What Is Agile Visualization And Its Importance?
The concept of Agile is all about creating a perfect experience for the entire team working on a project. The team is responsible for planning together, coding together, testing together, and finally retrospecting together. Working in close harmony allows every member on the team to be on the same wavelength so that each person could be crystal clear of what the other member is going to perform.
However, when Agile projects get bigger, the objective gets lost in a pile of multiple user stories, making it harder for any team member to know about the duties of the other member. Since transparency is one of the major components of successful Agile teams & organizations, without proper transparency, it’s impossible for Agile projects to become successful. And that’s where Agile visualization comes into play.
Agile visualization not only benefits the Developer or Product Owner but also everyone who’s working on the Agile project because it helps everyone to see the objective or the bigger picture that is to be obtained. Such is the reason why in this day & age where data is everything, Agile visualization is ultimately very crucial.
What do you mean by Agile visualization?
Agile visualization is the process of compiling large & complex data into a visual form that’s easy to understand for the viewer (in this case the team that’s working on the Agile project).
Typically, when you try to visualize things that you want to explain, achieve or create, it becomes easier to communicate and collaborate with your peers within the same work environment via visual transparency. And that’s the concept on which Agile visualization works.
In the modern age, visualization is everything because it can help you create more opportunities for improvement. If you cannot visualize an Agile process, then you’ll remain unaware of the enhancements that can be made or obtained. With the help of Agile visualization, you can channel your effort & time onto the correct path. But, that doesn’t mean documentation isn’t essential – it’s just that visualization in Agile is more effective than documentation.
Benefits of Agile visualization
The following are some of the most significant benefits of visualization of work in Agile:
1. Easy access to all the latest information at a glance
In an Agile enterprise, multiple teams are hired to implement & oversee various Agile projects from the beginning to the end. With written documentation, it becomes difficult for Agile teams to find the proper information without mistakes or wasting time.
On the other hand, with direct accessing information with the help of Agile visualization (if implemented in the correct manner), Agile teams can easily obtain the same without any issues. The teams will not only save time because there will be less information to exchange but also obtain an accurate representation of the team’s overall progress.
2. Eliminate any kind of time-consuming reports
There’s no denying that you can find written reports being used in every company out there. It should be known that a lot of time is spent making such reports, which are to be discussed in meetings.
But, by opting for the concept of Agile visualization, less time can be spent on reports and more time on making the Agile project/process a success. Moreover, all the information will be clearly visible without the need for any major explanation.
3. Agile visualization works as a great method for communication
The problem with written documentation is that – documents can be interpreted in multiple number of forms by various members of the Agile team (or even different Agile teams as a whole). As a result, the actual information gets polluted or adulterated when it reaches the target from the source. But, the same can’t be said about Agile visualization.
With Agile visualization, obtaining direct feedback becomes a possibility, which means the chance of misunderstandings & mistakes becomes less. Furthermore, any urgent issue can be solved on demand. Ultimately, organizations can save millions of investments in eliminating such procedural mistakes.
Additionally, with Agile visualization, if there is any change, the same gets visible immediately for the entire team. As a result, it gives the team the opportunity to work quickly with better quality, while also obtaining the capability to react to changes more rapidly. And in an Agile environment, if you don’t adapt quickly, then the whole project will fall apart.
4. Inspecting progress becomes easier for the Agile team
When visualization is used in Agile, it becomes easier for the entire team to inspect the amount of progress that they’ve made so far and what is left to be completed. The total work remaining can be easily summed up visually so that transparency is properly maintained across the entire Agile work environment.
Everyone on the Agile team is made aware of what they have to do and what they don’t – thereby eliminating any issues with responsibilities & availability of team members.
5. More focus can be exerted to satisfy the end users
Since visualization makes the Agile procedure more streamlined compared to documentation, the team can focus more on satisfying the needs of the end user, ultimately leading to the success of the Agile project. This is because if the end user isn’t happy, then the Agile project becomes a worthless pool of resources.
What are various ways to visualize work in an Agile environment?
1. Release Burndown Chart
This is one of the many classic visualization tools that you can utilize in Agile. It’s extremely effective for portraying the progress of the Agile team, not just in terms of speed but also effective output.
The Release Burndown Chart can easily showcase the summary based on status & story points. However, there’s a key caveat of this burndown chart is that – it will only show the viewer ‘when’ the project will be completed and not ‘what’ is being built (or has been built).
2. Sprint Burndown chart
Sprint Burndown Chart is one of the many visualization tools that shows the rate at which the work is completed and the amount of work that is left to be done. It displays all of this information with the help of graphs.
3. Kanban Board
A Kanban board is an Agile project management tool that is designed to visualize work, limit work in progress and maximize flow.
The board uses cards and columns to help service and technology teams commit to the right amount of work.
4. Story mapping
The story mapping process is a way to properly visualize a large backlog of user stories. In other words, story mapping is nothing but an epic map along with their child stories (child stories are formed when epic is broken down into smaller parts). Each epic will be sorted based on the order they’re to be completed (left to right), while on the other hand children’s stories will be sorted up to down based on their priority.
There’s no denying that story mapping is indeed a great way to visualize work in an Agile environment. It’s also a fantastic method for organizing your entire backlog in Agile in a better manner, leading to enhanced communication with the Agile team(s). The story mapping process also makes it easy to select the MVP feature of each epic.
However, do remember that story mapping takes a considerable amount of time to follow compared to a burndown chart because it provides more information than a burndown chart.
Download Sample Story Map Here at Free
5. Parking lot
In this type of Agile visualization process, each elemental box will be color-coded based on the traffic lights concept. Each color will showcase the item’s urgency, such as:
Red – The work that was to be done has missed its deadline.
Yellow – The work that’s in progress.
Green – The work has met the deadline.
The size of each box will depend on the number of story points it has. This type of visualization is very easy to understand.
Also, this can be simply used to represent the open issues or impediments for a Scrum Team. The Scrum Master can address these impediments as part of their daily responsibilities.
6. Tree map
If you’re dealing with complex and large forms of data, then using a treemap seems prudent. Each epic will be color-coded (different shades of green) based on its status and the size of each epic will be denoted by the size of each item box.
It should be known that even though it showcases the status of each epic, it doesn’t tell us what is past & future, since there’s no inclusion of time factor.
Conclusion
The primary objective of visualization of work in Agile is to fix a significant issue and that is – summarising all the complex & large sets of data – including their size, time & requirement all into one place. The relationship between data complexity and Agile visualization is directly proportional, meaning if the data is more complex then the visualization will also be difficult to create. However, the effort & time will truly be worth it.
At the end of the heyday, with Agile visualization, streamlining the workflow of Agile projects will inherently become so much easier. Such is the reason why it’s necessary to incorporate the same into the Agile procedures that you practice every day.
References
- https://Agilefixer.com/2017/02/07/scrum-kanban-importance-of-visualisation/
- https://www.benlinders.com/2017/visualization-team-deliver-value/
- https://www.legamaster.com/home/newsroom/news-detail/transparency-Agile-visualisation-explained-by-deborah-ghisolfi
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