This document discusses using visuals to illustrate project challenges. It provides examples of using charts and graphs to show how scope is growing rapidly on a medical records project, risking a delay in the planned release date. The visuals show scope additions over iterations, a trend of increasing scope growth, and inputs from the team about features driving most scope changes and unexpectedly high UI effort. The visual examples are meant to help stakeholders understand issues compellingly and discuss available trade-offs to get the project back on schedule.

1. 1000 Words:
Illustrating Project Challenges with Visuals
Tarang Baxi Chirag Doshi
@gnarat @chiragsdoshi

2. Inspiration

3. Quick Poll
What type of Pen are you?

4. The Visual Thinking Process

5. Let’s get our feet wet!

6. Story # Estimated Size (points) Cycle Time (days)
US003 1 1
US006 1 6.5
US010 1 2
US015 1 2.5
US016 1 1.5
US020 1 3
US004 2 2.5
US005 2 3
US009 2 1.5
US012 2 3
US014 2 3
US017 2 2
US002 3 3.5
US008 3 8
US013 3 3
US018 3 5.5
US001 5 12
US007 5 15
US011 5 9
US019 5 6

7. Size v/s Avg Cycle Time

8. Size v/s Cycle Time

9. Lets practice some drawing

10. The 6 Ways to See
The 6 Ways to Show

12. Now we really get our hands
dirty!

13. The Project
• Building a new product for an early-stage
startup in the medical sciences field
• Product expected to be redefine the
patient health record space with its visually
rich UX
• Will be launched 8 months after project start
at the industry’s biggest trade show

14. Trade-off Sliders
Most Negotiable
Least Negotiable
Extensibility
5
UX Richness
2
Time
1
Cost
3
Scope –
Internal users
6
Scope –
External users
4

15. The Situation
• 3 months since project start – things
not going well
• Scope is growing rapidly
o Most of the scope allowance built into the plan is
already used up
• Release date likely to slip by 6-8 weeks

16. Your Task
• Create a set of compelling visuals that
you can take to a critical discussion
with client stakeholders
• Highlight:
o Reasons for the risk to the release date
o Available trade-offs to bring the project back on
track

17. Exercise 1
Iteration Scope Added (points)
It-1 0
It-2 1
It-3 3
It-4 4
It-5 6
It-6 3
It-7 8

18. Scope Growth Trend

19. Additional inputs from the team
• A couple of high value features are undergoing
most scope churn as the CEO and CMO see
working versions of those features
• On several features, the effort needed to
implement a rich UI is turning out to be much higher
than expected.
• Also some new features are being added to release
backlog on a weekly basis, as thinking about the
product evolves

20. Some sample visuals