Core Activities of System DesignVisualization of work processes enhances understanding and transparency in knowledge-based tasks by making invisible work visible through boards that track progress and dependencies.
Key Points
- Goal: To create common understanding and transparency
- Consideration of the entire value stream (End2End)
- Representation of work steps, dependencies and bottlenecks
- Together with the people involved in the process
Details
Purpose: This is about making invisible work visible. In knowledge-based work, tasks are often intangible, such as ideas, digital documents, or code. Without visualizing what is being worked on, it's difficult to grasp the current state of progress or identify bottlenecks and dependencies between teams.
How it works: Visualization is typically achieved using boards (such as Kanban boards) that represent the flow of work through different stages of completion. Each team or level of the organization can create a board that reflects its specific work processes and dependencies with other teams or departments.
Why it's important: By seeing the work in progress, team members and leaders can understand where value is being created or delayed. It helps in managing dependencies between teams and identifying areas where delays or blockages are preventing progress.
Example: A company might create a visual board showing how customer requests move through development, testing, and delivery stages, which makes it easy to see where the process might slow down or encounter obstacles.
More about this
These 5 activities are part of the core of the Flight Levels thinking and design model. If you want to learn more, take the Kick start path to Flight Levels Now!