Make All Work and Workflow Visible

Make All Work and Workflow Visible - A Complete Guide

Why is Making Work and Workflow Visible Important?

Making work and workflow visible is a fundamental practice in agile methodologies that enhances transparency, collaboration, and continuous improvement. By visualizing work, teams can:

• Identify bottlenecks and constraints quickly
• Improve communication about priorities and progress
• Reduce cycle time and increase predictability
• Facilitate better decision-making based on real-time information
• Support self-organization by providing clear status information

What is 'Make All Work and Workflow Visible'?

'Make All Work and Workflow Visible' is a Disciplined Agile (DA) practice that emphasizes visual representation of all work items, their current states, and the process flow they follow. It extends beyond just showing tasks on a board to include:

• All types of work (including unplanned work, maintenance, technical debt)
• The rules and policies governing how work flows through the system
• Impediments and blockers
• Work item aging and WIP limits
• Dependencies between work items
• Quality metrics and team agreements

How Does It Work?

1. Physical or Digital Boards: Teams use kanban boards, task boards, or digital tools that show columns representing workflow states.

2. Work Item Representation: Cards, tickets, or digital items represent units of work, containing essential information like description, owner, and estimates.

3. WIP Limits: Columns often have work-in-progress limits to prevent overloading.

4. Flow Visualization: The movement of items across the board shows the flow of work through the system.

5. Information Radiators: Dashboards, burn-up/burn-down charts, and cumulative flow diagrams provide additional visibility.

6. Policies: Clear rules about how work moves from one state to another are made explicit.

Key Implementation Techniques:

• Kanban boards: Shows work items in columns representing workflow stages
• Swim lanes: Categorizes work into horizontal lanes by type, priority, or team
• Color coding: Uses colors to indicate work type, priority, or status
• Aging indicators: Shows how long items have been in a particular state
• Avatars: Shows who is working on what items
• Digital tools: JIRA, Trello, Azure DevOps, etc., for teams that are distributed

Exam Tips: Answering Questions on Make All Work and Workflow Visible

1. Understand Core Principles:
• Recognize that visibility applies to ALL work, not just planned features
• Emphasize transparency as a foundation for improvement
• Connect visibility to faster feedback loops and reduced risk

2. Identify Key Benefits:
• Know how visibility leads to improved flow and reduced cycle time
• Explain how it enables better decision-making
• Articulate how it supports team collaboration and self-organization

3. Recognize Common Implementation Approaches:
• Be familiar with kanban and other visual management techniques
• Understand how WIP limits complement visibility
• Know how to apply visualization at different scales (team, program, portfolio)

4. Connect to Other DA Practices:
• Relate to "Limit Work in Progress" practice
• Link to "Continuous Flow" and "Plan Continuously"• Understand how it supports "Improve Predictability"
5. Common Exam Question Traps:
• Questions may present scenarios where only certain types of work are visible - the correct answer will include ALL work
• Watch for options that suggest visibility alone solves problems - it must be paired with active management
• Be cautious of answers suggesting excessive documentation - visibility should be lightweight and focused on value

Sample Question Approaches:

For scenario-based questions: Identify if all work types are being visualized, check if workflow policies are clear, and assess if the scenario shows effective use of WIP limits and flow metrics.

For best practice questions: Choose answers that emphasize simplicity, transparency, and inclusion of all work types in visualization.

For problem-solving questions: Look for options that use visibility to identify root causes rather than just symptoms.