Can a Project Be Beautiful?

What would make a project beautiful? What sort of aesthetic would we seek? Would would make a beautiful plan? What would make a beautiful backlog? What would make a beautiful team? What would make a beautiful delivery?

I imagine it might be different for everyone…

The Plan

For me, a beautiful plan would be something that covers a wall of a team or war room. It would have requirements, wireframes, architectures, acceptance criteria, impediments.

It would tell a graphic story of the evolution of the project over time. It would be a graphic history in multiple dimensions, worthy of Edward Tufte. But it would not be perfect. It would reflect rough edges, rapid sketching, mistakes, blind alleys, rough annotations everywhere.

It would also reflect the growth and improvement of the team. Items from retrospectives would be incorporated into the timeline. There would be different ways that the team measured their own performance. It would be a glorious mess!

The Backlog

A beautiful backlog would be on it’s own wall. It would reflect dialog with the customer, questions from the team, user profiles and scenarios.

It would be shaped like an inverted pyramid, with rich detail at the top, tapering down to sparse sets of one line ideas and proposals below. It would have color (LOTS of color) and use different shapes to indicate stories, epics, features, etc.

The Team

A beautiful team is tight. The team works physically closely together, eliminating all barriers, focusing on collaborative activity over solo activity. They work together, they eat together, they respect each other. They share roles and responsibilities promiscuously.