[This post originally appeared on its own blog, prior to my merging all Agile Self Development posts into Discardia’s archives.]
In Agile software development an information radiator is a display – electronic, whiteboard, or paper – which makes visible to the team current indicators of progress (or velocity) within the current sprint. Panic (makers of utilities for the Mac) has a particularly attractive one. As noted on Tim Ottinger and Jeff Langr’s Agile in a Flash, effective information radiators are simple, stark, current, transient, influential, highly visible, and minimal in number.
For the items you’re working on now, what did you decide to measure? How can you expose that to yourself as encourangement or warning to keep yourself on track?
- Do the tools you already use include displays which meet these requirements of a good information radiator?
Some examples:- OmniFocus for iPad‘s Forecast view
- HealthMonth.com‘s Your Latest Report page
- Bang Bang Diet app’s oh so clean display
- Can you create your own visual indicators as part of any of your habits?
- If you write daily pages, what could you put at the top which would expose progress at a glance?
- If you make a short list of tasks for today, do you cross them off as you go and keep that list in sight throughout the day?
Use your surroundings to keep yourself on track over the course of each sprint.
Discardia 