It's always a balance. There is no universally-correct amount (or types) of meta-work to make a team function optimally. For some teams, especially very small

It's always a balance. There is no universally-correct amount (or types) of meta-work to make a team function optimally. For some teams, especially very small ones (and most especially if they're all volunteers), adding significant amounts of bookkeeping to their tasks is likely to be much more trouble than it's worth. (Though, again, even for some solo developers, the bookkeeping can be very valuable—it's all about the specifics of the projects and the ways different people operate.) For other teams, not having the extra bookkeeping will mean that the people struggle to keep their tasks straight, or get abused by their managers, or have a variety of other problems. The most important thing is to be reflecting on your and your team's work and processes, and being open to changes that might improve them.