[Fg-general] Big Visible Charts

[Ifny]

Thanks for suggesting this Luke, I think it's a lovely idea. It will give 
everyone who comes to Free Geek tangible things to feel good about.

I've added some items, and there's now a wiki page here:

<http://wiki.freegeekvancouver.org/article/Big_visible_charts>

I remember a while ago there was talk of having a get together to draw a 
big beautiful timeline, going back to the beginning of Free Geek. We should 
do that at some point too.

~Ifny



Luke Closs wrote:
> 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