The December close finished 1 day late, with the reporting package delivered on WD+6 instead of WD+5. 

**What ran late:**
Three tasks slipped. CL-17 (Dana Whitfield's accrual register sign-off) was the bottleneck—it ran 2 days late and blocked the critical path. CL-08 (Marcus Oyelaran's cycle count adjustments) and CL-30 (Ruth Calloway's reporting package) each slipped 1 day; Ruth's slip was downstream of Dana's delay.

**Who was waiting on whom:**
The critical path ran: Cutoff memo → Cutoff confirmation → AP close → Accrual entries → Accrual register review → Trial balance lock → Draft reporting → Issue package. Dana's accrual sign-off (CL-17) was the pinch point. It depends on both the freight accrual (CL-09, on time) and accrual entries (CL-16, on time), so the delay was in her review process itself, not upstream work.

There's also one process violation: Priya Raman finished the fixed asset roll-forward (CL-21) before the depreciation run completed, though it didn't impact the end date.

**For January:**
1. Dana needs to allocate 2 extra days for accrual review or start it earlier—this owns the close timeline.
2. Marcus should document evidence for the tax return (CL-24) and build more buffer for cycle counts.
3. Tomas needs to file evidence for the AP cutoff review (CL-11).
4. Priya should wait for depreciation (CL-20) to complete before rolling forward fixed assets.

The full retrospective is in `output/checklist-note.md`.