As we have said many times, agile is not about following a process; it is a mindset. It is a mindset that makes us aware of our thoughts and actions, helping us to make the right decisions and work on them for the betterment of our organization. It embraces every positive concept that can help improve the process and help individuals grow. The use of visual thinking is one of the greatest concepts in agile right now. Let’s see in detail how it’s helping Agile.
How will you feel when you can visualize your ideas and solve the problem? It will make your work a lot easier, right?
When concepts or processes are presented visually, we, as humans, tend to understand them faster and work out the solution more easily than when they are presented in written form or through our imagination. It is because we are attracted to visuals more easily than anything else.
What is visual thinking?
It is a cognitive phenomenon through visual processing; this helps in visualising words in a series of pictures. Our brain is designed to think visually, which was discovered in the late 1980s. Whether it be verbal or thought, humans generally create a picture with it in mind. Visual thinking is carried out by about two-thirds of the world's population. Visual thinking helps in organising thoughts, forming ideas, and remembering important details. Visual thinking helps in
Organize ideas graphically.
Recall and remember data as images.
Estimate physical attributes based on numbers.
creates a connection between two data points or pieces of information through pictures for better understanding.
Quickly learn new processes and concepts by connecting them with images.
Understand complex concepts easily with pictures.
When it comes to being an agile coach, product manager, or executive, they have many daily tasks that require a lot of problem-solving and decision-making based on the ideas and concepts they are working on or will work on in the future. As we can see, as an agile coach, one must participate in meetings, facilitate events, train some team members, brainstorm, problem-solve, and also guide and mentor team members.
Let’s see how visual thinking helps agile leaders and executives.
Taking visual notes
Everyone is at a certain level during meetings and events and must take notes, which is critical because everything cannot be remembered. In such cases, when that individual takes notes in the form of visuals, whether on a writing pad, in digital format, or even in a less artistic way, it helps them to:
Stay engaged and attentive in the meeting.
Connect in-depth with information
It's easy to share artifacts as it shows images of notes.
An enjoyable activity that can also inspire others
Activities for Problem Solving
Problem-solving is an important part of any team leader's, product manager's, or executive's job, whether they work on it themselves or assist others in doing so. This, combined with visual thinking and creating a series of processes with images on a whiteboard or paper, will provide:
Provide a clear view of the issue.
The necessary data can be easily explained.
Provides flexibility with various colors and stick notes.
Provides an opportunity to be creative
Presentations
Presentations are essential in larger organizations, but they become tedious as time passes because constant data bombardment causes mental fatigue and prevents you from taking in more. However, visual thinking and the incorporation of images, whether digitally created or hand-made, provide
Gives a twist to boring presentations
Better understanding
Decreasing presentation times as a lot can be explained easily with images
Communication and facilitation
In agile, communication and facilitation of events are important aspects that provide a lot of benefits. Agile coaches, product managers, and executives' communication becomes easier with visual thinking because;
This helps introduce new ideas that attract team members and encourage them to provide other
Help team members visualise thinking that helps the project succeed.
In facilitation, it helps in
Visualize the agenda and proceed easily.
Making tough questions and concepts easier during events with images
provides flexibility for the organisation of tasks.
Training
When used in training, it helps with a lot of things, making the task easy for leaders and trainers.
Visual thinking helps explain new concepts easily with images.
Prepare fun activity material for training.
Facilitating trainers' planning by organising their thoughts
Provides participants with full attention and immersion in the process throughout the sessions.
There are various ways visual thinking can help with agility. Some of the examples we have seen above There are many more examples in every process and task carried out in agile that have the benefits of visual thinking. The preceding example should have given you an idea of how incorporating visual thinking into your agile work will help you be more agile.
About Advance Agility
We, at Advance Agility, are the new-age Agile Coaching, Consulting, and IT services company. We enable end-to-end Digital Transformation. Agile execution is integral to our being. We are doing SAFe implementation with small, medium, and large organizations across the globe. Our vision is to be the leading Agile execution player globally. To keep adding value at every process stage. We are on a mission to empower our clients, move from concept to cash in the shortest sustainable lead time by adopting a human-centric approach to business agility. Embracing the change is in our DNA. Things that keep us apart are Quicker and Seamless execution with an End-to-end gamut of services. Our Global presence and Stellar Track Record give us an edge over our competitors.
Connect with us at advanceagility.com to learn about SAFe and SAFe Implementation. We provide various SAFe certification courses along with DevOps, Scrum, Agile Coaching and more trainings. Write to us at contact@advanceagilty.com for any agile training or consulting needs. We are always looking for competent agile trainers as well. So if you are a good trainer or want to become one, do get in touch with us to that we can learn, grow and achieve together.
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