--- name: visibility-board description: "The performance board discipline pointed at a commercial function: bookings, pipeline quality, service velocity, team productivity. The same bowler chart — Target, Actual and Gap for each measure, from its jump-off point (JOP) through every period of the cycle to a to-date column — run on a weekly cadence rather than a monthly one, 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. For a commercial team's week-by-week hit-or-miss board, that is the performance grid. Use when: A commercial function already has (or can name) the vital few KPIs that actually matter — bookings, quote quality, turnaround time, service level agreement (SLA) compliance — and wants an… Not for: You don't have a real plan or target for the KPI yet, just a hope it trends the right way — set a real plan first, or every period reads as an ungrounded pass/fail." --- # Visibility board The performance board discipline pointed at a commercial function: bookings, pipeline quality, service velocity, team productivity. The same bowler chart — Target, Actual and Gap for each measure, from its jump-off point (JOP) through every period of the cycle to a to-date column — run on a weekly cadence rather than a monthly one, 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. For a commercial team's week-by-week hit-or-miss board, that is the performance grid. Family: Daily management · Format: .xlsx · Domain: commercial ## What it is A visibility board is the performance board discipline pointed at a commercial function — bookings, pipeline quality, service velocity, team productivity — instead of a shop floor, and run weekly rather than monthly. It is the same bowler chart: three rows per key performance indicator (KPI), Target, Actual and Gap, running from the jump-off point (JOP) the measure started at — the last real measurement before the plan began, which is why it sits on the Actual row — across the weeks of a quarter, to a quarter-to-date (QTD) column at the end. Only the Actual row is coloured — green for a week that met target, red for one that missed, blue for a week that closed with no number posted, and white for the weeks still to come. The weekly cadence is the point: a commercial team that only sees a miss at the month-end review has already spent three weeks not working on the cause. Each KPI gets a real target for every week and a computed status, never asserted. Every red gets a response, not just a color: containment (a quick action that protects the customer or the deal now) and a short note on the board saying what's being done and who owns it, then an abnormality log entry and a countermeasure with a real owner and a target date. The board also flags a KPI that has missed two or more periods running. Treat that as a prompt to check whether containment is holding, not as a test of whether the miss is a real change or ordinary ups and downs: two points in a row can't tell you that. To judge whether performance is genuinely shifting, plot the KPI on a run chart (its values in time order around a centre line) and look for a sustained pattern over enough points. The gemba — the place the work actually happens — in a commercial workflow isn't the shop floor: it's the customer relationship management (CRM) quote queue, the order intake portal, the enterprise resource planning (ERP) contract master, the pricing approval inbox. A real abnormality log entry comes from direct observation there, not speculation about what probably happened. ## When to use it Use it when: - A commercial function already has (or can name) the vital few KPIs that actually matter — bookings, quote quality, turnaround time, service level agreement (SLA) compliance — and wants an honest, computed record of how each is tracking. - You want every red period to trigger a real response — containment now, a note on what's being done, and root-cause work in the actual commercial systems (the CRM, the ERP, the pricing engine) — not a status update nobody follows up on. - You review the same commercial KPIs on a regular cadence and want the history kept, so trends can be judged on a run chart rather than argued about from memory. Not when: - You don't have a real plan or target for the KPI yet, just a hope it trends the right way — set a real plan first, or every period reads as an ungrounded pass/fail. - You're tracking this KPI nowhere near its own review cadence — a board reviewed monthly needs monthly discipline behind it, not numbers nobody's actually checking. - You're tempted to list every metric the CRM can report — the vital few discipline applies here too; a board with real ownership beats an exhaustive dashboard nobody discusses. ## How to fill it in - **kpis** — Describe the commercial function and what matters to it — a first-pass KPI set gets drafted, each with a target for every period and a jump-off point (JOP) recording the last real measurement before the plan began. Enter actuals yourself as each period closes; a real reported number is never