Illustrative scenario: a Mississauga corporate practice at 250 files
At roughly 250 corporate files, a Mississauga practice's failure mode is not error — it is silence. Files wait weeks on client documents with nobody chasing, and the December 31 year-end cluster arrives as one undifferentiated wall of T2s all sharing the same six-month filing clock.
The firm in this scenario
An archetype, not a client. The figures below describe the shape of the practice being modelled — they are inputs to the scenario, never results.
| Attribute | Detail |
|---|---|
| Archetype | Corporate-tax volume practice |
| Location | Mississauga, Ontario |
| Firm size | Seven staff |
| Client profile | Around 250 corporate files, heavily weighted to December 31 year-ends |
- Kanban boards
- SLA colours
- Reminder digests
- Per-file stages
The problem
At volume, a file that has not moved in three weeks looks exactly like a file that moved yesterday. Nothing surfaces absence.
The December cluster compounds it: hundreds of files enter the pipeline within days of each other, so the natural order is arrival order rather than risk order.
The workflow, step by step
- 1
Make the document chase its own stage
Every T2 file is a project with an explicit waiting-on-client stage, so the wait is a tracked state rather than a gap between two states.
Task Master Kanban
- 2
Let stalled files age into colour
A file sitting in the chase stage moves from green to orange to red on proximity, which turns an absence into something visible.
SLA dashboard
- 3
Chase on a digest cadence
Chase emails go out on a schedule rather than when someone remembers, which is what keeps the third and fourth follow-up from never happening.
Reminder digests
- 4
Stage the December cluster
The cluster is broken into internal sub-deadlines across the spring, so the six-month date is a backstop rather than the plan.
Per-file stages
What this changes
Volume practices typically find the board's value is in the negative space: the file nobody has touched in three weeks finally shows up as a colour rather than as an absence, and the December cluster is worked in risk order rather than arrival order.
About this scenario
Related reading
Where this applies
Start running a tidier, deadline-proof practice.
Set up your firm in minutes. No credit card to start.