Three weeks into a migration project, the status update said “70% complete”. Two months later, it still said “70% complete”. The remaining 30% contained all the problems nobody had figured out yet.
Percentage complete is a comforting lie. It treats all work as equal, when the hard part is usually discovering what you don’t know. Hill Charts fix this by separating “figuring it out” from “making it happen”.
How Hill Charts Work
The left side of the hill is the uphill phase: research, spikes, uncertainty. You’re still learning what the work actually involves. The right side is downhill: execution. You know what to build, you just need to build it.
The peak is the turning point. You’ve answered enough questions to proceed confidently. Moving a task past the peak means “we know what to do now”.
This distinction matters because stuck work looks different on each side. A task stuck on the uphill needs more investigation or a different approach. A task stuck on the downhill has a blocking dependency or resource problem. The response is different, and the chart makes that visible.
The Subjectivity Problem
Hill Charts rely on self-assessment. One person’s “almost at the peak” is another’s “barely started climbing”. I’ve seen tasks teleport backwards when someone new looked at them with fresh eyes.
Regular check-ins help calibrate. The team needs a shared understanding of what “past the peak” means for their context. Without this, the chart becomes another form of false precision.
Where They Work Best
I’ve found Hill Charts most useful in two situations:
Communicating with senior stakeholders. Executives understand “we’re still figuring out the approach” versus “we know what to do; it’s just taking time”. A percentage doesn’t convey that distinction.
Spotting stuck work early. When a task hasn’t moved in two weeks, the chart makes it obvious. More importantly, its position tells you what kind of stuck it is.
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