Earlier this week, we looked at the gaps between active steps: the time when an item is ‘in progress’ but nobody is working on it.
To make those gaps visible, follow one item through its journey.
Start small.
Choose a recently completed piece of work and reconstruct what happened from the moment it started to the moment it finished.
Follow the item, not just the tasks
A task list tells you what needed doing. For this exercise, you also need to know what happened between those tasks.
Use board history, messages and conversations with the people involved. Record:
- when active work began and ended
- when the item started waiting
- what it was waiting for
- when work resumed
Include the ordinary gaps: waiting for an answer, a review, access to a system or a release slot.
If you cannot establish a time, mark it as unknown. The exercise should reveal the journey, without inventing precision.
Ask what would have allowed it to move
For each period of waiting, ask what needed to happen before this item could move forward?
Perhaps a decision needed an owner. Perhaps the next person had no capacity. Perhaps several changes were being held for a scheduled release.
Keep the conversation focused on the conditions around the work. Naming the person who eventually picked it up does not explain why it waited.
Distinguish necessary activity from the queue before it. A careful review takes time. An item sitting untouched before that review is a separate part of the journey.
Try one small change
Choose one period of waiting and agree one small change that could reduce the delay. Try it, then review whether it helped.
Depending on what you find, you might:
- agree who can make a particular decision
- resolve a dependency before starting similar work
- make items awaiting review visible
- finish existing work before starting another item
Give the change an owner and agree when to review it.
Then follow another comparable item. Did that waiting period shorten? Did the delay move elsewhere? Was quality maintained?
One item will not tell you how the whole system behaves. But it gives you a concrete starting point for a useful conversation.
At your next retrospective, bring the journey of one item: where did it wait, and what could help the next item move?
Photo by Jacek Dylag on Unsplash
