Increase collaboration and commitment with a digital Obeya

There is something energizing about meeting all together in the same large room. Though it may be difficult for your team to all meet in person, you can create and more easily harness the same kind of energy with a digital Obeya.

Obeya or Oobeya is Japanese for “large room” (大部屋). As a concept for planning and collaboration, the Obeya is a space where groups of people can strategize and execute plans together. Toyota practiced the concept of Obeya in 1993 as they planned the Toyota Lean Manufacturing System and launched the first Prius in under three years.

The Obeya is a dedicated physical or digital space where diverse teams and stakeholders can meet together and align their goals. Everyone is able to gain more of a sense of unity with the group as well as ownership over their own endeavors, which enables the Obeya participants to solve difficult problems, drive important changes, and get all kinds of work done.

AgileWalls has created a digital Obeya template within Lucidspark to help remote and in-person teams capitalize on the advantages of the Obeya. It contains five different walls for strategy, planning, action, performance, and improvement to show how these aspects of your team’s work come together. Whatever initiative or project you are planning, this virtual Obeya can enable your team’s success.

How to use the virtual Obeya template by AgileWalls in Lucidspark

The digital Obeya template can be used to effectively strategize for and plan initiatives, as well as monitor them once they are in progress. All of this can be done on one Lucidspark board for maximum efficiency, creating a valuable resource for everyone involved in your projects.

To use the template, simply share it to your team’s Lucidspark whiteboard and complete all five walls according to the template instructions.

• Strategy Wall: Defines what needs to be done and what your team’s priorities are.
• Planning Wall: Determines how to accomplish what needs to be done.
• Action Wall: Breaks down what needs to be done into specific tasks.
• Performance Wall: Creates a space for ongoing updates on the status of different tasks.
• Improvement Wall: Provides parameters for continuous improvement projects.

As your team participates in the template, you can assign everyone different collaborator colors to keep everyone’s contributions straight. You can also utilize interactive comments and emoji reactions as well as the chat feature and freehand drawing.

For the Planning, Action, and Performance Walls, you can use Lucidspark Cards to note the objectives and tasks that must be accomplished by each team to reach the milestones. For added convenience, you can connect the Lucidspark Cards to Lucidspark’s integrations with Jira, Microsoft Azure DevOps, or Smartsheet to stay on top of tasks.

As your team collaborates and tracks progress within the digital Obeya, you’ll be able to more easily include everyone’s best ideas and improve overall team unity and performance.