Daily and Visual Management Katas

Daily and Visual Management Katas are disciplined, frontline operating routines that track actuals against target performance in real time, making operational gaps immediately visible to trigger structured, team-level problem-solving.

9 katas, in the order they are used. Each is free, open-licensed, and comes with a companion guide.

1. Step 1

   Daily management

   Key performance indicator (KPI) tree

   Goals, the driver metrics that actually move them, and a checkable target with a review cadence for each — a huddle board's metric tree, honestly flagging any goal with no real target yet.

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2. Step 2

   Daily management

   Visibility board

   The performance board discipline pointed at a commercial function: bookings, pipeline quality, service velocity, team productivity — Plan vs. Actual, period by period, computed red or green from real numbers, where every red gets containment and a note on what's being done, closing the loop into a gemba-grounded root-cause log and a countermeasure register.

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3. Step 3

   Visual management

   Visual board design guide

   What a visual board should show, how often, and who keeps it current — a worksheet specifying content and ownership, not a rendered board layout.

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4. Step 4

   Daily management

   Tiered huddle board

   A cascading structure of standing huddles — what each tier reviews, and the concrete condition that escalates something to the tier above — honestly flagging any tier nobody's actually named to run yet.

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5. Step 5

   Daily management

   Escalation matrix

   A severity-by-severity response plan — definition, response target, escalation trigger, and a named first responder — honestly flagging any severity nobody's actually assigned to yet.

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6. Step 6

   Daily management

   Performance board

   A Plan vs. Actual matrix for the vital few key performance indicators (KPIs) that matter to a function, period by period, computed red or green from real numbers, not asserted — where every red gets containment and a note on what's being done, closing the loop into an abnormality/root-cause log and a countermeasure register.

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7. Step 7

   Daily management

   Pipeline management board

   The same tiered huddle cascade — what each level reviews, and the concrete condition that escalates a deal or a pattern to the level above — pointed at a sales pipeline instead of a shop floor.

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8. Step 8

   Visual management

   Visual management audit

   Whether a visual board's zones are actually staying current weeks after it was designed — the sustainment audit's shape, applied to a visual board instead of a kaizen event.

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9. Step 9

   Daily management

   Daily accountability sheet

   Who committed to what, by when — a flat commitment log for a daily huddle, honestly flagging anything open past its due date.

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