Squad room

The difference is the audience: a report is read by those who demand results, a radiator is read by those who do the work. That is why the screen has no filter, no export and no detail — it answers from afar a single question: how is my team doing right now?

If you need to click to understand the panel, it has failed. Each card carries underneath the sentence that says where the number came from, precisely so nobody needs to ask.

WIP is work in progress: everything that has already been started and hasn't finished yet. It matters because starting is free and finishing is not — a team that pulls a new request before closing the previous one turns ten half-done jobs into zero deliveries.

Limiting WIP is the agreement that forces the right conversation: instead of pulling one more, what's missing to finish that one? The sentence changes color according to the state: within the limit (green), at the limit (amber, "only pull when one leaves"), above the limit (red, "finish before pulling") or with no agreed limit (gray).

Watch the slice: here WIP counts all open requests in the room's slice, not just those in the "in progress" column. If the slice includes the backlog, a limit designed for "5 in progress" will look exceeded forever. Either tighten the room's slice, or calibrate the limit to the number the room actually shows.

Each card shows how many days that request has not been touched — the count is based on the last recorded movement (or on creation, if there has never been any). Green up to 7 days, amber from 7 to 14, red from 14 onwards; the card at the top counts how many have passed 14.

Aging is the indicator boards usually hide: a column with fifteen cards looks productive until you discover that three of them have been stuck for a month. A stalled request is not a request in progress — it is a decision nobody made.

The "forecast overdue" tag is something else: it looks at the promised date, not at the silence.

These respect the room's slice (team, project, type): the board, the current sprint and its goal, the open retro actions, the head count and the climate.

These do NOT respect it, and it's good to know: the velocity, the "next by the numbers" block (WSJF) and the count of unscored backlog are read from the whole company. In a single-team company this changes nothing; with several teams, read these three as company context, not the squad's.

The team slice is by the request's person in charge — whoever is not a team member doesn't count, even if working on the same project. And the climate is matched by the team's name: renaming the team silences the thermometer until the next pulse round.

TV mode hides the menu, header and footer, darkens the background and enlarges the typography for reading from a few meters away. It is the only state in which the screen refreshes itself, at the interval configured in the room (from 30 seconds to 15 minutes).

Outside TV mode the screen freezes at the moment it was loaded — the "updated at HH:mm" clock is the clue. If the number looks wrong, look at that clock before looking at the data.

You can open it directly on the big screen with ?tv=1 at the end of the address (true, sim and on also work). Any other value opens in normal mode.

Because nobody "registers" a panel. The squad room and the Agile Coach are read-only for all profiles, without exception — what is configured lives in Squad rooms, and what is worked on lives on the requests board.

"In progress" counts only tasks that have left the opening statuses, that is, what someone has started. Newly created tasks stay out of the count and do not break the room’s work-in-progress limit.

The columns of the flow of the room’s task types appear, plus any column that has tasks now. With a team, tasks of its members come in, by employee or by their user. If the team has no sprint of its own, the company’s open sprint applies. If the selection exceeds 600 open tasks, the room shows the 600 oldest and says so on screen.

Open the room and click "TV mode": the menu and the top bar go away and the board fills the whole screen, on a dark background readable from afar. To go back, click "Exit TV mode".

Yes. Ask "what is the squad velocity?", "how much does the team have in progress?", "is anyone over the limit?" or "which sprint is open?". Tenkai answers with the same numbers as the room and a link to open it; it only answers people who can see the Squad room.