[Fg-general] Big Visible Charts

[Luke Closs]

There is a practice in a software development discipline called eXtreme
Programming[1] called Big Visible Charts.  You can find a big detailed post
about Big Visible Charts here:
http://www.xprogramming.com/xpmag/BigVisibleCharts.htm, but the idea is
quite simple.

Create simple charts that reflect activity in our team, post them on the
wall, and keep them periodically updated.  These "information radiators"
will show us trends over time, will communicate our progress to our
community, and will help us focus on improvement.

I propose that we adopt this practice and create some Big Visible Charts for
various aspects of our organization.

So I need your help to come up with a few metrics.  I'll suggest a few, and
look to the group's wisdom in suggesting a few more.  Then we can agree upon
a few of these metrics at the next Monthly meeting, and create the basic
charts.

Some suggestions:

* Number of active volunteers in the past month
* Number of volunteer hours in the past month
* Number of systems built in the past month
* Number of systems sold in the past month
* Store revenue in the past month
* Skids sent out of the warehouse in the past month
* Skids of equipment received in the past month

Obviously some of these need tweaking, and we could consider different time
scales, too.  I suggest that the staff coordinators become the official
people for each chart (in their area), and then we have a little ritual in
our monthly meetings, where we review the updated chart, or perhaps update
the charts collectively and then discuss what we see.

Over time, we'll start to have rich charts that reflect our progress over
time.

Cheers,
Luke



[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extreme_Programming