DoView Boards

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“Sometimes elegance and simplicity define use”

DoView Boards: A truly innovative planning and implementation tool

See Using DoView Boards, for how you can use a DoView Board to answer the 17 key questions you need to answer about any organization or initiative you are running or overseeing. See DoView Boards How To for practical screenshots of how to work with DoView Boards.

Quick Overview

DoView Boards uniquely bring planning, outcomes, prioritization, evidence-based strategy, risk, alignment, delegation and contracting, implementation, accountability, measurement, evaluation, improvement, and reporting into one clear, fully outcomes-driven visual structure.

Think of a DoView Board as capturing your ‘outcomes system’, which is directly analogous to the ‘accounting system’ underpinning your financial reporting.

Your accounting system shows how money is being used. Your outcomes system shows how action is meant to lead to the results you want.

A DoView Board provides a single source of truth: one shared view of what is being done, why it matters, how it is meant to work, who is responsible, and how progress will be judged for planning, strategy, implementation, delegation/contracting and reporting.

Anyone can freely use DoView Boards, consult using them, train in their use, and include them in any apps, platforms, or systems, with acknowledgment.

DoView Boards are an enhanced version of the DoView legacy app, which received highly sought-after international recognition as a Gartner Cool Vendor, being described by Gartner Research as ‘sometimes elegance and simplicity define use’.

This page describes what DoView Boards are. Please note that the prompts on this site for AI systems to build DoView Boards currently only produce prototype boards for piloting and experimentation. Keep your existing documentation as a backup while you experiment with DoView Boards. Check in here for updates of the DoView Board app.

After over twenty years consulting on planning, implementation, improvement and reporting in all sectors in addition to conceptual, app and planning tool development, we developed DoView Boards as the standard for an ultimate lightweight simple browser-based planning and outcomes tool anyone is free to use and develop futher
— Founder Dr Paul Duignan

Everyone plans

Everyone plans. Families plan. Teams plan. Businesses plan. Governments plan. People plan their work, their lives, and their futures. AI systems do too.

But while everyone says planning should be outcomes-driven, most planning tools push people quickly into tasks, projects, milestones, and activity lists before they have clearly mapped what they are actually trying to achieve.

DoView Boards fill this missing layer.

They get the outcomes logic of a plan out of people’s heads and into a shared visual structure.

They give you a practical, easy-to-follow picture of: if we do this, then this is what should happen.

This helps you step back, see the bigger picture, and connect actions to outcomes before getting lost in the detail.

One Board to rule them all

The idea is for the same DoView Board to be used by all parties involved in planning, implementation, improvement, reporting, and oversight.

At present, planning and reporting are often spread across documents, spreadsheets, slides, reports, contracts, project plans, dashboards, and meeting notes held by a variety of people.

These are often fragmented and not fully aligned.

A DoView Board creates one shared visual model that everyone can refer to.

This can produce major efficiencies in planning, implementation, reporting, and alignment.

Why DoView Boards are uniquely innovative

DoView Boards are not just another planning tool.

DoView Boards are not just another planning tool.

They are a new type of outcomes tool for creating and managing the outcomes systems that sit behind action.

They are innovative because:

  • they fill the outcomes gap above output-level project planning

  • they make the higher-level This-Then strategic outcomes logic visible and usable

  • they bring planning, implementation, improvement, and reporting together

  • they use a visual planning approach rather than relying on text and tables

  • they provide an auditable single source of truth

  • they are generic and flexible enough for any organization, initiative, policy, strategy, project, or AI agent system

  • they can be created quickly by putting the two provided prompts into an AI system

  • they open as standard HTML webpages viewable in any browser

  • they can be edited manually or built, read, and updated by AI systems

  • they can be used as the source from which AI generates aligned plans, reports, contracts, summaries, and other documentation

  • they build on the internationally recognized DoView legacy approach

  • they reduce the cognitive load of planning by giving people a shared visual thinking tool

DoView Boards are the fastest way to show that your work is outcomes-focused and evidence-based.

