The ABCDs of Seeing your Project

When I take on a project that has some complexity, I expect to come across a few problems. If I can describe them and try to visualize the project in terms of its problems, it really helps me to understand and get closer to solutions. Describing and visualizing help me to better understand the details, which provide me more insight into the problem overall.

Like our clients’ IT teams, ours must resolve problems that surface in the course of our projects.

When I am listening to someone on our team providing a description of a project and its problems, I start to visualize its various components. Who are the people involved, and what devices, tools or methods are involved? How does everything come together and where are the complexities? Before long I am drawing and saying “Is this what that looks like to you?” This helps me to understand where to focus my attention and what type of information or expertise I need.

You needn’t be an artist to visually clarify ideas for yourself and your audience. Using simple arrows and boxes with captions and doodles will enable you to define your project visually. It may be difficult at first to feel comfortable using this method, but it is useful and fun. You’ll get better at expressing yourself in this fashion.  I apply my ABCD (Arrows, Boxes, Captions, and Doodles) technique to create different visual descriptions that are in my mind. This drawing, of sorts, will articulate the problem specifics and its complexities. I use boxes to represent a thing, a product, or a process, and I write a description in the box. I use lines with arrows to signify the flow of information or products through time, or simply to illustrate connections among them. For example, the computer is connected to the wireless printer with an arrowed dotted line pointing to the printer. I write the words “computer” and “printer” in the two boxes, or doodle a little drawing of them.

The best place to employ the ABCD method is a white board, because you can easily and quickly restart or redraw. Then

• Write down the purpose of the drawing.
• Using ABCD, describe each single step of what is happening in your project. Carve off a smaller piece of your project or start at a more general level to keep the image manageable.
• Choose an organization for your drawing. Examples are
  • The flow of data through time
  • An action timeline, first this then that
  • A wiring diagram of how items are logically and physically connected, such as how the server is connected to the switch
• Keep in mind the flow of information, events, and results, as well as the owner and interested parties for each step.
• Reread your purpose periodically to ensure you are still on track.
• As the drawing becomes more mature and takes on real depth and meaning, review and revise.
• Capture the drawing and notes for later use. A snapshot as an image will do nicely. If the drawing is a work in progress, something that you need to continue working on or is a product you need to deliver, you can use an online drawing tool to represent your hand sketches.

The following is a very early whiteboard exercise we started this morning. The purpose is to show how we use our three hardware environments and how they are related. Stepping back and looking at it again inspires a few questions and more details to seek out from our experts.

This technique is not only fun, but it helps build a team that has a common, shared understanding. A story can be told very nicely using and opening up the ABCD drawings for the team to edit and contribute to, instead of just presenting them PowerPoint and Word documents. People love to jump in and help. It brings more voices into the conversation and gives all involved something very useful to look at while they think things over. (“No not there, first you need to talk to…”) It’s a real way to get an understanding of a step by step process, a complex interaction between items, and a work flow. When I do this with a small team it gets very interactive and participative.

The story I’m drawing is the actual work that I’m doing. It is further defining the confines and interactions of the problem. I’ll think about first this, then that. Equally important to me is understanding what is being acted on in each single step in the problem or what is influencing and effecting people or events in specific stages. Drawing the business process, work flow, and timeline, each tell a new part of the story and help me understand more!

When our designers show a client the beginnings of a new web page, it is the actual look of the page that gets real feedback and attention. The list of requirements and the marketing message are very important, but the visual of the page is what really gets their interest and the feedback we need. Literature supports the notion of drawing opening up certain windows to the brain. In Drawing from the Right Side of Your Brain, Betty Edwards discusses methods of perceiving and processing information that can help with creative problem solving.

So try it out. Next time you sit down for a meeting or start thinking about your project, do you’re ABCD’s, first alone, then with your team, and watch the details emerge and the ideas flow.