For 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.

Exemples

Value target not reached.

Positive value delivered, some value removed, some value added.

Positive value delivered, value added, no removed value.

Tags: added backlog, backlog, backlog T indicator, business value, commit, delivered, excel, grown backlog, indicator, it management, lean, management, removed, scrum, story points, t indicator

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 10th, 2009 at %I:%M %p and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.