17

Agile dashboard

Throughout the past couple of sections you have been creating a mountain of sticky notes and it may feel a little overwhelming or underwhelming, depending on your own personal current situation. This section will begin to give you an agile structure so that you can manage the thoughts and actions you are capturing.

The agile dashboard is a great way to map and track current reality to establish benchmarks. By tracking your current activities using a board you can establish a good picture of the nature and flow of current workload.

To bring order and structure to the volume of tasks created on notes or cards, agile teams use dashboards, sometimes known as a scrum board, sprint board or information radiator. All these boards are quite similar in that they track workflow and can be traced back to kanban, a lean production methodology developed by Toyota (see Section 1) and developed since by David J. Anderson. These information dashboards share the common objective of providing a visual format for displaying workflow in real time.

The nature of agile dashboards is that they contain a number of building blocks that allow individuals or teams to create boards that represent their teams and their workflow.

This allows the boards to be flexible, making them adaptable to a variety of ways and types of working.

In its simplest form, an agile dashboard contains three columns: to do, doing and done (see Figure 17.1). Actions to be carried out are placed in the to do column and then, as tasks are completed, they are moved across the board into doing as in work in progress, and then into done once complete. The work in progress box may be limited to a maximum number of tasks and, in order to help improve workflow, the doing section can be broken down further to show stages of a specific process.

The benefit of using agile dashboards is that you and your team can gain visibility: it gives the big picture and the detail.

It gets your workload out of your head and onto paper, which allows you to process and manage the information more easily.

The board gives a tangible and visual representation of time and activity. The best way to understand the value of an agile board is to use it. Begin by using it to record your future work, what you currently know has to be achieved, and by adding to it as new work is received. Trying the board out gives an easy and simple way to see practically how the dashboard maps your workload, and shows you the progress you are making.

Mapping work in this simple way can help to identify the different types of work you do, what gets done and what does not get done. If your jobs vary across a number of types of activity, visually grouping different types of work by colour or using ‘swim lanes’ (rows across the board) helps to gain visibility of the mix of work you are achieving (see Figure 17.2).

The board works by pulling the next activity through as the last is completed. Often work in progress is limited to one or two activities; once one has been completed, another can be pulled from the backlog to action.

Creating an agile dashboard

If you do not have a whiteboard handy and, in the true spirit of agile you are very likely to change this board to suit your own workflow, you can start simply with a large sheet of paper, a piece of cardboard, a window or anything of a decent size that will fit a number of sticky notes onto it.

Later, if you find this method to be agreeable, I recommend investing in a magnetic whiteboard or creating a fixed space on a wall or window where your board resides, but for now, just use whatever is handy.

Building on the basic concept of the to do-doing-done board, the board below gives a more structured space that allows you to break down these three key stages further (see Figure 17.3).

A printable version of this dashboard is available at www.beingagileinbusiness.co.uk.

The board is divided into two vertically: future work and current work.

Future work

The left side of the board is for tasks and activities that you would like to achieve in the future, it is the backlog of potential work to be completed. This may represent your working week or month, or it may represent the scope of work for a particular project or goal on which you are working.

Using the sticky notes of actions or objectives you created when you mapped out how you spend your time, or starting afresh, put sticky notes for all the future work you can think of on the left-hand side of your dashboard in future work.

INBOX

The inbox is a holding space on the board where new work can be received. As new tasks are identified or handed over from others, these are added to the inbox for review at the next planning meeting. These could be anything from big ideas to small tasks that need to be actioned soon or in the future.

The inbox is a vital element on the board, as it controls the influx of work received and provides a system for managing those requests so that they can be scheduled and planned for. Often work is received ad hoc and can become a distraction or interruption from carrying out the work scheduled. Having this inbox gives a control mechanism to manage the receipt of new work and avoid these ad hoc disruptions. The work received into the inbox is reviewed regularly through board meetings and planning and review meetings, which will be explained in further detail later.

