Glossary
Escalation Path
An escalation path defines where a request in an approval chain routes when its designated approver is unavailable — out of office, unreachable, no longer with the organization — rather than leaving the request stuck indefinitely waiting for a specific individual. Without an explicit escalation path, an approval chain has a hidden single point of failure in every one of its links: any one absent approver stalls the entire chain, regardless of how urgent the underlying request actually is.
Designing the escalation path deliberately means deciding in advance who else may authorize a stalled request and under what conditions escalation triggers, rather than improvising an exception in the moment under time pressure — improvised exceptions made under pressure are exactly the kind of decision an approval chain was designed to prevent from happening carelessly in the first place.