Ursa Major
Menu

How to

Get startedYour first canvasFill in a blockPeople, machines and capacityCalculate and read the figuresFix a problem

Learn

Thinking in systems

A business is a systemA business is easier to read when you stop listing its tasks and start watching what builds up, what moves, and how long things take to move. This part introduces five plain ideas from systems thinking: stocks (what accumulates), flows (the rates that fill or drain them), delay (the gap between a cause and what you see), feedback loops (results that circle back and change what happens next) and cadence (the rhythm at which recurring work happens).Seeing what holds you backMost of what slows a business down is not visible on a normal day. Work waits between steps.Systems dynamics applied to businessA business changes through a few patterns: things that feed on themselves, things that push back, waits that make both overshoot, and limits that stop growth. This part applies stocks, flows, delay and feedback to two small businesses: referrals and the morning rush at a bakery, and rework, steel lead time and a bottleneck at a fabrication shop.

Working with the map

Two clocks: work and waitingEvery job in your business runs on two clocks: the hours someone works on it, and the time it takes from start to finish. The gap between them is waiting, and waiting is what customers feel and task lists hide.Ceremonies: what the rhythm costsA ceremony is a gathering that comes back on a rhythm: the morning huddle, the Wednesday order review, the month-end look at the numbers, the yearly planning day. Each one is small on the day it happens and large over a year, because the rhythm accumulates.ChunkingA chunk is a group of things you treat as one thing, so you can think about the group instead of every piece. Chess players, climbers and everyone planning a week do it all the time.Discipline and disciplined processA process written on a wall is a hope. A process that is repeated, on a rhythm, by the same people, in roughly the same way, is something you can look at, discuss and change.Adding up: cost, working hours and elapsed timeWhen you map a process you end up with figures on many blocks: hours of work, costs, durations, waits. It is natural to add them all up, but they do not all add the same way.

Stay current

What’s new

Support

Contact supportSend feedback

About

FeaturesOur approachAbout Ursa MajorTerms of ServicePrivacy PolicyConfidentiality

Draft: this text has not been reviewed by the owner and may change before publication.

Your first canvas

From an empty workspace to five connected blocks, in the order a new tester meets the controls.

  • Step by step
  • 4 min read

Illustration to come

Annotated screenshot of a fresh canvas: the left pane with Canvases highlighted, the toolbar (Add block, Add note, Add innovation, Add input, Add output, Options), the empty canvas and the right panel.

1. Create a canvas

  1. In the left pane, open Canvases. The page lists your top-level canvases.
  2. Choose New canvas, type a name (the process or the part of the business you want to look at, such as “Special orders”), then Create canvas.
  3. The canvas opens. Its name sits in the breadcrumb above it; the breadcrumb will grow as you open child canvases.

A canvas is one document. You can have as many as you like, and a block can later open into a child canvas of its own.

2. Add and name blocks

  1. Choose Add block in the toolbar. A block named “New block” appears.
  2. With the block selected, the right panel shows its name with a pencil button, Edit. Choose it to open the Edit node dialog.
  3. Type the name in the first field and a sentence in Description (“What happens in this process?”). Choose Done.
  4. Repeat for each step. Five to seven blocks is plenty for a first map: for a bakery, Take the order, Bake, Decorate, Box, Hand over.

A block with only a name and a sentence is a complete block. Figures can come later, or never.

The toolbar also offers Add note for a handwritten annotation beside the map, Add input and Add output for figures that enter or leave this canvas, and Add innovation for time reserved to work on the process. You do not need any of them for a first map.

3. Connect them in order

  1. Processes run from top to bottom. Drag the blocks so that the first step is at the top.
  2. Drag from the dot under a block to the dot above the next one. An arrow appears. The arrow says “this leads to that”; it does not claim that one causes the other.
  3. To add a step at the end, drag from the last block’s bottom dot and let go on empty canvas: a new, connected block appears there. Name it as in step 2.
  4. To change where a line goes, drag its arrow end onto a different block.

The Get started page has a practice area for each of these gestures.

4. Read the right panel

Select a block and the right panel shows what it knows: the name and description, the figures you have entered, the people or machines assigned, and, under Subprocess, whether it opens into a child canvas. Click empty canvas and the panel switches to Whole canvas, with three tabs: Overview (costs and totals), Flow and Capacity. Expand dashboard gives the panel the whole width.

Illustration to come

The right panel with one block selected (name, description, figures, assigned people) beside the same panel in Whole canvas mode with the Overview, Flow and Capacity tabs.

5. Know that it is saved

Changes save as you make them. The bar above the canvas reads “Saving…”, then “Saved” with the time. If it reads “Save failed — will retry on next change”, make another small change or reload. See Is my work saved? for the rest.

What to do next

  • Fill in a block: how long a step takes, how long work waits before it, what it costs and who carries it.
  • People, machines and capacity: state what each person or machine can give, and see the planned load against it.
  • Calculate and read the figures: Parse, the figures it produces, and what “out of date” and “counted as 0” mean.
  • Double-click a block to open it into a child canvas when one step deserves a closer look. Chunking is about when to do that.