Visual management: concept and implementation

Visual management is a project management concept based on the power of visual perception. Its main aim is to make a body of information more legible and memorable for a company's employees. Visual management offers numerous advantages for project management, and contributes to inter-team collaboration.

What is visual management?

Visual management is a principle of Lean Management, a lean production management method invented by Toyota. It focuses on a set of communication techniques based on the visual transmission of information and results. Its aim is to facilitate the dissemination of information between all members of an organization, using a visual approach that simplifies and increases operational efficiency tenfold. Today, agile practices have adopted the concept of visual management. They take advantage of its benefits to enhance collaboration, which must remain close, between multi-disciplinary teams and the customer.

The benefits of visual management

Visual management is a tool, a means of centralizing information relating to a project and sharing it with the teams concerned. It provides an overview, which leads to a better understanding of the issues at stake, and thus develops employee motivation and involvement. Visual management offers many advantages:

• It facilitates internal communication and encourages feedback;
• It enhances the legibility of information, increasing its transmission tenfold;
• His work is based on collaboration, interactivity and sharing;
• It increases employee involvement and encourages participative management;
• It stimulates creativity and encourages decision-making;
• It facilitates the detection of important information, as well as any discrepancies between set objectives and actual results;
• It allows you to evaluate your action plan in real time, to become more responsive, improve processes and better guide your decisions;
• It provides an orderly, transparent, dynamic, up-to-date and simplified working environment.

How to implement visual management?

To reap the benefits of visual management, discover a multi-step action plan for implementing agile project management practices.

Forming a multidisciplinary work team

The idea is to bring together distinct professions within a single work group, in order to benefit from the different skills and visions that will drive the project forward. The interaction and collaboration of these varied profiles can result in faster, more efficient and more creative progress. What's more, visual management is intended to be a tool for employees, so it's a good idea to include them in the process.

Defining the visual management framework

Drawing up a project outline enables us to establish a visual management method that will actually meet its objectives. To do this, we need to prioritize the issues that visual management is intended to resolve, and thus be able to answer a number of different questions:

• What is the scope of the project?
• What should be communicated?
• Who are they for?
• Where should they be displayed?
• What budget should be allocated?
• What actions need to be taken?

Choosing your tools

Visual management can draw on a wide variety of tools, some of which are already in use within the organization. The idea is to take stock of the tools available to the company, and consider how to improve their effectiveness. The first step is to think about their coherence in relation to the target. Eventually, this step may lead to the deployment of new tools that better meet the company's objectives.

Design appearance and display

Once you've selected your tools, it's time to decide on the visual aspect to be favored. You should always strive to facilitate the transmission of information: the visual should highlight it and standardize the display of projects in the workspace. Depending on its shape, you can then decide where to place the tool.

Ensuring the effectiveness of your approach

Throughout the project and at its conclusion, you need to make sure that the means used really do make it easier to achieve your objectives. If necessary, you need to be able to make changes and adjustments as part of a continuous improvement process, and regularly ask your staff about their perception of the solution to assess its effectiveness.

What are visual management tools?

Visual management solutions can take many different forms: they can be based on the use of whiteboards, flipcharts with post-its, or even be digitized and accessible via the Internet.

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Digital signage is the ideal support for disseminating information as part of a visual management project. It is highly attractive, encourages memorization and has the advantage of always being contextualized thanks to real-time updating. The screens can be placed in different areas of the company, effectively replacing whiteboards. The Cenareo solution fordigital signage is ergonomic, intuitive and inclusive. Easy to use, it deploys automatically on all digital workplace tools, helping to integrate all employees. It allows you to distribute information instantly across your entire screen estate, for ever more functional and up-to-date project management.

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As part of a visual management project, the project dashboard must include a certain amount of relevant information, including :

• Information on operational progress: this section is designed to show at a glance the progress of the project and the tasks assigned to each person. It provides an overall view and effective daily monitoring to easily detect blocking points;
• Highlights: deadlines and milestones, scheduled meetings between teams and with the customer;
• performance  indicators;
• Feedbacks and observations: in the form of a list, a wealth of information can be compiled for the continuous improvement of future project management.

To illustrate these data, we can use representations that look like :

• Chromatic wheels ;
• Diagrams, such as the Eisenhower matrix, the P.E.R.T diagram or the Gantt chart;
• Mind map.

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The important thing is to implement these tools with the aim of including all employees and simplifying project management. They must therefore be facilitators, accessible to all, and engaging. The Cenareo solution dedicated to digital signage enables you to set up effective visual management, fostering greater collaboration and cohesion to boost your teams' productivity.