Status Indicators

During a Kaizen event, teams identify projects to work on and then go off and do the work, hoping to return with a finished product. In my early experience, I allowed team members to work on their own. I hoped they would complete their work in a reasonable amount of time. It didn’t always turn out that way. Hope is not a plan.

They rarely completed their work on time. More often, they lost time and progress because they got stuck and no one knew about it. I started to rotate through groups to assess progress. That relied on one person: me. After a time, I realized there was a better way to track progress, make it visible, and create engagement. The answer: Status Indicators.

Here’s how Status Indicators work:

Draw a circle. Break it into quadrants. Fill in each quadrant using a marker, indicating progress towards completion. It doesn’t have to be scientific or pretty, it just has to work.

25% = Getting started – initial progress has been made or a plan has been created.

50% = Making progress – things are moving along and people know what to do and how to do it.

75% = Almost there – we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. We can finish the work.

100% = Done – we’re finished and ready to move on to something else.

There’s no need to break status down into smaller elements. That would cause the team to spend more time updating status and less time doing work. When properly updated, it’s powerful and simple to understand. I use flip chart paper to draw Status Indicators during Kaizen events. Flip chart paper is large enough to allow others to see the status from twenty feet away or more.

To give you a sense of the value and impact of Status Indicators, use the following example. Four teams are working on separate projects.

Project 1 is Almost there, Project 2 is Done, Project 3 is Getting started, Project 4 is Making progress, and Project 5 hasn’t been started. It’s clear who needs help and who can help. Team members from Project 2 can help Projects 3 and 4, depending on their skills and interests. If there are more resources than Projects 3 and 4 need, those resources can start on Project 5. Anyone else, even if they’re not on the team, can assess the status and help those who need it.

The value of Status Indicators has been reinforced to me many times, never more than when I forgot to use them. After a particularly busy day during a Kaizen event, some team members said they were frustrated because they didn’t know what to do next. Others said the day felt chaotic and disorganized. I realized I hadn’t trained the team to use Status Indicators. I immediately showed them how to use them. The next day, much more work got completed. At the end of the day, the team related how much easier it was to manage their work.

From a supervisor’s or manager’s point of view, Status Indicators make it simpler and more efficient to keep track of work going on in many areas. Hours of effort to track progress are reduced to minutes or seconds.