> [!summary]+ Summary > This page describes my take on the value of making individual and collaborative work visible. I share a useful book and applied examples from it to operational problems I faced. I touch on the kinds of design work I've done, but examples are shows in my professional achievements section. # Making work visible I started doing design work in 2004 when I was teaching high school students in China. I didn't realize it at the time, but I was learning the basics while spending many of my out-of-class hours working through the delivery sequence of lesson plans, writing and stylizing documents for students, and editing video clips. It's shocking to say, but I did all of this on a [12-inch Powerbook G4](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PowerBook_G4). At the time, I remember making diagrams of my lessons, the connections between materials, and making semester plans with OmniGraffle and Apple Keynote (v1.0). Fast-forward about 10 years, I began working with engineers at MIT as an Instructional Designer. Among many things about this experience one thing that stuck with me was how most joint planning was done on a whiteboard or wall. The culture was/is one of transparency, sharing knowledge, and exploring idea was one of the indicators of the "secret sauce". But this approach taught me how to visibly approach learning design and team operations. ==Making (design and operations) work visible is something that whole heartedly believe in and strive to practice with colleagues and teams.== It is not only **useful for work outcomes**, but it is **extremely useful for building partnerships**. ## A starting resource In early 2022 I discovered a book called "[Making Work Visible, 2nd Edition: Exposing Time Theft to Optimize Work & Flow](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1950508498/?bestFormat=true&k=making%20work%20visible&ref_=nb_sb_ss_w_scx-ent-pd-bk-d_de_k0_1_15&crid=23C15691348US&sprefix=making%20work%20vis)" by Dominica DeGrandis (2022). I came across this book by chance at a Barnes and Noble when it came out and immediately purchased it. At the time, I was looking for some guidance to help me figure out a solution to managing multiple priorities. For example, the following were my focuses at the time: 1. <u>Team transformation efforts</u> – building and embedding new mental models in my team; resetting an internal and shared workflow; managing a serious personnel issue; and defining new expectations of project ownership and accountability in cross-functional efforts. 2. <u>Coaching a manager</u> – helping someone to think more high-level and systematically; setting joint metrics and demonstrating the costs in choices; communicating a vision of individual staff project ownership; drafting joint workflow documents for cross-functional teaming; demonstrating visible collaborative teamwork. 3. <u>Digital fluency programming</u> – executing work on a grant; writing, designing, and delivering new workshops; collaborating with leadership on priorities and direction. 4. <u>Building a network</u> – prioritizing collaborations with departmental colleagues; responding to and reaching out to faculty; exploring potential collaborations; attending various meetings. 5. <u>Daily wild cards</u> – emails; meeting requests; requested feedback; all of the unplanned things that come up. I needed help to organize the operational challenges and make space for strategic planning and program development. And I really needed to be able to see everything as a big picture that I could touch. > [!example]+ My examples of making work visible > I share examples from throughout my career in my '[professional](https://jasontorresedd.com/about-s5)' section under 'leadership and management'. There you can see pictures, screenshots, and explanations of how I have made work visible. ## Making OPERATIONS work visible According to DeGrandis (2022) there are 5 things that steal time and prevent work from getting done. These are: 1) too much work in progress (WIP), 2) unknown dependencies, 3) unplanned work, 4) conflicting priorities, and 5) neglected work. Any professional has experienced these. They are hard to see even though you feel them. I like to make sense of these kinds of things for myself, but also for my teams. Without thinking through it, we just wander day-to-day and miss the purpose. But this is particularly if/when I have direct reports. **I want to ensure their health, their clarity in our direction, and most of all, their ability to do great work.** DeGrandis (2022) has 2 simple diagrams that I put to use immediately to both organize myself and to coach a manager. In both cases, these helped me get a hold of what I needed and wanted to do. ### Organizing myself I use software to track and check-off my work. Occasionally too, I use scattered notes for compact projects. But in managing multiple priorities (such as those listed above), and direct reports at the same time, I learned to create for myself boards to help me keep an eye on the big picture. Borrowing from the diagram below, I created a [Miro](https://miro.com) board to track my 'big projects' and capture the many interruptions and unplanned work. It worked so well that I began to feel that I wasn't doing enough. But the simplicity was magic. The backlog piled up, and in meetings with my reports and/or my supervisor, I was able to show and talk through the work in progress. Of course, a blank wall or whiteboard works great too, but I went with a digital canvas for archival purposes. ![[Backlog-Progress-Done.png]] DeGrandis (2022), Page 10 ### Coaching a manager Another example I used to great effect with a manager and teams was the table below. In my case, I was trying to change a highly inefficient workflow into one that was both efficient and effective. The central problem, was that the existing system treated person A as the one who had to review and clear everything. This despite the fact that person A did not have the expertise of persons B or C who they were collaborating with. The solution was to simply make a system where A, B, and C could each do their jobs and reduce the dependency on A. As much as I tried to explain, this was just not getting through. Using the chart below, I was able to quickly help a manager see (in math) why reducing dependencies was better. If 0 was on-time and 1 was late, then with 3 people involved we only had a 12.5% chance of the project being on-time. But if we took just 1 person out of tasks that they did not need to be in, then we improved our chance of being on-time to 25%. Resistance remained, but this simple chart that made the work visible got through to them. ![[Dependencies-Late.jpg]] DeGrandis (2022), Page 16 *Note: See this section in [[GWU Project management#Dependency chart and the math of over reliance]] for an example of how I utilized this lesson in a real working context.* ## Making DESIGN work visible There are many different kinds of design work. Some of those that I know and have practiced are as follows: - Instructional and learning design - Learning/technical materials design - Curricular design - Assessment design - Survey design - Multimedia design (graphics, video, documents) - Organizational and teams design - Systematic workflow design - LLM prompt design From my experiences teaching, guiding subject-matter-experts, cross-functionally teaming, and leading teams, I have learned that miscommunication is very easy to happen. It takes clear and direct communication to ensure this does not happen. But to really ensure alignment, the best approach is to **make the work visible**. Physical whiteboards with stickies and markers are great for spontaneity and human interaction. If you have a space that you control, then you can keep coming back to it daily. But if you don't control the space and/or you care more about archiving, then an infinite whiteboards is the solution. Of significant importance is that **collaborating on work in a visible way goes a long way to building human connections**. Everyone has ideas and a lot of people enjoy working those out with others. But the more often people can be brought together one-on-one and in teams to jointly design, then the better it will be for their working relationships and friendships. ### Examples in action The following pages are some examples through my career where I have gotten colleagues around a whiteboard with some dry erase markers and stickies to map out ideas. - [[2023, GWU unplanned work]] - [[2023, GWU Personalized learning]] - [[2023, GWU genAI MP workflow]] - [[2021, GWU CDM planning]] - [[2017, IMF Project planning]] - [[2017, IMF MDSx]] - [[2017, IMF Data management]] - [[2016, IMF Video concepting]] - [[2016, IMF PFMx]] - [[2016, IMF MOOC page structure]] - [[2016, IMF Accessibility planning]] - [[2013, MIT Sharing a vision]] ## Resources DeGrandis, D. (2022). _Making work visible: Exposing time theft to optimize work & flow_. IT Revolution.