Some inbound work may be urgent and require action immediately. If this is the case, the note or card can be placed directly into the current workflow. However, the volume of this work should be measured and accounted for during planning. For example, if on average four hours of work a week is received ad hoc, then this should be accounted for as slack. Another example would be, rather than scheduling 40 hours of work, 36 are chosen, leaving slack for the 4 hours of work likely to be received that will require immediate action.

In the future work area of the board, you might have ideas or specific tasks: they might be 10 minutes’ work or so big you do not know how long they will take until you investigate them further. You can organise these sticky notes as you wish. You may like to put the important/urgent priorities at the top, and things that are at the concept/idea stage further down.

Current work

The right-hand side of the board is for your current work in progress. It shows the tasks on which you are currently working or need to complete in the near future. For this introduction, we will set this as your next week’s work.

At the top of the board are areas in which to record the date of the current-time box of work and the total points you can achieve during that period. For example, if the time box represents a typical 40-hour week of work and a point value represents 1 hour of work, 40 points of work can be scheduled for actioning during that week, minus slack or other time that needs to be accounted for, for unpredictable new work or other activities not shown on the board. By recording estimates and actuals, and analysing these, we can predict more easily the work involved in each task and improve our ability to schedule work that is realistically achievable.

TO DO

The activities in the ‘to do’ area of the board represent the scheduled work that is to be completed during the current-time box of activity and is selected from the backlog of future work. It is the minimum viable proposition of what work should be completed in the next-time box.

These activities are a subset of future work that has been identified as the highest priority tasks; this helps to control and focus on a batch of work that can be completed in the next-time box rather than draw from the larger backlog of work. This will help to balance the workload among activities, which can be useful especially if you are guilty of the tendency to do favourite jobs often at the cost of not doing less-favourable tasks.

Move tasks from the backlog of future work into the to do box, use the estimations and prioritisation to help identify which group of tasks should be included.

For larger activities that have become actionable, break these down further into sub-tasks on additional sticky notes, so you can move an element of the task into current work and leave the remainder in future work.

You can break it down as far as is necessary for you personally. A short planning session to identify and set the work to be achieved over the next week should be held and others invited to contribute to this decision--making process, if their input is useful.

Most of us have an element of unknown in our jobs: the requests that come from nowhere and need to be actioned immediately or as soon as possible. This is where we need to be realistic about the amount of planned work we can achieve, and build in some slack to the points we can plan to achieve.

DOING

The doing box is for work that is in progress and is being actively worked on. This box represents current activity.

Limit work in progress – it is recommended that you limit the amount of work that you have in progress. You may like to create a rule that limits the total number of tasks; this can be useful especially if often you start things without finishing them!

FEEDBACK

This space is for work that is considered done and needs to be validated as complete. The activity is reviewed and tested against the success criteria established for that task. This could be integrating the activity to check that it works, or getting it signed off by your manager or customer to get their feedback and agreement of completion. Reviewing work before it is established as done is needed to ensure that the work is complete and to a satisfactory standard. If the work is not fit for purpose, then it returns to the to do column, otherwise it can move into done as complete. The feedback received may help to identify further improvements or additional activities needed.

WAITING

The waiting box is a holding area for work you have started but cannot complete, due to delays from another party. Consider each of your tasks in the doing box and identify if there is anything that is blocked and stopping you from completing that task.

When work is in the waiting area it has been held up and further progress is delayed while you are waiting on someone or something before you can continue. It could be that you are waiting on an external party for resources or information needed to carry out and complete the task. Any actions that are blocked or delayed should move back to the waiting area.

Visually identifying actions that are blocked from progressing helps to uncover waiting times or issues that affect the flow of your work. These issues that slow down and delay work from being completed can be flagged in the waiting box, so that actions can be identified to free up the task and move it forward.

Another action may be to break down the task further so that some elements can be completed, while other delayed elements move back into the backlog of future work to be scheduled later when the delay has been resolved.

