scrum: physical or virtual
DESCRIPTION
Why do some development teams favour physical story cards and a physical wall over digital? What are the advantages and disadvantages of using physical over digital? When should you use which and how can you combine them? These are difficult questions to answer and often they are the first questions that a team has to deal with when implementing an agile methodology. This session is an experience report rooted in the academic literature. It will aim to answer the questions above using use case examples from the author’s own experience. It will also incorporate the latest academic research into the field specifically using research from Human Computer Interaction in which Agile teams have been analysed to explain the benefits of physical and digital artefacts.TRANSCRIPT
Scrum: Physical or virtual walls?Paula de Matos
What is this talk about?
2
versus
About me
Paula de MatosGroup Coordinator and User Experience Analyst at the EBI
Previous incarnations: • Java Technical Lead • Java Developer• Broadcast Engineer• Electronic Engineer
About the European Bioinformatics Institute
• Based on the Wellcome Trust Genome Campus near Cambridge, UK
• Non-profit organisation
• Close to 500 employees
• Aims to provide comprehensive biological data to scientists
My work
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Team A (6 people)Team B (4 people)
Team C (4 people)
We like a physical cards and walls
We like physical cards and wall
We like software tools to manage our process
How I became an Agile fan?
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Picture attribution, Toby Bradbury (Flickr) – Creative Commons License
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Our Scrum-like process
Tasks
What is this talk based on?
• My own experience
• Survey: 23 respondents
• Scientific publications
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Picture attribution, Flickr, The Bees
Unscientific survey: 23 respondents• Open ended questions
• Aim to get as broad a view as possible
• 65 % of respondents had experience with physical and software tools
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Picture attribution, Flickr, The Bees
Respondents agile experience
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Picture attribution, Flickr, The Bees
43%
43%
13%
< 3 years 3-10 years > 10 years
The academic literature
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Picture attribution, Flickr, The Bees
• Sharp et al. (2006). The Role of Story Cards and the Wall in XP teams: a distributed cognition perspective.
• Sharp et al. (2008). Collaboration and co-ordination in mature eXtreme programming teams.
• Whittaker et al. (1999) Board meetings: the impact of scheduling medium on long term group coordination in software development.
The academic literature
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Picture attribution, Flickr, The Bees
• Methods: mainly observation and ethnography
• Distributed Cognition Analysis:• Physical theme• Physical artefacts• Information flow
What do I mean by user story and taskboard?
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What do I mean by user story?
14Picture attribution, Flickr, J Beau
How are user stories stored?
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Picture attribution, Flickr, Natalia Osiatynska
10/04/2023
16Picture attribution, Flickr,Mircea Turcan
17Picture attribution, Flickr, Drew Stephens
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Photo attribution: Roger Greenhalgh (Flickr) – under the Creative Commons license
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What does the “taskboard” look like?
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TODO IN PROGRESS
DONE
BLOCKERS
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Photo attribution: Levent Ali (Flickr)– Creative Commons license
What are the advantages of physical walls?
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Visual
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Photo attribution: C. Fraser (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Coordination of resources
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Photo attribution: Logan Ingalls (Flickr)– Creative Commons license
It’s easy to update the board
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Photo attribution: Ha! Designs (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Sense of achievement
10/04/2023
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Photo attribution: Welsh government (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Encourages personal communication between members
10/04/2023
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Photo attribution: David Cosand (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Encourages personal communication between members and managers
10/04/2023
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Photo attribution: David Cosand (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Holding a card engenders feelings of task ownership and responsibility
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Photo attribution: Victor1558(Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Encourages reflection
10/04/2023
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Photo attribution: Mike Baid (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Size limit of cards promotes collaboration
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Photo attribution: Roger Mateo Poquet (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
What are the drawbacks of using physical cards?
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Ghost cards
35Photo attribution: Mosieur J (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
No burndown charts or tie into project management software
36Photo attribution: Jeff Covey (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Hours, points or estimates need to be tallied manually
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Photo attribution: Yum9me (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Geographical location
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Readability
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Photo attribution: Jim Barter (Flickr) – under the Creative Commons license
Missing in action
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Photo attribution: Brenderous (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Archiving
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Photo attribution: Damien Oz (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Space constraints
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• Title• Estimate• Description• Stack trace• Bug tracker info• Additional
comments• Etc….
No tie into bug trackers and existing documentation
43 Photo attribution: Ivan Walsh (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
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Unwieldy for large teams
Photo attribution: avlxyz (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Advantages of software solutions to manage your tasks and wall
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Geographical location
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• Team members and management• Meeting rooms
Automatic features – burndown charts, velocity
10/04/2023
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Information rich story cards
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Access archived sprints
10/04/2023
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Tie into existing software systems
50 Photo attribution: Paolo Valdemarin (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Disadvantages of software solutions to manage your tasks and wall
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Can become microtasking hell
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Task 1
Task 1.1
Task 1.1.1
Task 1.1.2
Task 1.2
Task 1.2.1
Keeping it upto date is difficult
53 Photo attribution: Yon Garin (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Visibility is lost
54 Photo attribution: AV-1 (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Cards are not distinctive enough
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Computers are full of distractions
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Case study: The best of both worlds
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We maintained the backlog using an agile software tool
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User stories were exported to Excel
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Cards were generated using an Excel visual basic script
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Cards printed and subtasks were assigned using post-it notes
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Check mockupsusers
Implement design
Test cases
Cards and subtasks were placed on a mobile board
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At the end of sprint: post-its were chucked out and new stories printed
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Tips on maintaining physical walls
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Use effective stationery
65 Photo attribution: Ivan Di Carlo (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Place your wall in a prominent position
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Use a transportable board if you need your wall to be mobile
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Treat your cards with the respect they deserve
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Tips on choosing software solutions
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Compile a checklist of what you want the software to do
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Photo attribution: Mistersnappy (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Consider your existing software infrastructure
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Ease of use
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Photo attribution: Ha! Designs (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Consider how you will replicate the tactile nature of the taskboard
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Check mockupsusers
Implement design
Test cases
In summary
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1st Conclusion
Choose a solution that suits the team, organisation, culture and environment.
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Photo attribution: Jace Cooke (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
2nd Conclusion
Trial and error.
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Photo attribution: Everyones idle (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
3rd Conclusion
Don’t underestimate the sensory nature of physical walls… think carefully about how that can be replicated in a software only solution.
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Photo attribution: Nikki Duggan (Flickr) – Creative Commons license
Thanks
• Cheminformatics and Metabolism team members
• Survey respondents
• The authors of the academic literature cited
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