Visualizing the State of the Product – Build Calendars
One is the one thing that needs to fall into place before testers can start operating the product? The build has to be successful!
One day I was looking at some statistics about our build process.
Project 1
Month fo Feb – 80% pass
Month of March – 72% pass
As I looked at these stats I was having a hard time deciding what action to take because of them. I said outloud ”I wish I could see these numbers in a visual way – like on a calander or something. We could put a big green check mark when the build passes and a big red X when it fails.
John Sterne, a student from Waterloo, who has done 4 or 5 work terms with us, decided to run with my “I wish” statement.
Much to my surprise I was able to get a better feel for the state of the build and it’s impact on my team by looking at the following graphics
80 % pass rate or 20% failure rate
72% pass rate or 27 % failure rate (6/22)
Which one communicates more powerfully to you?
If you like the pictures – then take a guess at how the testing for this product was going 
June 2nd, 2009 at 4:14 AM
Obviously they are worn out on Fridays and not yet awake on Mondays
Builds should not be made on those days.. haha..
You’re right: the pictorial way is much more informative and easier to connect to.
June 2nd, 2009 at 12:07 PM
Yeah! This is awesome. It’s like a super simple version of James Bach’s White Board Dashboard. I want to do something like this. I just can’t figure out how to encapsulate a days worth of testing into a pass/fail.
June 2nd, 2009 at 1:10 PM
Eric,
This is only meant to show if the build process was successful in getting us something that we can use.
It doesn’t show the state of any testing.
I will however post my take on a simplified testing dashboard in a later post.
June 9th, 2009 at 7:27 PM
Hey Adam,
I would be careful not to use these graphics in a unscrupulous manner.
I noticed that my eyes are quickly drawn to the Red Xs and focus on them much more than the green check marks. This effect might result in over stating the problem, for example I think the graphic would look negative even with only one red X.
This effect could also be used to your advantage if you did want to emphasize the problem more. For example you could increase the size and the brightness of the Xs slightly and reduce the size and brightness of the check marks resulting in greater attention to the Xs.
I just thought how I interpreted the information based on the colour to be interesting. I wonder what would happen if you made the Xs blue and kept the check marks green, would the graphic be as powerful message against bad builds?