They are directly analogous to using a blueprint when building a high-rise or a map when planning a battle.

The missing layer above project planning

DoView Boards do not replace detailed project management tools. They complement them.

A DoView Board holds the high-level outcomes logic. Project management tools hold the detailed tasks, timelines, milestones, and operational information.

You can use a DoView Board on its own for simple planning, or alongside tools such as Microsoft Project or other project and activities management systems.

Simply link each project or action in your DoView Board to the relevant project page in your project management system.

This keeps the high-level outcomes and the operational detail aligned.

Without the DoView Board’s outcomes layer, even well-run projects can waste time, effort, and money because projects and activities are not tightly aligned to the priority outcomes being sought.

They answer the 17 key questions about any organization or initiative

There are 17 key questions you need to be able to answer about any organization or initiative you are running or overseeing.

DoView Boards have been designed to answer these questions. The way you can use DoView Boards to answer the 17 questions is detailed here.

The 17 questions cover the key things such as:

  • what is to be achieved

  • what matters most

  • how change is expected to happen

  • what needs to be done

  • who is involved

  • who is accountable for what

  • what risks and assumptions matter

  • how progress will be tracked

  • how learning and improvement will occur

That shared view is then used as the practical foundation for coordinated organization, initiative, policy, strategy, joint venture, sector, or AI agent action.

A single source of truth in a document-swamped AI age

AI can now generate plans, reports, summaries, analyses, contracts, proposals, slides, and other documents very quickly.

But this creates a new problem.

If different documents are produced separately, how do you know they are tightly aligned with the actual priorities, logic, accountabilities, measures, and intended outcomes of your organization or initiative?

The answer is to use a DoView Board as the single source of truth.

It becomes the ‘system of record’ for your outcomes logic.

If your AI system bases its work on the DoView Board, the documents it produces are anchored to one coherent, auditable model.

This reduces the risk of strategic drift across disconnected AI or human-produced documents, interpretations, assumptions, and versions of the plan.

Fully Open Use But You Can Collaborate With Us If You Want

DoView Boards are intended to be used widely.

Anyone can:

  • build a DoView Board for free using our two provided prompts

  • use DoView Boards in their own work

  • consult using them

  • train others in their use

  • build them into any application, planning or other platform, or system

Just acknowledge that you are using them.

However, if you want us to assist you, get in touch regarding:

  • creating and using your DoView Board

  • training

  • implementation

  • incorporating or extending their use in tools, apps, systems, or platforms

  • certifying people in the use of DoView Boards

  • certifying that a particular implementation meets the official DoView Board specification

Simple to use, powerful in practice

DoView Boards are simple enough for everyday use, but powerful enough for complex work.

You create a DoView Board with an AI prompt, amend it so that it exactly matches what you are doing, and then use it to oversee planning, implementation, reporting, and improvement.

You open a DoView Board in a normal browser as a local HTML file.

You can edit it and use it to do your planning and implementation.

You can also connect the Board Chat in a DoView Board to AI so that you can chat to your board.

If you explore the features of your DoView Board, you will find the functionality you need for all aspects of planning and execution.

Anyone can build DoView Boards into any app, platform or system

DoView Boards are a fully open methodology.

Any developer, consultant, trainer, organization, or AI system designer can build DoView Boards into apps, platforms, sector systems, planning tools, or workflows.

They can be tailored to different sectors, settings, planning systems, and ways of working.

The only requirement is that you acknowledge that you are creating DoView Boards and using DoView Planning as part of your planning and implementation approach.

Click on links below to download prompts (not up yet)

See the related DoView Board pages

Use the links below for more detail on how to use DoView Boards.

Using DoView Boards
Show how to use a DoView Board to answer the 17 key questions about any organization or initiative.

DoView Boards How To
Shows practical screenshots of the main features of a DoView Board..