1000 Words – Illustrating Project Challenges with Visuals

Tarang Baxi and Chirag Doshi

Workshop: 90 minutes

Summary

Project teams typically track a lot of data related to throughput, quality, scope, cost, etc. You probably already use some of this data for project dashboards and information radiators like burn-ups, burn-downs, defect distribution charts, etc. When specific challenges come up however, more creative use of the data may be called for. Simple, hand-crafted visuals can often help you effectively tell your stakeholders the story of what’s going on, possible causes, and potential next steps. In this hands-on workshop, you get to exercise your visual thinking and visual communication skills. We introduce some simple visual thinking techniques like Look-See-Imagine-Show and the <6><6> Rule, and then let you apply them in a project simulation, so that you can practice hand-rolling simple visuals that speak volumes (no fancy tools needed!).

Short Bio

Tarang Baxi works with ThoughtWorks as a Project Manager and Business Analyst. He has over 11 years of experience in a variety of roles spanning analysis, project management, IT strategy consulting, business process consulting, and methodology coaching. He has extensive experience working with distributed software delivery teams. Tarang has presented and run workshops at a number of agile conferences including Agile India 2010, Agile India 2012 & 2013, XP2012 and Agile2012.