One Quick Glance at the Workload
A system of Visible Workflow gives team members one place to visit online, to see who’s doing what, and who might be waiting for us to finish our task to kick off theirs. There is the added bonus of spotting when we’re in danger of duplicating our work, something that will happen in team member’s roles and responsibilities are fluid.
As a manager, or team leader, a system of visible workflow gives you a quick snapshot of whether your team is on track or falling behind – or even whether you are further ahead than you thought. Plus, in those teams where team members’ tasks are of a similar nature and complexity, one quick look at your workflow can show whether there are significant inequalities in the workload.
A system of visible workflow doesn’t just need the right online application to enable it (Trello or Planner are my favourites), it needs clarity around who is doing what, and where the priorities lie. Setting up the system with your team gives you the opportunity to be clear about who is responsible for each task, and for understanding how all the individual pieces fit into the team’s machine.
(For an example of using Trello to visualise the team’s workflow and how it can help a team self-organise, have a look at this article I wrote for Management 3.0 back in 2015.)
WARNING!
I hope that your neurons are firing off warnings.
Pretty much like any system where you report your presence to your team, it can turn into an epidemic of presenteeism. A system of visible workflow which only looks at what has been done, can turn into a race to see who can come up with the longest ‘Done’ checklist.
For the manager, keeping an eye out on the workflow might feel like micromanaging, so you will need to find the right balance for yourself, the work, and the workflow. For example, you can set a time during the week to “pop into” your workflow site.
Or you can have a team meeting once a week where you all review how much progress you’ve made together. This is not about going through the board task by task, but looking at those tasks that seem to linger for too long under the “in progress” label and asking questions to find out whether there are any blockers that can be removed, or even whether you need to drop the task alltogether.