--- name: visual-management-audit description: "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. Use when: A visual board has been in place long enough to check whether its zones are actually being kept current. You want to catch a zone that's gone stale, or one whose update ownership never got assigned, before the board loses the team's trust. You want to verify the team is genuinely using the board, not just walking past it. Not for: The board was just designed — give it real time to settle into use before auditing it." --- # 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. Family: Visual management · Format: .xlsx · Domain: core ## What it is A visual board designed once and never checked tends to go stale exactly where it matters. This audit is the sustainment audit's exact shape, applied to a visual board: restate what the board was supposed to keep current, get a checklist of specific zones and practices to verify, and see honestly which are still holding. ## When to use it Use it when: - A visual board has been in place long enough to check whether its zones are actually being kept current. - You want to catch a zone that's gone stale, or one whose update ownership never got assigned, before the board loses the team's trust. - You want to verify the team is genuinely using the board, not just walking past it. Not when: - The board was just designed — give it real time to settle into use before auditing it. ## How to fill it in - **originalObjective** — What was the visual board supposed to keep current? - **checks** — Drafted from what the board was supposed to show — verify what's actually still holding. - **narrative** — Drafted from the checklist actually built. ## What good looks like The example below audits the tier-7 visual board thirty-five days after it was designed — including whether the escalation-matrix zone's originally-unassigned update owner has since been named. Full worked example, on-screen and as a downloadable .xlsx: https://www.katafacts.com/katas/visual-management-audit ## Common mistakes - **Auditing a board that's never actually been used by the team.** — There's nothing to check if the board was designed but never adopted — that's a rollout problem, not a sustainment one. - **Treating a stale zone as a minor issue rather than raising it.** — A board with even one stale zone starts losing the team's trust in all of it — small gaps are worth closing quickly. ## What it connects to Upstream: - **Visual board design guide** (`visual-board-design-guide`) — The board's own zone specifications and update owners are exactly what this audit checks against reality. ## Where AI helps Judgement — stays with you: - Deciding how much time to give a board before auditing it - Deciding what to do about a zone that's flagged at risk Analysis — AI helps: - Drafting specific, verifiable checks from a description of what the board was supposed to keep current - Drafting the narrative from the checklist actually built Drudgery — automated: - Tallying how many practices are still holding - Identifying which zones are at risk - Exporting to xlsx in the house format --- Visual management audit 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/visual-management-audit.