If the waiting box becomes busy, this can flag a key issue with your current processes. It may be that you are not allowing enough time for dependent or associated tasks to be completed and, therefore, they have been scheduled too early. Often a volume of work stuck in waiting can flag that there has been some under estimation in how quickly something will happen.

For example, work requiring input from a third party may have an expectation of being completed sooner than possible, there may have been an estimation that there would be an immediate response on request but, in fact, it takes a week to respond, due to the third party’s other commitments and capacity. Identifying this, establishing the reasons behind the delay, can help to find resolutions to this problem, such as agreeing expectations more clearly.

The review of work in the waiting area is an opportunity for learning, so that in future these delays and blocks are expected, and therefore can be planned for, with scheduling altered to take them into account and mitigate any future delays.

DONE

Once work has been tested, checked and signed off as complete, it can be moved into the done box. This is a holding area for completed work that can be reviewed regularly to inform what work is to be pulled through to action next.

When the done box has a good number of tasks in it, compare what you have achieved against what you hoped to achieve over that period of time. Before removing these completed activities, we can reflect on them and ensure that the learning to be gained is not lost. It is also an opportunity to celebrate completion and success.

You can retain these cards for future reference: some may be repeat tasks and so will circle back to to do. For example, if you complete monthly expenses, once complete the action will be due again the following month and so can go back into future work.

Many report a great feeling of satisfaction in the physical action of moving the activity across the board and finally removing the activity from the board, either storing it away or screwing it up and throwing it away because it is done!

Your board should always represent your current workload, both present and future, and show you the status of each of your planned activities.

Over the next couple of weeks, update your board as you progress activities and, at the end of the week, take time to review what you have and have not achieved. Think about what has gone well, what you could do better and the current state of play.

Later, in Section 22, Agile reflection, we will structure ways of planning and reviewing the dashboard through stand-up and retrospective meetings that support managing the dashboard day to day and between time boxes of work.

The board provides a tangible tool that helps to manage choices in work that is scheduled and progressed: it provides a transparent way to visualise work and better understand our performance in terms of the rate at which we work, and identify the areas of friction where our work is held up or slowed down.

We can identify the quality of work through the feedback box and become aware of when work requires further action and when it meets the standards required to move to the state of done.

At a higher level, the board provides a structure with an easy mechanism to see where work is being focused, and ensures that this aligns with the overarching goals so that the direction is in line with the top-level scope and timeline. Later, in Section 25, Agile culture, these higher level roadmaps and plans will be explored to show how agile can be used to link lower level actionable work with higher level goals and milestones.

Tips

UNPLANNED WORK

Capture any significant ad hoc tasks on the board as you do them and make a note on them that they were unplanned and how long you spent on them (use colours or symbols to differentiate types of task/activity).

This activity will help you gain a realistic view of how you are spending your time and help you to plan more effectively in the future.

LIMIT WORK IN PROGRESS

By limiting the amount of work that can be in progress at one time, this helps to focus attention and ensure that work is completed. It helps to ensure that there are not too many activities being started but not completed.

Often, the reason for non-completion can be linked to delays and hold-ups from other dependent activities, either internal or external. The dashboard can help to ensure that work is well ordered through estimation and ranking internally. External delays are flagged in the waiting area – flagging them as an issue – which helps to free up the doing box, so other work can be actioned while waiting.

PHOTOS

Keep track visually of your mapping exercises and your dashboard by taking photographs. This is a good way of documenting your progress at a high level.

Write on your notes with in a fine-line marker pen. This way, when taking photos, words are much clearer and the notes can be read without removing them from the board.

COLOURS

Use different coloured notes or pens to represent different types of activity. This helps to give a quick view of how you are spending your time and helps you to maintain a balance of work.

BOARDS

Create a wall space specifically for your dashboard that is in sight and, ideally, in reach of your main workspace. Magnetic whiteboards are the ideal solution, as the magnets can help to secure your notes in place.

