Quick, where is your project at?
Now, does everyone on your team know that information?
Ah ha. Gotcha.
If you’re an agile shop, then you probably hold Daily Standups. If you aren’t, then you probably hold daily Sitdowns (see also: boring meeting).
As everyone talks about their status in those meetings, everyone else is busy breaking Company IT policies. Only Youtube gets a pass (it’s really hard to watch a video with sound in a meeting. People tend to stare). At the end of the meeting, everyone who is still awake heads back to their desk. The management types (of course) schedule another meeting, and the cycle repeats itself.
Break the cycle.
Don’t discuss status in the Standup, discuss particulars. Keep the status information on a status board.
Enter the Project Dashboard:
At a glance, anyone on your team can tell the following:
- Server Status
- Completion percentage
- What’s going in the next release
- Anything you want
How long does it take to build one?
For one as good as the Panic Status board, a few weeks. I’m building one now, and because I’m building it using ASP.NET MVC, it took me all of about a day to get the entire thing up. There are still metrics I’m adding, but the basic functionality is there. For it to be polished and out the door? About two weeks.
Why doesn’t your project have one?