KaizenProof

Lesson 18 of 23 · 6 min read

A board the team reads in ten seconds

In Lean: visual management

Builds on: Working time and waiting time, Did it hold?

In one minute

A team board is only useful if it answers the team's questions in about ten seconds: what is moving, what is stuck, who owns what, and what is due. Lean calls this visual management: show the state of the work so that anything out of the ordinary stands out without a meeting or a report. A good board shows work and its state; it never ranks people. If it needs a meeting to explain it, it shows too much.

The idea

Office work is hard to see. A factory can see a pile of parts in the wrong place; an office has a queue sitting in someone's inbox. Seeing the state of the work at a glance (in Lean: visual management) puts the work where the whole team can see it, so problems are noticed early and people can help without being asked.

What the board must show at a glance:

  • The state of each item. Reported, being diagnosed, countermeasure ready, in place and being checked, standard, reverted. Columns from left to right make progress visible.
  • What is stuck. Items that have waited longer than the team considers normal. Age matters more than count: as lesson 7 showed, most of an item's time from request to done is usually waiting, and a board that shows how long things have sat makes the waiting visible.
  • Who owns each item, so nobody has to ask.
  • What is due: check-ins waiting for an answer, standards due for review.

What it must not show:

  • Rankings or scores of people. A board that compares people becomes a performance report, and people stop putting problems on it.
  • Numbers without a source. Every figure on the board should trace back to something a person typed or confirmed (lesson 22).
  • Everything. A board with every detail cannot be read in ten seconds. The detail lives inside each item; the board shows the state.
A board with a limit on work in progressColumns show the state of each item. A limit on Doing makes the team finish work before starting more.

Illustrative example, not real data

A Kanban boardA team board with three columns. To do: Expense approvals, Shared inbox owner, Supplier set-up form. Doing (limit 3): Order record at purchase, Access requests (marked stuck), Offer letter template. Done: Weekly report removed, Bank details on the form. The Doing column is full, so the next item in To do waits until one is finished: the team pulls new work only when a slot frees.To doExpenseapprovalsShared inboxownerSupplierset-up formDoing (limit 3)Order recordat purchaseAccessrequestsStuckOffer lettertemplateDoneWeekly reportremovedBank detailson the formpull the next item only when a slot frees
  • A stuck item is marked in words and shape, not only in colour, so it stands out at a glance.
  • The board shows state, owner and what is stuck; never scores or rankings of people.

The core idea is to make what is not normal stand out (in Lean: making abnormalities visible). If every card looks the same, the one that has waited for weeks hides among the rest. Agree a simple rule for normal, such as "untouched for two weeks gets a mark", and the exceptions announce themselves.

The ten-second test. Ask someone new to the team to look at the board for ten seconds. Can they say what is stuck and whom to ask? If not, take something off.

Use it together. A board nobody looks at is decoration. Read it as a team at a regular moment, briefly, perhaps ten minutes once a week. Start with what is stuck and what is due, not with what is going well. For each stuck item, ask one question: what does the owner need? Lesson 21 is about what the lead does with the answer.

Example

Illustrative example, not a real company.

An operations team kept its improvement ideas in a shared spreadsheet with a column for everything. The weekly meeting went through it row by row and rarely reached the end.

They replaced it with a board: one column per state, one card per friction, the owner's name on each card, and a mark on any card untouched for two weeks. Nothing else.

At the first review the marks drew everyone's eye to the same column. Several countermeasures had been ready for weeks and never put in place, all waiting for access to a system another team runs. Nobody had been hiding it; it was simply invisible in the spreadsheet. One conversation between team leads cleared the access, and the cards moved the following week.

Common mistakes

  • Turning the board into a scoreboard. Counting each person's closed items invites comparison and hides problems.
  • Putting everything on it. If it cannot be read in ten seconds, move detail into the items.
  • Never looking at it together. Tie the board to a regular, short team moment.

Words to know

  • See the state of the work at a glance (in Lean: visual management).
  • Make what is not normal stand out (in Lean: making abnormalities visible).
  • Ten-second test: can a newcomer say what is stuck and whom to ask after ten seconds?

Check your understanding

3 questions. Answer them all, then check. You can try again as often as you like; nothing about your attempts is kept.

Question 1 of 3Which should a team's improvement board show at a glance? Select all that apply.

Choose all that apply.

Question 2 of 3A manager wants to add each person's number of completed improvements to the board. What is the main risk?
Question 3 of 3After ten seconds, a newcomer cannot tell which items are stuck. What change helps most?

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Try it on your own work

Describe one recurring task that wastes your time, and see these ideas applied to it.

Report a friction (opens in a new tab)

Where this comes from

Making the state of work and its problems visible at a glance is a long-standing practice of the Toyota Production System, carried through the Lean tradition into offices as team boards.