Visualization in Agile

Presented By: Ankit TandonPlayscrum Pune Event, 30th April 2016

Visualization – Why is it important?

A picture is worth a thousand words..

Why visualize our work?

• Make things transparent • Infuse collaboration• Increase communication• Reduce risk• Focus on right things first• See the whole, look at the big picture

Visualization Onion

Strategy

Portfolio

Product

Release

Iteration

Daily

Information Radiator

Activity: List 10 general visual indicators

Visual Indicator 1

Visual Indicator 2

Visual Indicator 3

Visual Indicator 3(Cont.)

Visual Indicator 4

Visual Indicator 5

Visual Indicator 6

What makes a good information radiator?

Visualize your flow

FLOW

Visualize your flow

FLOW

Use columns, rows, lines to represent your flow either on wall / white boards

Workflow helps to see progress, improve collaboration and reveal bottle necks

Keep it Accessible, Simple, Clean and keep Evaluating

Visualize your norms• Definition Of Done and Team Habits

Legend

Avatars• Name Post Sticks

Avatars• Cartoon Characters

Avatars Big and Small

Big one is the main task team member is focusing upon while small one is where he is helping out

Confidence Smileys

Confidence SmileysAt the end of daily stand up team ask themselves how confident they are of finishing the story by the end of sprint

Update the stories with color of Confidence Smiley accordingly

An effective alternative to Sprint Burndown chart

Dotting

Put a new dot each day for tasks In Progress

Tasks should not have more than a few dots

Dots reveal bottlenecks

Effort should be made towards completing ‘In Progress’ tasks before picking new ones

Blocked

Red color sticky for blocked tasks

Description, date and a new dash for everyday it is blocked for

Discussion in daily stand up to review and resolve

Express Lane• Criteria – Prod Issue, CI blocker, Blocks other team etc

Parking Lot (With States)

On Time Stand Ups +1 every time stand up starts on time

Beat the highest score for a team lunch

What’s Hot Today Put general information sharing items in ‘What’s Hot Today’

Once information is shared clear the section for next day’s standup

Umpteen In 15 Have a separate 15 minutes technical discussion just after the standup to avoid running it over

Write down the items in the board under ‘Umpteen In 15’ section

LATE=PIZZA Draw a pizza

When someone is late for the stand up, put that persons name in one of the slices

When the pizza is full, count the winner

Winner treats everyone with pizza in the lunch

Standup Timer

Just putting a timer on the desk while doing stand ups helps – It has got Magic powers

Stand Up Wall

Stress Meter

Pair Programming MatrixHelps to visualize pair programming in the team

Put a dash in the corresponding box after each pairing session

Review and talk about the results in the retrospectives / any other decided meeting

Pair Programming MapTeams can also try pairing map for the same purpose

Story Point Ruler

Pyramid BacklogBase of the backlog has epicsEpics break into stories and percolate to the top of pyramid

Top stories form sprint backlogEnsures ‘Just enough / Just in time’

Rules on story size can be imposed, i.e. only stories less than 8 can go to priority level 2 or higher

Can be useful for Kanban / Scrum ban type frameworks

Dependency Spider

Kudos Wall

Whenever a team member feels someone else has done something great and deserves appreciation, he puts it on a sticky on the Kudos wall

A great tool to enhance intrinsic motivation within a team

Fail Wall Team member puts a post sticky with description on the fail wall whenever he has messed up

Does a failure bow

Team members applaud for giving them a learning

Creates safe and conducive environment for experimentation / learning

Achievement Poster At the end of retrospective meeting summarize your sprint achievements on a poster

Bigger the sticky bigger the achievement

You can also try different color sticky for different events

Interruption Bucket

Categorize interruption on post sticks as per their common source

Decide upon a threshold for ex. 4

Whenever threshold is reached call a meeting to discuss ways to reduce them

DND Hour Glass

Request for undisturbed, uninterrupted time

Put it on your table with a note

Amount of sand left will be an indicator when your will be free

45 Mins

Retro Input WallCapture the retro inputs on the wall as soon as they catch your attention

Creates transparency

Validates real issue

Review them in the retrospectives

Retro Input Box

Use it when team does not want to make the inputs public

Review them in retrospectives

Waste Snake WallEvery time there is a delay, write it down on sticky and add it to the end of snake

Include the time lost, things affected, cause with reporter’s initials

It becomes an information radiator to analyze, quantify, resolve impediments and reduce waste

Kaizen Board Track the retrospective actions through out the sprint

Use post sticks for each action

Move them out from the board once the real time impact is observed

How to peel sticky notes and Blue tack

Traditional Way – Bottom to top. Results into curl up and it doesn’t hold for longBetter Way – Left to Right. Still results into raised corner. Not very effectiveCorrect Way – With thumb under Post It. Hold the stack from underneath with the other hand and instead of pulling up, pull back in one movement to have perfectly flat sticky.

If it still does not stick, Use Blu Tack. It’s cheap and super effective.

Happy Visualizing !

References• http://blog.crisp.se

• http://www.jurgenappelo.com

• https://blog.pivotal.io/labs/labs/pair-programming-matrix

• http://www.ccpace.com/the-backlog-pyramid/

• http://www.infoq.com/news/2008/12/snake-on-the-wall

• http://agiletestinglessonslearned.wordpress.com/

• http://thekaizone.com/2014/06/agile-kaizen-speeding-up-continuous-improvement/