invented, and the Gap row is computed rather than typed. - **coverage** — Computed for you from your KPIs, once actuals are entered — nothing to enter here. - **abnormalities** — Log one whenever a period comes in red — a real cause observed directly in the CRM quote queue, order intake, or wherever the work actually lives, not a guess. - **countermeasures** — Every red gets at least a containment action (protects delivery now) with an owner and a note on what's being done; add a permanent countermeasure (fixes the root cause in the system or process) when the cause is understood. - **narrative** — Drafted from the board actually built. ## What good looks like The example below is Beacon Analytics' own commercial operations board: a thirteen-week quarter read at the end of week 9, so the last four weeks sit white. Quote first-pass yield has missed four weeks running: every red got containment and a log entry, and the credit sync fix closed on time and worked, but a second, unrelated failure mode kept it missing, so a second countermeasure is open. Commercial bookings had a single red week that got the same treatment — logged, root-caused and countermeasured — before it came back over plan. Nine weekly points are still few, so no trend is called; every measure stays on a run chart. Full worked example, on-screen and as a downloadable .xlsx: https://www.katafacts.com/katas/visibility-board ## Common mistakes - **Letting a red pass with no response because it "looks like a one-off".** — Every red gets containment and a note on what's being done — that's how the board protects customers and deals while you learn more. Whether a miss is a one-off can't be judged from a single point or two in a row; it needs a run chart with enough history. - **Treating two reds in a row as proof of a real change, or one red followed by a green as proof it was just noise.** — A couple of points can't separate ordinary ups and downs from a genuine shift. Judge trends on a run chart, and don't credit a countermeasure for a recovery until the run chart shows it holding. - **Logging an abnormality's cause from a guess about the CRM or ERP instead of actually looking.** — A root cause written from speculation is usually wrong, and a fix built on the wrong root cause doesn't actually stop the recurrence — check the actual system before writing the cause down. - **Treating a closed countermeasure as proof the KPI is fixed, without checking the KPI actually recovered.** — A countermeasure can close on schedule and still not hold — the honest signal is whether the KPI itself returns to green, not whether the action item got checked off. ## What it connects to Upstream: - **Performance grid** (`performance-grid`) — The board a commercial team marks period by period, asking only whether this one met its rule. This one keeps the whole cycle in view — target, actual and gap, week after week, against the point it started from. Different question, and worth keeping apart. - **Sales funnel value stream map** (`sales-funnel-map`) — A flow-efficiency or conversion finding from the funnel VSM is exactly the kind of thing that turns into one of this board's own KPIs. - **Key performance indicator (KPI) tree** (`kpi-tree`) — A KPI tree's driver decomposition is what earns a metric its place on this board in the first place — this tracks it over time, the tree explains why it matters. Downstream: - **Pipeline management board** (`pipeline-management-board`) — This board's monthly review names what's off track; the daily/weekly tiered huddle cadence is where an abnormality actually gets worked between reviews. - **Deal A3 — win-rate root cause analysis** (`deal-a3`) — When a repeat-miss KPI's quick countermeasure doesn't hold, a deal A3 is where the root cause gets worked with the full discipline it deserves. ## Where AI helps Judgement — stays with you: - Deciding which commercial KPIs are actually the vital few worth tracking - Deciding what containment a red needs and whether its cause needs a full root-cause investigation Analysis — AI helps: - Drafting a first-pass KPI set and monthly plan from a description of the commercial function - Drafting the narrative from the board actually built Drudgery — automated: - Computing each period's colour, the Gap row, and the to-date target vs. actual rollup - Counting on-track, repeat-miss (two or more reds running), and not-yet-reported KPIs - Exporting to xlsx in the house format --- Visibility board is licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com). ## Using this skill Apply this method as part of whatever broader task, instructions, or deliverable you're already working on -- it's a method to use, not a standalone conversation to start. There is no generation tool for this catalogue yet, so draft the artifact's actual content yourself, following the fields above, the same way a person filling this out by hand would. The canonical guide page and a downloadable worked example (.xlsx) are at https://www.katafacts.com/katas/visibility-board.