Hill Chart

https://basecamp.com/features/hill-charts

Figuring things out -> Making it happen

... for bigger projects with dozens or hundreds of tasks, you need a way to see the bigger picture. Is the project going to be done on time? Are people stuck?

The idea: work is like a hill

Every piece of work has two phases. First there’s an uphill phase where you figure out your approach. You have a basic idea about the task, but you haven’t figured out what the solution is going to look like or how to solve all the unknowns.

Eventually you reach a point where there aren’t any more unsolved problems. That’s like standing at the top of the hill. You can see clearly all the way down the other side. Then the downhill phase is just about execution.

From unknown to known, and known to done

Since we adopted the Hill Chart internally at Basecamp, our teams have been communicating about progress at a level never before possible. Our intuition is the same, but now we have a way to immediately show each other where things stand.

And because of the Hill Chart history, we don’t need to call meetings to catch up on a project’s status. It’s no longer a challenge to see what’s in motion and what’s stuck. We can have quick, substantial conversations asynchronously about where to focus next or how to break up a problem.

Others related links

https://3.basecamp-help.com/article/412-hill-charts

https://github.com/nagi1/hill-chart

https://medium.com/swlh/be-running-up-that-hill-3873675aaa2e