program selection system

The task board, that seemingly innocuous artifact of the standup meeting, is perhaps one of the most important physical tools that the team has at its disposal. When teams make the transition to electronic tools, often many of these physical information radiators go away. This can cause unintended problems for teams. They are not insurmountable, but teams should be aware of the potential issues. For example:

1) Team stand up meetings - often when the team switches to electronic tools, they no longer have the stories and tasks on a board in front of them during the meeting. As a result, they tend to lose focus during the meeting.

2) A physical task board is a very useful information radiator - often that information is no longer displayed prominently when the team switches to electronics. The casual passer by loses their visibility into the team’s status.

These are just some of the examples of teams losing transparency when they switch tools. In this experience report, The intent is to share the awareness of the problems teams can encounter with transparency if they do not manage the transition to electronic tools well.

The implications for Agile development teams are discussed along with the strengths and weaknesses of the tools used.