High tech andon lights are great. Your build breaks, your tests don’t pass, a server goes down, and the bright red light goes on. The team swarms, someone fixes the build, and the light goes green. It’s all good.

But it takes some technical effort to set up that magic red/green light. Why not go low tech? My team is using giant green and red tri-fold presentation boards, like the ones you used at your middle school science fair. Anyone can raise the red andon any time and spread the word: something isn’t right, let’s swarm and fix it. They fix it and raise the green one. And it’s all good again.

What do you use for your big visible green/red indicator?

Special thanks to Patrick for turning “I need something big and green” into “here’s a big green presentation board.”