Chris Johnston

Andy Marks has written an excellent blog entry about the power and importance of information radiators to the success of a project. In this case, it is a story card wall that allows both the development team and the client see what stories are being worked on and what stories have been completed. This informs everyone about what is going on and focuses the conversation between the devs and the business people.

The marketing and sales people started asking questions about the purpose of the wall and quickly understood what information it was showing. They were most appreciative of being able to see what features were in development, completed or not yet started. Based on this increased understanding, conversations between the business and the development team increased and were based on a common understanding of the current state of development.

The project that I am working on does not have any of these information radiators and we have run into problems of communication between the client and the team with the client not knowing what has been accomplished and what we are working on. Our story card wall is not in another room, it is in another state.

The culture of the client would make putting up story card walls in high trafficked areas difficult if not impossible, but I have to wonder if we could do it how much it would help to decrease our communication problems.