Another variant of work visualisation is an obeya room: a space where strategy and programmes of work are made visible. An obeya room is the macro view, the “bridge of the ship”; whereas a Kanban board is a local view.
The obeya provides one overall view of
Why: vision, purpose, mission
How: strategy, roadmaps, plans
What: portfolios of work, backlogs of initiatives/projects
The vision and purpose are best presented as a story. Roadmaps might include a radar, along with other visualisations. Strategy of an organisation or a business unit can be visualised in many ways. One way is Goldratt’s Strategy and Tactics Tree. Most organisations have their own ideas. The work itself can be presented as Kanban, or backlogs in a table format, or a map, or many other formats.
Sometimes we do virtual obeya on Miro. It can be actively used every day.
e.g.
Rows = work: programmes, projects, products, build teams
Columns = information or status or stakeholder team status
Every few months they hold 1 – 2 weeks of asynchronous planning, where all teams update the mural at their convenience during that period.
Each stakeholder team who owns a column on the table goes down their column updating their field for each row with a stick-on icon to say e.g.
✔️ Yes we can do our bit in the next cycle
❌ No we are unable to help in the next cycle
❓ What the heck is this? This is the first we have heard about it.
The team who owns a row on the table updates all the informational fields and checks what the stakeholder teams have put in their columns.
The only meetings are convened by the programme manager to resolve any issues that emerge, or by those who want to resolve things themselves (“we will meet you at the obeya to discuss it”).
From our book Working Naked See the book for more illustrated examples