The development of a Visual Project Status Wall in a transformation programme

Abstract

The problems with the poor use of project data include: i. lack of visibility and transparency of what is being worked on; ii. differing understanding of purpose across the project team;iii. silo’d and individual work patterns; and iv. ‘watermeloning’, described as the reporting of project status and progress as green or to plan when the project is red, behind plan. Through the successful development and implementation of a Visual Project Status Wall, it was shown how the problems could be addressed by increasing transparency and collaboration in the project team. The Visual Project Status Wall is a low fidelity, flexible, interactive, visual and data rich artefact that can be quickly adapted to the changing needs of a project team. A set of critical success factors were identified that can be applied by practitioners to the use of Visual Project Status Walls on other transformation programmes.