Continuously Improve
1 Establish a Workflow
Define Stage Policies
Visualize Work
Define Work In Progress Limits
2
3
4
5
5 Key Steps to a smooth Workflow
Establish a Workflow1
Start by inviting your team and identifying the major processes of your department or organization and then mapping them to a Blossom Board. !
Add, edit or remove stages to visualize your Workflow to match your project’s needs. !
Aim to minimize the number of stages, so you can effectively identify bottlenecks in your workflow. !
Learn more about defining the stages of your workflow
Describe what each stage is in a stage policy. This clarifies what it means for a card to be in a stage. Considerations or requirements that should be met at a certain stage of the process can be defined as well in a stage’s policy. !
Stage policies set quality standards and minimum requirements for cards to be in a specific column. !
Learn more about defining stage policies
Define Stage Policies2
Visualize Work3
Start adding cards that represent features (campaigns, tasks) which are worth doing. Cards have a short title that everyone in your team can recognize and understand.
Each card shows the reason why it is being built, who is currently involved and an optional state, for example if it is "Blocked" or "Ready for the next Stage". By doing this work gets visible to all involved stakeholders, collaboration and communication increases instantly. !
Learn more about adding the right features to your Board
Visualize Work3
Reduce the time a card takes to go through from the first to the last stage by adding card limits to stages of the board in which work is being performed. !
Setting the optimal amount of work that your team can handle at one time will lead to a smooth & continuous workflow and it improves quality because you can give greater focus to fewer tasks. These benefits improve efficiency and you eventually get more work done in less time.
4 Define Work In Progress Limits
If you bring in too many tasks into a column with WIP limits, we give you a gentle reminder that you’re likely trading focus for doing that extra task. !
Learn more about defining the right WIP limits
4 Define Work In Progress Limits
Regularly view key metrics, like high cycle time and your most recently shipped work, to determine where you can improve. !
After the first (and every upcoming) iteration you can analyze how smoothly the cards flowed through the process and look where you can improve idle time (for example of cards that have been marked as ready), and reflect why bottlenecks and blockers happened.
Continuously Improve5
Look for metrics that are out of the ordinary and discuss why these anomalies have occurred. Improvements (and suggestions) nearly always follow. !
Learn more about Blossom’s Performance Analytics
Continuously Improve5
Thank you for reading!
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