Often when teams start visualising they start with low level tasks. Very quickly these either overwhelm the team or it works, tasks get completed but nothing really has changed – work still gets lost, fires still break out and quite quickly the team just stops updating the space and gathering.

A powerful visual space often has the following characteristics:

• It manages the ‘value’ that the team adds, not the tasks the team does to add the value (so it looks at how a Feature is transformed, rather than the steps that go into creating a requirements document)
• The space shows where work is handed over to other team members or to individuals or processes outside the team. These handovers are where a lot of the waiting waste comes into play and visualising them, especially how long work sits there, can be a powerful aid to taking action
• It focuses on what is being done today to accomplish the work the team has committed to and visualises things that are getting in the way of the team completing their work
• The team talks about what isn’t working because the visual space tells them the status without the need for talking about it

How many of these do your visual spaces have ? What are you doing that is working and allowing your teams to see together and learn together ?