Work Card
A Work Card is the card for one Activity in the LIØNSBERG Integrated Delivery System. Every Activity has one Work Card, and only one.
The card is how the Activity is seen and kept. Its face says what the Activity is, which Work Stream and which branch of the Work Breakdown Structure it belongs to, who has committed to it and by when, what must happen before it (Predecessor) and what waits on it (Successor), how long it will take, how much slack it has, and where it stands. Its record holds every event that has touched it, so anyone who picks it up can tell what it is and what it needs without asking a person. The state lives on the work, not on the worker.
The rules of a Work Card
- One Activity, one card. Work without a card cannot be seen, sorted or kept.
- Linked both ways. Every card has at least one Predecessor and at least one Successor.
- Fifty hours at most. No card is larger than five days of ten-hour work. A larger piece of work is broken into several linked cards.
- One truth, many sorts. A board, a person's hand, a queue and a plan are all sorts of the same cards, never separate lists.
From the links between cards, the Critical Path and every card's float are calculated, not guessed. A card is a Commitment made visible, so it serves Making And Securing Commitments and Tracking Commitments. The Work Card is the promising side of the network; the TEA Card is its spending side — each person's daily record of time, energy and attention, kept by Work Stream and Quest, and rolling up into the System Wide Master Plan. Cards are plain text, readable by a person with no machine and just as usable by an agent.
See also: Activity, Work Stream, Work Breakdown Structure, Network of Commitments, Critical Path, LIØNSBERG Integrated Delivery System