User:Iyoti/sandbox/Parking Lot Diagram

A parking lot diagram or parking-lot diagram is a visual representation of progress on a project. It originated from the Feature-driven development process of software development.

Parking Lot diagrams collate features into topical groups, known as feature sets, and then optionally groups these into functional areas to better illustrate overall progress against business areas.

The intention behind the graph is to compress a lot of information in a smaller space and thus providing a high-level view on the progress of the project. The representation is based on themes, which is the grouping of similiar User Stories.

Structure
The boxes are coloured to indicates status. Typically boxes are White for not started, Yellow for work in progress, Green for complete, and Red for late.

The bottom portion of the box contains a progress bar that duplicates the percent complete figure to give a more visual measure of this number and the target completion month for this group of features.

The real power of this technique comes when these feature groups are combined into feature areas and an overall dashboard for the entire project is created.

Strengths
Overall project status is quickly summarised in a single view. When following the standard coloration, diagrams are familiar to anyone who uses the Traffic light rating system