If I understand takt time correctly, tracking time-on-task in TSP (Team Software Process) gives the net available time to work very precisely (all time interrupted from a task is subtracted from the total). A TSP team tracks the team total (and individual team members their own time-on-task) on a weekly basis. Significantly, it takes a lot of individual AND organizational effort to get anywhere near 20 hours time-on-task per person per week doing anything except testing or training.

Combined with task completion data on highly granular tasks (<10 hrs./task) the typical TSP team has a good handle on its own capacity and knows very early on a.) if its planning estimates of both the task efforts and their available task times were reasonably close (and if not, how so), and b.) when they are likely to finish. Early warnings are invaluable here, since if you fall behind early, you (and the boss) know it and cannot ignore it. Corrective actions therefore can be relatively minor – I call it moving the asteroid. It’s something you want to do long before it is due to crash to earth. The most common CA is rebalancing workload – inevitably someone is running faster while another runs slower. If everyone is behind, you’d better get more runners!

TSP also looks at current time-on-task for unfinished tasks – a lot like your sticky notes. If that number gets too large, work is getting started but not finished – a bad thing, but again, if you know early, corrective actions don’t hurt nearly as much and are usually much more effective.