As my brother and I try to sort out our aunt’s affairs to put everything in order, I’m struck with the importance of keeping work visible. This isn’t about shouting “Darn you, Aunt!” Life happens.

It seems different in a work context though, where we’re literally paid money to keep work moving.

So, what does it mean to keep work visible, especially in knowledge work? Our friends in product manufacturing may have an easier time of it because you can look across a plant floor and literally see the work.

Jira ain’t it. Alistair Cockburn coined the term “information radiator” to describe visual representations of work that give the state of things at a glance. Jira is more like an “information insulator”. One-dimensional lists of technical task descriptions, each assigned to an individual, obfuscate the larger picture and atomize a team’s efforts.

A team’s information radiator will be specific to the team, but some characteristics to consider:

• Can team members see it and understand the current goal?
• Does it contribute to unifying a team’s efforts?
• Does it contain all the information necessary to understand it?
• Does it provide a means for team members to surface impediments to the work, so that they can be acted on immediately?
• Does management act upon the impediments?

I find swimlane boards lacking because they show only the most trivial information: what is the state of individual tasks? They don’t surface that unifying goal, communicate standards and expectations, or provide a means for surfacing issues.

Now, tools do not a culture make, and just because high-performing teams use information radiators doesn’t mean that an information radiator alone will deliver a high-performing team. Without a culture that prioritizes improvement of the daily work over new features, the tools lose their power.

But if you’re trying to build a culture of relentless improvement, an information radiator may be a useful tool.

Do you have highly visible work? How have you realized doing so?