Work of Others pattern visualizes external work on the board to manage handoffs.
The value chain doesn't stop at your team's boundary. Your board shouldn't either.
This pattern makes visible where work leaves your own system and is handled by external parties — certification bodies, customers, outsourced teams — whose work is currently invisible on the board.
The Problem
Work leaves your system and goes somewhere else — a certification body, an external developer, a customer who needs to sign off, another department. From your board's perspective, it doesn't exist. Until it comes back. Late. Or wrong.
How It Works
An explicit "Work of Others" column or zone is added to the board, showing how much work is currently sitting with external parties — visible, countable, and impossible to ignore. For ping-pong situations where work goes back and forth multiple times, the column can be divided horizontally to show the iterations. The visualization supports an important strategic question: should these people be brought onto the FL2 board? Only when the gaps in the value chain are visible can that decision be made clearly.
When to Use It
- External parties are part of your process (certifiers, customers, other departments, outsourced teams)
- Rework and correction loops with externals are frequent
- The handoffs out of your system are a recurring bottleneck
Related Patterns
- Doing vs. Waiting — external work phases are often the most significant waiting times
- Connecting FL — when external parties are brought onto the board, this pattern connects the levels
Your play!
Get the cards and maps — all 18 FL2 Flow Patterns plus the new "Identify your Flow" companion map (A3 + A2 in EN, A3 in DE), ready to use in your next FL2 workshop or board design session.