My budget is for the stationery that I added – not the gizmos I had painstakingly collected over these years – that will be my next post – the stuff that runs on electricity.
Whats in my home office
1. Stickies – 40Rs
2. Color sketch pens – 20Rs
3. World Map – 200Rs
4. India Map – 150Rs
5. LIC diary – 0Rs ( given free by my agent )
I do miss having a white board but it is prohibitively expensive – a decent sized one costs 4000Rs – and also the white board markers are not cheap either.
The backside of the maps are very effective card walls – stickies cling on to them nicely. And I can move the card wall easily. Now I have a visual progression of my project.
You are wondering what is a card wall? It is a must have in any agile project – it visually depicts the “stories” waiting to be played, being played, the ones that are in QA’s desk and the ones that have been passed by the QA.
In the first week I did not have the card wall and my partner ( Sangeeta – my wife who is supporting me in this venture) had a tough time visualizing where we are going. Then I hung the world map and laid out the stickies and both of us now have a better idea of what is happening. Now she is totally bought up on the card wall and has made her own now ( with the India map ).
I first thought of categorizing bugs, features, tech stuff with different colors – but then it became too corporatish so I decided to not worry about such things and now I use any sketch that comes to my hand. Its nice to doodle in different colors – keeps the brain in “invent” mode.
Next post : The hardware being used to create the online portal.
