Vaughan Rowsell

Concept-u-wall

February 26, 2007 at 9:53 pm In Getting Things Done, 2 Comments

Sometimes the first step is the hardest in any journey and adding features to a software product is no different. Although I love Visio, UML diagrams, and requirements specs; they usually have too many rules and procedures attached with them. I like simple.

Quite often you can get bogged down in planning and all you really need to do is pick up a piece of paper and do a doodle. Doodles are fantastic and I am a huge fan of doodling ideas up, and quite often these doodles become the specification. In fact I am usually seen attending meetings with my jumbo sketch pad and colouring in pens. Doing a good meaningful doodle is quite hard, as you need to be able to look back on it a week later remember what the hell it was.

I have taken the doodling to the next level now and in the office we have implemented a way of organising doodles into more coherent and readily understandable ideas. Its simple, its a wall you stick doodles on with bluetac. But not just any wall, it is a “Concept-u-wall”. What is the difference? Well a concept-u-wall has these simple rules.

1. Draw a doodle of an idea or concept and stick it on the wall.
2. If the doodle makes no sense then do other supporting doodles until the idea or concept starts to make sense.
3. A doodle can be a scribble, a printout, photo or what ever. If you can Bluetac it to the wall then it is a doodle.
4. Don’t be alone. Get others to contribute to your idea, and doodle on it.
5. Any wall is a Concept-u-wall

And that is about all the rules you need. The whole idea is to get an idea progressing. Once a doodle concept has been fleshed out enough that it can become a reality then it is built and when complete it graduates off of the concept-u-wall into the real world. We also track successful concept-u-wall projects with an entry on another wall called the Act-u-wall. A small note, screen shot or title is added as evidence that the concept doodle made it.

Simple. I like simple.