Radiate Information

If you walk through a mature Scrum team’s workspace, you will see a lot of things on the wall. Why?

We radiate information visually, on the walls or whiteboards or windows, to transparently share that information with anyone who happens to be in the area.

Many people think that is not very important.

I once worked on a large project as an assistant Project Manager and lead Business Analyst. The Project Manager asked me to provide a weekly status report of everyone’s work. He had a formatted spreadsheet that I updated every week. Being a believer in radiating information visually, I asked this Project Manager if I could post the information as a task board on the wall. He said he did not see the benefit.

I did it anyway.

About a week later, the Project Manager wandered through the work area and noticed that task board. “What’s that?” he said. “It’s our tasks and statuses”, I replied. “What is this bit over here with no names?”. “Those are the tasks we have not started yet”. “And the colored dots?” “Those tell the status of the task”. “So John is working on task such-and-such, but no one is working on this other task.” “Right”. “That other task is more important. Please ask John to switch to that. Are you giving me this information in the weekly status report?” “Yes”. “Hmmmm”.

A few days later the Project Manager came through our work area with some other Project Managers and proudly showed off “his” task board.  He stopped asking for the weekly spreadsheet.  I started seeing task boards on the walls by other teams.

The power of posting information on the wall is hard to explain, but once you have tried it, you will appreciate how the information is instantly available by just lifting your head and looking at the wall.

Of course this assumes that the information is posted in your work area (it must be) and that it is kept up-to-date (Scrum ceremonies in front of your radiators – especially the daily standup – are a great time to update this information).

Any useful information can be radiated. A data architect I know wanted a large team of developers to review his work. No one was looking at it online. He printed the data model out on large sheets of plotter paper, put it up on the wall, and asked everyone to feel free to mark it up. Throughout the weeks of the project, whenever a developer had a question about the data model, he or she could be found in front of the wall examining the model. And when a problem was found, that person would mark it on the paper, and usually walk over to the data architect’s desk to get an answer right away. The data architect loved how the process worked, and the data model improved very quickly.

A large team I know had some problems. One unhappy person was sabotaging code, but pretending to be helpful and friendly to everyone. Once that person was discovered (and removed from the team), the whole team started to question each other and their trust in each other was hurt. I suggested they post photographs of times when they had done things together as a team and were having fun (picnic, softball game, Christmas party).  This visual wall of photos reminded everyone that they really did like being a team and dramatically improved their relationships in a very short time.

So try posting team information on the wall (rolling white board, windows, presentation pad, etc.) in your work area and see how much easier it is to communicate that information to the team and your stakeholders.

Geri