Power of Whiteboards

Just finished a kick-off of a project in Beijing, before I came back to my base office, San Francisco, for the next assignment.

The project is a short one, with one week as QuickStart + Iteration Zero, four weeks of development, and one week of bug fixing + final release.

Needless to say, the time was short and there were lots of things to do in four days, gathering the requirements, breaking them down to stories, and coming up with a release plan.

As it turned out, the whiteboards became very useful. We found two of them available, and pulled up the blinds to make the glass wall a third one.

One board at the end of the room, half filled with goal of the week, and the other half as the parking area. With the goals listed, we were able to keep ourselves focused. And we were also free to write topics or thoughts down on the parking area as we discuss, so that we don't get side tracked. From time to time, we check these items to cross out the things that have been taken care of.

The other whiteboard stands right by the door, with a little space in front of it, for requirements discussion. We use it to write down the role and goals, and draw process diagram on it again and again until we get it right. Then we divide it into stories with numbers mapped to different part of the diagram and took digital photos, so that we can easily see how the stories fit into the whole pictures.

The glass window turned into a over-all design board, with cards indicating internal components, external components, screens, and running list for the notes on each of the above. For example, there are WebServices that we need to call as part of the application. So we had a card with the WebServices name on it. During the requirement discussion, whenever we realized that we need to use the WebServices to retrieve or update some information, we will pull the card over, put it as part of the process diagram on the discussion board, and start writing down the kind of interface we need from the WebServices. In the end, we can just take a look at this card and come up with a list of dependencies that this application has on the WebServices.

At the end of the week, looking at the three boards full of arrows, blocks, notes, I just cannot imagine how we can do without them.