Iteration plan whiteboard
I'm a fan of Big Visible Charts. Ron Jeffries recently reminded me that I've been meaning to blog for a while about one I use to help manage my iterations. Its the whiteboard that I use to draw up the iteration plan and track progression through stories. Here's what it looks like:
I've removed the story names to protect the innocent, but you can see a few things at a quick glance.
- Each story card has a name and number.
- People have signed up for stories to work on them.
- Relative sizes of stories are immediately obvious.
- Total size of the iteration can be seen (in this case we scheduled 44 points worth).
- Progress on stories can be seen by the shaded areas.
- The current status of our FIT tests can be seen.
This is enormously interesting to anyone involved with the team when they go past. Issues are sometimes noted on the board (see the "stalled" note). Anyone interested in a particular story can tell if it is done or not. I can get an early indication if we are not going to complete all the cards, or if we need to schedule more. All in all, this is the most widely and actively used tracking tool on the project.
Comments
The explanation describes what we are supposed to see, but not the organization of the chart. So, those that see it for the first time may not know how to read it. It will be useful to describe in more detail what are the different parts of the chart and how to interpret the annotations.
For example, what are the vertical and horozontal axes? What are the different kinds of cells? What do the different shadings represent?
Green and red are clear, but what does it mean when there is no color? How quantitative are the color proportions?
Posted by: Victor | March 8, 2004 07:46 AM
This is not a graph, so there is no particular meaning in the axes. The meaning is in the area of the chart. We estimated stories in Story Card Units (SCU's), and each cell represents half an SCU. Cards are drawn over the top of the cells to represent their relative size.
There are no different kinds of cells. The shadings only represent that someone picked up a whiteboard marker and shaded in some area to indicate progress. Colour has no meaning either.
There's very little science here. If you're trying to guess what meaning some particular aspect has, then there probably isn't any meaning to it...
Posted by: Marty Andrews | March 8, 2004 01:47 PM
Hi - where did you get this very big whiteboard? i can't find a big enough one anywhere - it must be at least 2 x 1.5m if not bigger. Lucy
Posted by: Lucy | February 10, 2005 08:59 PM
I asked myself the same question and serendipitiously saw an entry in Kevin Kelly's Cool Tools site on how to find or make large white boards. For cheap DIY, he recommended white tileboard, 4 x 8 x (1/8 inch), from home depot. For more, there is a material called P3 Ceramic Steel, which can act as a whiteboard and is magnetic. He says they are $100 per 4 x 8 sheet. (dimensions are in feet/inches)
Posted by: furvyn | March 27, 2005 01:31 AM
Recently I have seen sheets of whiteboard material in Bunnings in varying sizes. It seemed to be mdf with whiteboard coating on one side.
Posted by: Nigel | April 1, 2005 09:47 AM