Create Visible Boards for Geographically Distributed Teams

You might be working on a geographically distributed team. You can still use a paper board to start instead of an electronic tool.

The team creates the board as described in ​Make Your Own Board​, in one physical location. Someone takes a picture of it and posts it on the team’s project space. Now the team has at least two choices. The team can ask one person in that physical location to please move the cards as people take and finish stories. Or the team can replicate the board in each physical location. Each person can move his or her own cards, take a picture, and let the entire team know which card moved and where.

The team creates a team norm about how to move cards. When a team member moves a card, the team member notifies everyone according to the team norm.

When the team practices with its board, and gets feedback from how the board works and how its process works, the team might decide to move to an electronic board. However, stay in paper as long as possible. You will find that your stories are smaller and that your feedback is faster.

Paper helps a team see its real flow, not what it thinks its flow should be. “Well, once a dev is done, a tester should just take it.” Are the testers in the same room, or at least on the same floor as the developers? Did the testers participate in story creation or refinement? I’ve seen time zones and insufficient understanding prevent the testers from “just” taking a story. The longer a team stays in paper, the more it is apt to create a board that reflects its real flow of work.

What if your management mandates a board in the form of a tool? That’s the ​Trap: Management Mandates Your Boards​.