On our way (Burn) up! - Part #2 -A burn up chart process example:

Refer to par #1

Let’s go further into a  leads to opportunity example using a burn up chart: (you can read more about how to manage leads and opportunities using Kanban)

●      Understand your flow

We need to first review the progress behind the chart

For example:  a lead to opportunity process.

At the end of every week, we will track the amount of contracts signed.

We can track other process areas as we will scope over them if we want to improve in those areas as well.

●      Visualize your flow.

 

 

●      Visualize the burn up chart. The burn up chart visualizes the progress over signed contracts each week.

 

 

●      Analyzing the burn up chart allow us conclude and change.

For example: as a marketing team member or manager what flattened the chart? Was it a seasonal trend? Maybe we didn’t invest in the correct leads?

What made it go up again?

Visualizing the process behind the results will lead us towards better effectiveness and efficiency. We may ask, what do we need to change so the graph will go up again?

 

●      In fact, we can also compare our current status to our monthly goal (and we should!)

Obviously we should set our goals according to business needs. The ability to visualize this way is a great motivation tool for the team to reach toward the goal, to be scoped daily over the goal as long as they discuss the  ability to change towards the goal .

Goal missed-- >

 

●      Change & inspect

Remember, small frequent changes are better than an entire flow changes, try small process change - then change again if needed.

The change reflection may be immediate shown on the chart.

●      Daily meeting:

Meet every day as a team, reflect over your progress and change if needed.

●      Retrospect:

Once a week, a sprint or a period of time, retrospect over your performance.

What did we do well, and what can we improve.

The Agile framework enables us to build a continuous improvement mechanism. Obviously continuous improvement has a lot more than just a burn up chart and a flow visibility, but the burn up combining with those Agile methodologies is a one hell of an incentive towards improvement.

There are many more ways we can use burn charts in our day to day life , school , personal projects… but this is another blog story…

Ho … and as always, don’t forget to have fun…

 

For further read and references :

http://soft-tactics.com/2012/05/burn-up-chart/

http://tcagley.wordpress.com/2011/05/09/metrics-minute-burn-up-charts/

http://zenhabits.net/top-20-motivation-hacks-5/