What Your Team’s Busyness Is Trying To Tell You

One thing I’ve learned over the years is that a busy board can be the biggest red flag in the room.

Everything’s moving, everyone’s flat out, cards are shuffling around — but very little is actually getting finished.

Busyness always has a pattern behind it.

If you dig into the work, not just look at the stickers, it usually tells you exactly where the flow is breaking.

The trick is to stop staring at the columns and start asking proper questions:

• When something says “in progress”, what does that actually mean?

• Is it being designed? Waited on? Half-tested? Blocked on a third party?

• Has a bug been found but no one’s flagged it as a blocker?

• Could the story have been split so the steps are actually visible?

• Or is the team quietly doing their part, parking the work, and picking up something new because they’re waiting on someone else?

Most teams don’t see this stuff because they’re living inside it.
It feels normal.
It feels like “just how we work”.

But the moment you break down those invisible steps — design, build, test, rework, external dependencies — the actual constraint becomes obvious. And once you can see it, you can do something about it.

Earlier this week I shared a simple Flow Reality Check that surfaces these patterns, and quite a few people messaged saying, “This is exactly what our board looks like.” It’s more common than most people admit.

The good news is you don’t fix delivery by shouting “work harder”. You fix it by understanding where the flow actually stops — and that’s the bit most teams can’t see from the inside.

When you live inside a system, the friction becomes invisible.
Sometimes you need someone from the outside who can listen properly, ask the right questions, and help you spot the real constraint — the one slowing everything down.

I’ve done that with dozens of teams over the years. A short conversation is often enough to show you what’s worth fixing and what isn’t.

If you’re curious where your flow might actually be snagging — or you want a second opinion on where to focus — this is exactly what I do.