Why Don't We Draw More Pictures When We're Planning Projects?

You know that uncomfortable feeling that you sometimes get in the middle of a project—the one that feels like you're walking a tightrope without a net? Except the rope extends from where you're standing to well past the horizon with no end in sight? And a nasty crosswind is starting to kick up? I've had this feeling before, and when I get it, it's usually because I didn't take the time to plan out the project before diving in. I've come to learn that I can make project planning a lot simpler and even fun if I start the process by drawing pictures of what I'm trying to accomplish and how I see the different pieces of the project fitting together. While I'm actually doing the work, I find I'm constantly referring to the pictures to aid my memory and avoid the tightrope feeling.

Before getting into the drawing software though, I'd like to get out my amateur psychologist hat and put a little more flesh on this idea that planning with pictures can make the project a lot more fun and interesting to work on. It's pretty clear that the tightrope feeling is a direct consequence of not having planned the project adequately. Having to back up and undo mistakes that I made because I started work before thinking it through is not a positive feeling. Neither is spending big chunks of time flipping through disorganized rough notes looking for important forgotten details. Those are the types of things that eventually land me on the tightrope. But why do I put myself in this situation?

I think the main reason for inadequate planning is a kind of penny-smart-pound-stupid notion of project management: "too much planning is too little doing." That notion can be produced internally in our minds or impressed upon us by the people waiting for the work to be done. Pride can play a role too—if you're competent with the subject matter, you should be able to dive right in and get a good result without a ton of planning, yadda yadda yadda. Finally, compared to the actual doing of the project, we tend to consider planning a boring exercise. The planning process will generate a lot of information that will need to be kept in some manageable form, which we generally don't see as fun. We didn't take on this project to push a pencil around. Let's get on with it.

With all of this pressure to get going, it's not a huge surprise that planning can fall by the wayside. Let's pretend for a second that none of that pressure exists and we decide to plan every step of the project as completely as possible before starting any of it. If we suspend disbelief and do this, we soon realize that drawing pictures of the final result (and how we intend to accomplish it) has some major benefits. The first is that drawing pictures is a kind of rehearsal. Rehearsing the work stimulates imagination and gives us new ideas that almost always increase the quality of what we're designing. Obviously, you are going to want to have these new ideas before you have a great deal of time and energy invested in the actual doing of the project. (Again, having to undo and redo work because of a lack of rehearsal leads to stress and anger about wasted time.)

My second reason is simple enjoyment. I find that my first few drawings are not really great and I don't enjoy what I'm looking at. But I know that these diagrams are going to generate new ideas that I wouldn't have had if I didn't start drawing. As I incorporate the new ideas, enjoyment starts to grow. I like pen and paper for the early sketches. Actually, I really like sitting down with a huge pad of chart paper laid flat on a table and drawing with a ballpoint pen (not a magic marker). I start by drawing regular-page-sized pictures in the center of the chart paper and then gradually work outward toward the edges as I think of new ideas. When I've got enough new ideas (usually expressed in a disorganized mess), I tear the page off and refer to it as I redo the drawing. The redrawing leads to a fresh bunch of new ideas, and more satisfaction. Refinement continues until I feel confident that I have a grasp of what I'm trying to do from start to finish.

Finally, when I'm refining the diagrams, I'm also organizing the information that I'm going to need to refer to later when I'm doing the project. Diagrams can hold a lot of information and present it in a way that is tailormade to the project at hand. When it's time to follow through and do the work, my ability to get at key details quickly has a big impact on my overall stress level. I'm much happier if everything is at my fingertips and I don't have to rely on my memory. The diagrams put the important information where I can find it easily, and I find I refer to the diagrams constantly when I'm working.

So that's the argument for drawing pictures at the earliest stage of a project. After I get past the pen-and-chart-paper stage, I like to transcribe the drawings in Microsoft Visio. There are a few reasons. The first is that Visio lets you have as many pages as you want (the same way an Excel workbook contains as many individual spreadsheets as you want). I can put an overview block diagram of the design on the first page and add detailed information for each of the blocks on subsequent pages. This arrangement wouldn't be anywhere near as useful as it is if it wasn't for Visio's hyperlink capabilities: any shape on any page can be made into a hyperlink to another page. So, each of the blocks on my overview block diagram can be right-clicked to send me to the page containing that block's detailed design. Hiding detail until I need it helps keep my stress level down.

The second thing I like about Visio is its ability to place comments beside individual objects. Ordinarily, comments appear as tiny yellow squares that only alert you to the fact that a comment is there. Clicking on the square brings up the full comment. Again, detail hiding. My only quibble with this feature is that I haven't found a way to be able to print comments with the diagram. I might be missing something.

Visio 2007 also includes a direct command on the file menu to export your diagram into PDF or XPS formats, which provides a nice quick way to produce the diagram in a standardized format for sharing with others or archiving. (I use a great program called Evernote—sure to be the subject of a future article—for archiving these diagrams and other reference material for easy access. Evernote can display PDF documents directly in its window, and it can also search the text embedded in the PDF documents, something you are not going to be able to do with a graphics-only format like JPG or PNG. The result is that you can quickly search your collection of diagrams by any text that you embedded inside any drawn object. Very helpful.)

I use Visio because of these features and because I'm comfortable with its drawing tools. I'm sure there are plenty of other packages out there with similar sets of goodies.

So that's my antidote for the infinite tightrope. Start with scribbling pictures on a big piece of chart paper, and redo them until the design starts to look complete. Then copy the key parts of your rough design using a decent drawing program. Keep the drawings handy while you're doing the actual work of the project. I don't think there is any project that can't be made enjoyable a process like this.

Why Don't We Draw More Pictures When We're Planning Projects?

Site Navigation: