I recently wrote about my role as project leader for the original DStv Explora consumer device launched in 50 territories across the African continent from 2012-2014. In this post, I will share some visual tools I used to communicate the planning and release strategy. Suffice it to say, I am a big fan of visual planning tools over detailed text narratives any day. There is power in visualizing the plan, on a single piece of paper that beats reading pages of text.
The launch is when the work actually starts
Here's a sample of a post-launch plan that mashes big-picture milestones for executives whilst providing enough detail to software delivery and integration owners. With this single piece of paper, managers can use this schedule as their primary map to navigate their work plans.
Visualizing an end-to-end technology program on one page
Building a new consumer device such as a digital TV set-top-box, from the ground up, end-to-end is a large-scale program with many moving parts. The challenge is how to show as much high-level and low-level detail as possible, starting with output milestones and cascading to detailed team expectations like agile sprints. I can't claim to have authored this view from scratch since I borrowed concepts from my previous projects and other program managers I looked up to, when I worked with Sky/NDS in the UK.
The timeline below is a snapshot from the early days of Explora planning, where I was the primary plan owner and designer.
Below is a view with extra commentary showing business leaders the hotspots with the plan and calling to action for workstream owners:
For CEOs, I created much-simplified views since they weren't interested in the agile sprints:
And this view for a little more detail, but still keeping it high level enough for business leaders to understand the big picture. These views were shared a board level reviews since the product attracted significant investment in Rand/Dollar terms.
Visual Roadmapping examples
Here is a view that shows roadmaps from different team perspectives. The colours relate to a specific team or business entity. The main timeline takes primary focus in center position, showing how the various teams contribute to drops "landing". I received a lot of positive feedback on the multi-dimensional view this picture provided.
Product Release Planning
Here are some views I created to guide product managers, product owners, scrum masters and development managers on how to go about communicating their work to stakeholders.
Merging UX Design Workflows & Software Development Releases
The Explora team originally had this wild idea to develop the next-generation user experience modelled on the then-popular Playstation interface, with a central cross-hair as the main focal point, allowing for vertical and horizontal scrolling, with animations. Quite powerful indeed - but it had one flaw - user research suggested the African market wasn't ready for a complicated user interface (UI) paradigm. Watching TV is a relaxed, passive experience. Users want a simple, intuitive UI, not a complicated one that makes them do work. So, with the UI time having invested engineer years of work into this already, I had to help reset the process and get to a path to green, with a release plan for the new UI. Doing so required me to run multiple design facilitation workshops, culminating in the workflow below. Because the UI change was a fundamental pivot in the program, we needed to communicate the new way of working and manage expectations of the release schedule (the second picture below).
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