Red can be a scary color. It is known for invoking feelings of anger, passion, and power, all very strong emotions. Societally, we use red to indicate things that need to stop, or as a warning. For example, most machinery uses a big red button to shut it down instantly in an emergency.
At Menlo, we use small sticker dots of various colors to indicate the status of a storycard. Yellow indicates that a card is in-progress, orange indicates that the card is ready for our Quality Advocates (QA) to review the work, and, if it is satisfactory, QA will give the storycard a green dot.
In a perfect world, a storycard will always get a green dot after QA reviews it for the first time. Unfortunately, we do not live in a perfect world. That’s where the red dot comes in. It can signal any number of things, such as QA finding an issue in the work, developers waiting for an answer to a question, or that priorities have changed and we moved to a higher priority card. A red dot is an indicator that some action or conversation needs to happen in order for the card to move forward.
One benefit we see from red dots having so many uses is that it takes the fear away from the color. A red dot doesn’t necessarily mean something is wrong, it is simply a signal that a conversation is needed. However, the range of uses can create ambiguity when it comes to understanding what each red dot is signaling.
To measure alignment on our use of red dots across projects, we sent a survey to the team. We asked two questions, “What does a red dot mean to you?” and “What is your first instinct when you see a red dot?”. We wanted to validate that we agreed on what a red dot means, and what you should do when you see one.
For the first question, we found that the ambiguity that comes with red dots resonated with many team members. A majority of responders indicated that a red dotted card was not being worked on, “for some reason”, but the reasons varied. To put it simply, something happened that made the work stop.
The answers to the next question varied greatly by role and project. Developers and Project Managers consistently see a red dot as a placeholder for conversation. They first look for a note describing why the card has been stopped. This could be a red index card from QA, or a sticky note from the pair who had been working on the card. Next, they find the pair that wrote the note to learn more, hoping to help eliminate the red dot. Echoing a line often heard on football Saturdays in Ann Arbor, one team member said, “Let's get the red out!”
While everyone indicated a need for a conversation, what this looks like in practice varies based on the project and role. Quality Advocates are often the ones who put red dots on cards. They check in to ensure that the red dots are being addressed with the feedback provided. A Project Manager’s job is to make sure that red dotted cards are being addressed quickly so they can be completed in a timely manner.
Developers will sometimes red dot a card because the feature they are implementing was more complicated than they thought, resulting in their original estimate needing an update. They will go have a conversation with the High-Tech Anthropologists to decide next steps. This could look like adjusting the mockups or writing new cards.
A great example of how a team responds to a red dot happened recently on one of our projects. A batch of cards received red dots due to them being blocked by us needing a storage solution for user uploaded documents. As usual, we asked the question, “how can we get rid of this red dot?”. We learned that our client was looking to transition their entire document storage solution to a new system, and we had to understand how the software could best integrate with that. To achieve this, we prioritized cards to do technical discovery into document storage solutions, and designed a way for our software to interact with it. What started with three small red circles resulted in us designing a holistic document storage solution.
After going through all of the survey data, we see how these little red dots take issues that would otherwise be ignored and surface the need for a conversation. What was missing from anyone’s survey response was fear. When a red dot appears, there is no intuition to avoid them. They are simply a signal for attention.
The simplicity of this dotting system means we can run experiments such as introducing new statuses if it is not working (stay tuned for a future blog post!). We confirmed team-wide alignment around how we use red dots. Those placing the red dots on cards are doing so consistently, and the signals that a conversation is needed are being received. Isn’t that how an effective status system should work?