictable "surprise" bottleneck in delivery.
Related terms
- Vertical work — A delivery stream owned by a single team or discipline that produces end-to-end value within its own lane — frontend, backend, data, mobile, platform.
- Readiness (three-state) — A planning dimension has three states, not two: not assessed, assessed and nothing found, and assessed with items.
This definition comes from building DeliverySheet — it takes a vague work request to a clear delivery decision, so the shape, owner, capacity, dependencies and open questions are on the table before anyone commits people or a date.