Case Studies
DATA VISUALIZATION & INFORMATION DESIGN
5) Mainframe Replacement Appreciation Map
Making a massive IT transformation visible, human, and worth celebrating, one milestone at a time
280+
colleagues involved
920+
project tasks
238
major milestones
MY ROLE
Communications Lead • Concept Design • Data Translation & Visualization • Production Lead for Large-Scale Physical Installation
THE CONTEXT
The Mainframe Replacement Program was one of the most complex IT transformations the organization had undertaken. Over 354 days, 280+ colleagues across 8 workstreams worked in parallel to consolidate 32 applications down to 14, a program with 920+ tasks, 238 major milestones, and 7+ integration rounds, all moving simultaneously toward a single go-live moment.
My job was to lead communications for the entire program, making sure people understood where the program stood, felt connected to the bigger picture, and had moments to recognize the work being done around them. The Appreciation Map was the centerpiece of that effort.
THE CHALLENGE
When everything is happening everywhere at once, complexity becomes invisible. Each workstream had its own milestones, its own timelines, its own integration cycles. Teams were heads-down in their own lane, doing excellent work, but with little visibility into how their piece connected to the whole.
Status dashboards existed. Reports went out. But none of it created a shared sense of progress. There was no way to feel the scale of what everyone was building together, and no built-in moment to stop, look up, and recognize the people making it happen.
Make the invisible visible. And make it something people could literally build together.
Instead of tracking progress in isolated reports, what if there was something physical, something you could walk up to, point at, and say: this is where we are, this is what we've done, this is who did it?
WHAT WE BUILT
The Appreciation Map was a large-scale physical installation placed in a central commons area, the heartbeat of the program, visible to everyone moving through the space every day.
It was designed as a mountain journey map, each workstream had its own migration path, with clearly defined checkpoints across the transformation lifecycle. The visual language was deliberate: a journey with peaks to reach, not a spreadsheet to manage.
Modular puzzle system
Pieces added physically as milestones were achieved, progress you could see and touch
8 workstreams
Each with its own visual path and milestone markers across the full transformation lifecycle
Full lifecycle coverage
Requirements, Development, Data Migration, UAT, Training, and Go-Live all represented
Milestone moments
Workstream leads placed pieces publicly, recognizing their teams in front of the organization
The puzzle mechanic was the key design decision. It meant progress wasn't just tracked, it was assembled. Every piece placed was a public act of recognition. Workstream leads weren't just marking a task complete. They were standing in front of their colleagues and saying: we did this.
WHAT HAPPENED
The map became a gathering point. People stopped in front of it. They pointed things out to colleagues. They took photos. Teams that rarely crossed paths started talking about each other's progress. The commons area, which had always been a throughway, became a place people actually paused.
Cross-workstream alignment improved. Milestone moments became genuine celebrations rather than checkboxes. And when the final piece went on the map, it meant something, because everyone had watched the journey unfold in real time, in a shared physical space.
Built by many. Made visible through design. Completed together.