Short answer / Lab
Plan the day in detail, the week in outline, and park everything else. Put on the board the work that isn't already scheduled elsewhere: jobs around experiments, things you're waiting for, and open questions. Mark what's blocked separately from what's late, and link each task to the record it's about, so whoever picks it up doesn't have to search.
Our example lab's mycoplasma test on Thursday depends on two things nobody at the bench controls. One is a reagent due on Wednesday. The other is a 72-hour wait that starts when the cultures are fed on Monday.
Feed a day late and the plate moves to Friday. Lose the delivery and there's no plate at all. Planning a lab's week is mostly about dependencies like these, plus the small jobs that belong to nobody's experiment: a sample to fetch from a freezer, a reviewer to warn. This is the week of 21 September in the lab our home page follows, on the Bench Board in CCA Labs: what went on it, what didn't, and where boards like it go wrong.
What should go on a lab's task board?
The work that isn't already scheduled somewhere else. That means the jobs around experiments, the things you're waiting for, and the questions nobody has answered yet.
The experiment's own steps don't belong on it. This month's screen is experiment EXP-20260921-001, built from version 3 of the "Mycoplasma PCR screen" workflow. It already knows its six steps and their order. It holds the 72-hour wait, and it books the qPCR instrument for step 4 because the step names it. Copy those steps onto a board and you have two plans, and by Wednesday they disagree.
The week of 21 September
This is the board on Monday morning.
| Section | Card | Linked to | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Today | Tell the culture owners: no antibiotics from today's feed | The experiment | Due today, then Done at 09:15 |
| Today | Primer and probe mix with internal control, due Wednesday | PO-00005 |
Blocked |
| This Week | Plate day: pull SMP-0424 from the -20 °C freezer, with a checklist (everyone on the plate has read SOP v4) |
The sample, the experiment | Scheduled, pinned |
| This Week | @QA batch record to sign Thursday afternoon | The experiment | Scheduled |
| Parking Lot | Ask QA: should dense suspension cultures go in at 1:10 first time? | Parked |
Five cards for a week with a new SOP in it. The feed itself isn't one of them: it's step 1 of the experiment, done at 09:45. The card is the job around it, making sure nobody's flasks still have antibiotics in them. The primer and probe mix is new because version 4 of the SOP added an internal control to every well, and the lab has never stocked it. SMP-0424 is 1 mL of spent medium kept back from the new HEK293 cell bank, which this plate will clear for use.
Why does waiting need its own state?
Because a blocked task and a late task need different people. A late task needs whoever is doing it. A blocked one needs whoever can move the thing it's waiting on, and on most boards it looks exactly like a late one.
In CCA Labs a card is Open, Waiting or Done. A Waiting card shows as Blocked, in red, whatever its date. The delivery card links the purchase order, so anyone who opens it can see where the order has got to without asking. When the mix arrives on Wednesday it goes into stock as lot LOT-PP-2609, gets one check run with the positive control, and is released for use. Then someone sets the card back to Open and then Done. The board won't do that by itself when the order is received. Setting it back is a person's job.
In control terms, the delivery is a delay in the loop, and the Thursday plate is downstream of it. A delay you can see is one you can plan around. Project managers call this the critical path. At the bench it's usually the box that's still on the lorry.
How far ahead should a lab plan?
The day in detail, the week in outline, and everything else parked. The board has exactly those three sections: Today, This Week and the Parking Lot.
Cards don't move between sections on their own; people move them. The date drives the badge instead. A card past its due date shows Overdue, one due today shows Due today, one due later shows Scheduled, and anything in the Parking Lot shows Parked. Pinned cards sit at the top of their section. Done cards clear out of Today and This Week after a while, and the Parking Lot keeps them.
I'd rather plan a week well than a month badly. A board that plans further out than that stops being a plan and turns into a wish list, and people stop believing its dates.
What should a card link to?
The record it's about, so the person who picks it up doesn't have to go looking. A card can link experiments, samples, inventory, workflows, documents, rooms and equipment in the Virtual Lab, and purchase orders. In the notes, # links a record, @ mentions someone and sends them a notification, and you can paste a photo straight in.
The links work in both directions where it matters most. Open the experiment's runner on Thursday and its Tasks panel lists the cards linked to it, so "pull SMP-0424 from the freezer" is in front of the scientist inside the run, not on a board in another tab. One detail to know: a link keeps the record's name as it was when you linked it, so a card can show an old name after a rename.
Where it goes wrong
Lab task boards tend to fail in one of four ways, and none of them is about the software.
- It copies the experiment. Two plans, and the one people trust is whichever they looked at last.
- Nothing is ever closed. The board fills with cards that were done weeks ago, and the real work hides among them.
- Blocked looks like late. The delivery everyone is waiting on sits in red next to a report someone forgot, and nobody chases the supplier.
- The Parking Lot is where ideas go to die. Look at it every week or two and either schedule a card or delete it. The dense-culture question gets its answer on Thursday.
The Bench Board in CCA Labs
A card has a title, notes, an assignee, a due date, a checklist, attachments and a pin. It can be filed under a program, project, fund or experiment, and it carries its linked records. Filter Tasks narrows the board by any of those, and Add Task puts a card straight into a section. The rest of the lab side is on the all-in-one lab page, and you can create your lab to plan your own week on it.
By Thursday morning the mix is in, the wait is over and the bank's sample is thawing on the bench. What's left is sixteen wells and a mastermix, which is Thursday's arithmetic: the calculations a cell culture bench does every day.
The whole story / one floor at a time
One mycoplasma test, from the SOP to the signed record
One routine test, followed through a lab: the monthly mycoplasma PCR that clears the example lab's new HEK293 cell bank. Operations releases a new SOP and builds it into a workflow, the bench plans the week and runs the plate, QA signs the record, and what the run taught goes back into the SOP. Each part is written for the people on that floor.
FAQ / asked about this
Frequently asked questions
- Should experiment steps go on the task board?
- Usually not. If the experiment already schedules its steps, copying them onto a board gives two plans that drift apart. The board is for the work around the experiment: preparing samples, chasing deliveries, telling reviewers what's coming, and following up on results.
- What is the difference between a blocked task and an overdue one?
- An overdue task has passed its due date, so it needs the person doing it. A blocked task is waiting on something outside that person's hands, such as a delivery, a result or someone else's decision, so it needs whoever can unblock it. Mixing them hides the blocked work behind the late work.
- What is a parking lot on a task board?
- A place for ideas, follow-ups and questions that are worth keeping but not worth scheduling yet. It keeps them out of the day's plan without losing them. It needs emptying every week or two, or it becomes a list nobody reads.