Backlog T indicator
June 28th, 2008For those who are closely looking at what’s happening during a sprint or release cycle, important parameters are the ones related to values (effort, business value) to be delivered.
Usually, an implementation cycle starts with a commit, which is the moment in time where both business and workers agree on the value to deliver. The workers commit to deliver this value at the end of a sprint or release. But for various reasons, the final reached value may be different, because some requests may be dropped out or added, and some effort may differ from initial estimations.
In order to display these kind of values in one single and simple visual indicator, I had the idea to use stacked columns type of chart, mixed with a maximum vertical line.
As a consequence of the T shape in the middle, and because T is target first letter, I proudly named this new indicator the “T indicator“.
This indicator is intended to be very easy to read, as it does not require to “mentally” move objects to get a global picture of the situation. It avoids to use 4 different columns with different colors, or pie chart parts, standing to each other. Therefore, it’s much more compact, and should impact faster the eyes looking at it.
How to read it

- the top of the column represents the delivered value,
- the “T” is set to the initially committed value,
- the light blue block height represents the amount of added value,
- the dark blue block height represents the initially committed value minus removed value.
In case you might be interested in using it, feel free to download the Excel spreadsheet! This file is in MS Excel 2007 version, but will work in Excel 2003.
Possible extensions
There are two main types of reason why a backlog may change during a sprint:
- added or removed business requests,
- grown or lowered effort compared to initial estimations.
The current version of this indicator does not make any difference between the reasons why the backlog changed. But it may be included by using different color codes on half side of the column.

An approach (like SCRUM’s one), sets a “natural” limit to x collocated team members. This limit is often presented as an a priori limit, even if some heretics allow themselves to set the limit higher if the team’s dynamic increases. Organizational design is not considered as a choice variable: collocation is preferred, there is a “natural maximal team size”, the only possible organizational change is a team split, etc.
Sampling of the 4 sprints are calibrated on the planned release date, showing the last 20 working days before releasing the product.
Agile is one of the most fashion idea in software development. “Agile software development”, or the ability to implement fast the business requirements, is a graal which many companies are looking for. Several methodologies propose a way to implement agile software development. Here is a small list of the most famous ones (without any specific sorting):
An interesting
You can
Java Indonesian island has no problem, this post is about the programming language Java. Considered by programmers as a language to be used for small applets at the beginning of is life (cycle), it is now adopted by a lot of developers around the world, and large scale softwares are actually written using Java. Java is not only an object oriented language which comes with an extended and well structured API which addresses almost any programming need, it is also a concept, as Java binary code can be executed without change on the main operating systems of the market, Unix, Windows, and MacOS, not to mention some mobile phones manufacturers which also runs Java byte code in their devices.
Wondering if you have a chance to see the International Space Station, or the Jules Vernes European Automatic Transfer Vehicle in the sky next night? Google offers a satellite tracking 
So, you are already publishing your holidays pictures on the web, your friend connections, your business contacts, but it’s not enough. You want to show more. In this case, try 
