Iterex Planning Cards

Q: What do the different coloured bars on the tracking graphs mean?

A: The tracking graphs have been designed to be simple information radiators for your iteration and sprint progress.

The green bar is the cumulative total of what you have completed in each reporting period. The Pink target bar at the far right of the graph is what you set out to do. In essence you are trying to get a slope on the green bars that would indicate you will achieve all of the pink. The blue bars indicate remaining scope in the iteration, if you see blue bars increasing, this is an indication of scope creep (which is bad unless you see a corresponding increase in green completion). Normally the first bar on the graph will be the same height as the pink bar - as your target should be what you started out to do. Finally the yellow bars indicate work in progress - and show the portion of work that you have completed so far.

The graphs are purposely left slightly open to interpretion so that as a team you can explain why/why not you aren’t going to make it. As you get closer to finishing the iteration however, there is more data and so the graph is much easier to interprate.

This is an important point! In the past we did experiments where we calculated the slope of completion and drew a line to show where it would intersect with the target. It was a good idea but it backfired on several occasions in meetings with clients, where the comment was made – "why doesn’t the line intersect with the top of the target – are you guys not very good?" This was frustrating as we know its difficult to estimate and foresee exactly how a project will unfold. In fact its more important to deliver something each iteration (ideally lots of things) and ensure that the customer keeps getting what is the most value to them now – not what they thought several weeks ago. Its also misleading if you're only half way through an iteration – as a lot can change in the second half of the iteration and so its really only a guide.
 
For this reason we removed the trend line – it indicated a precision that wasn't there – however without the line conversations in those meetings changed to – great it looks like your making good progress and will meet your target (your eye draws the line for you but is used to +/20% error). OR we might get - "the slope of that graph looks like you might not quite make it - is there a problem?". These are much better conversations to have.