INDEX CARDS

Postcard-size index cards on a magnetic whiteboard can be customised to hold the information about the activity that is needed, such as the estimated time to complete.

AVATARS

If you are sharing a board as a team, you can create magnets that represent each person. This might be a symbol or a cartoon stuck to the magnet. This can help when work is being shared on a board, also to differentiate activities if coloured magnets or different sorts of magnets are used.

LEVEL OF DETAIL

The level of detail that is recorded on the dashboard is down to personal preference and how much detail is required, which may take a few cycles to find. Additionally, some tasks may need to be broken down more or less than others, based on their nature. It may be that existing systems fulfil the need to record the detail, such as time recording systems or Customer Relationship Management (CRMs), so the boards maintain a higher-level view, or feed the systems with the information they need in an easy-to-maintain system.

EVOLVING

As agile is used, dashboards can be adapted and evolved to suit your own personal way of working and the processes you follow.

For example, if your work has a number of different facets to it, then you may wish to customise the board to monitor the balance more visually. You can do this by using different coloured cards or by creating ‘swim lanes’ for different types of activity. This can help everyone to see quickly if a particular area of work becomes busy, and help to manage the amount of work that is committed to or promised.

Agile dashboards

Sophie’s hobby for making her friends’ hair accessories was growing quickly, especially once she started to trade online. After a couple of months, work to do had increased significantly and Sophie’s tactic of writing daily to do lists and the long hours needed for the workload was getting overwhelming and felt out of control. Sophie found herself spending large amounts of time trying to keep track of everything and organise and plan her workload and day’s work, but with so much to do and little experience in running a business and producing volumes of product, it was hard to know what to do when.

Sophie adopted a simple planner, which allowed her to keep track of her activities and her thoughts as they happened. Simply getting the information out of her head was valuable in itself, freeing up her headspace to think rather than retain and recall. She also colour coded the different activities on her planner to help her keep track of how she was spending her time. For example, on production, marketing and administration, this allowed her to become aware of what work was not getting done, either because she was avoiding doing it, or because it was blocked for some reason.

Sophie also estimated how long she felt each activity would take her, as well as considering if she could break it down further to help get things done in small chunks, rather than dedicating whole or half days to them.

Sophie also created a space for dreams, where she could capture ideas and thoughts that struck her during the day. This allowed her to ensure that the activities, both short-term and for the future, were not lost. Over time, Sophie adapted her dashboard to suit her working style and improve the flow of work. She created a section for growth activities, such as sending out samples to those she would like to work with, and desirable activities that would grow and expand her business and fulfil her ambitions as a creative designer.

Digital options

The physical boards work very well; they are tactile, tangible and visible all the time. However, if you work in a distributed team or rarely are you in one location, a digital agile tool may work for you.

Digital tools for agile are emerging and developing, but are still in the early stages. If you find you have too many things on your board, think about using the board at a higher level and using your existing computer systems within the organisation for managing the detail. Remember, this is a starting point: we will look to evolve and adapt your use of agile for the right things at the right level for you in the following sections.

• Post It® Plus is a free app that enables you to capture and store a map of notes. Once captured, the notes can be moved around and remapped. There are a number of digital note apps where you can record notes directly onto your phone or mobile devices.
• Trello is a free app you can download to create a digital agile dashboard. You can also share boards with others to help with multitasking. This app works well if teams are distributed and projects are relatively small and straightforward.
• Lean Kit and Jira There are also a number of emerging cloud-based software solutions to create and manage agile working. Lean Kit and Jira are two packages from a number of options that appear to be delivering usable solutions. These can be visualised on a wall-mounted screen or projector. With touch technology now becoming more accessible, these provide a virtual board as a solution, but can be expensive to implement.

If you are keen to adopt a virtual version of your board, when first adopting agile, the MVP approach is to use a physical board and notes initially to help develop your board’s structure and get used to the processes before migrating to a digital solution.

For more links to digital tools, visit the website
www.beingagileinbusiness.co.uk.