Posts Tagged ‘taskboard’

Using a Task Board with One Remote Team Member

Sunday, May 31st, 2009

I want to address a question I was emailed yesterday but that I receive frequently. What should we do in the case when the team really likes having a physical task board, but when one team member is remote?

My first answer is always: Try to get the one person to move to where the rest of the team is. I don’t expect to see any moving trucks roll out when I ask this, but I have to ask. I figured if I keep asking, some team somewhere will eventually have the person move. Having one remote is a cost that must be borne by the full team. For the right person, it’s easily worth it. But sometimes, the person who is remote has not special skills, knowledge or experience to justify the added hassle.

So, assuming that we’ve tried the “move here” solution and it didn’t work, what can a team do that likes the physical task board but that has one remote member?

My recommendation is to continue to use the physical task board–it is simply too beneficial to the collocated team members to give it up in favor of a product backlog tool, especially if team members are already used to it and like it. How the team conveys information on the task board to the remote team member depends on what that person does.

Sometimes the remote person works remotely because they have a very specialized skill that couldn’t be filled in the office where the rest of the team is. This would be the case, for example, if our remote person is an expert in Windows internals and is writing boot-time code in C++. It would also be the case if our remote person has twenty years of experience in the domain and with some of our really old code. In these cases, the remote person usually (not always) works for a day or two relatively alone. The remote person in this case could identify during the daily Scrum what he or she will work on and not need further interaction with the task board until selecting the next task. Here, the remote person doesn’t really interact with the task board at all and interacts only with the team. Not ideal as I’d like the person to see the tasks, but this can work in some situations.

What is more common is for the ScrumMaster to take on the responsibility of updating an electronic version that mirrors the physical task board. A shared spreadsheet is normally sufficient for this, but some teams opt for a more specialized tool, which is fine. Many tools offer 5-10 user free licenses and since the tool is only needed by the ScrumMaster and one remote employees, the free license is adequate.

Normally the ScrumMaster updates the electronic task board once a day, usually right after the daily scrum meeting. Of course, reading the physical task board and updating the electronic one can be quite time-consuming because the ScrumMaster has to look at each task in both places to see if that item needs to be updated.

One good way of minimizing the time the ScrumMaster spends doing this is to mark the cards on the physical task board. The mark indicates “I’ve updated this task. Please update it in the online task board.” I like to use Post-It flags for this. As team members do their daily scrum, they stick one of these flags (of any color) on the card. If the estimate changes, if the task is done, if a new task is added, those cards are tagged with a flag. When the meeting is over, the ScrumMaster can very easily see which items need to be updated. The ScrumMaster removes the flags once the online task board is updated. This approach also works in situations where the ScrumMaster updates the board more than once a day. Any time someone changes the board, flag the task.

Other teams do something similar using color-coded dots. Anything touched on Monday is blue, Tuesday is red, and so on. Two problems occur though: First, the dot packs usually come with four colors to a pack so you have to buy a fifth color. Second, it’s a hassle to make sure we have the right color on hand.

Posted in Sprint Artifacts, Sprinting | 29 Comments »

The Ideal Agile Workspace

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

As you may now, I am working on a new book, which will be called Succeeding with Agile. I recently finished writing a chapter for it on the impact of the human resources and facilities groups on an organization that is transitioning to agile. While writing that chapter, I put together a list of all the things that I think should be visible within the ideal agile workspace:

  • Big Visible Charts. Alistair Cockburn coined the term “Big Visible Charts” to describe the charts that agile teams like to hang on their walls. One of the most common of these is the sprint burndown chart, showing the number of hours remaining as of each day of the current sprint. Charts like these provide a strong visual reminder of the current state of the project. What is shown on these charts will get the attention of team members so display charts showing the most important information for that sprint. Ron Jeffries suggests considering big visible charts showing the number of passing customer acceptance tests, the pass/fail status of tests by day, sprint and release burndown charts, number of new stories introduced to the product backlog per sprint, and more.
  • Additional feedback devices. In addition to big, visible charts, it is common for an agile team to use additional visual feedback devices in their workspace. One of the most common is a lava lamp that is turned on whenever the automated build is broken. I’ve also worked with teams that use flashing red traffic lights to indicate exceptional conditions such as an issue on a production server. Also popular are ambient orbs and Nabaztag rabbits, which are wireless programmable devices that can also be configured to change colors, speak messages, or wiggle their ears as a team desires. Devices like these make a workspace more dynamic, unobtrusively bringing into it information the team may find helpful.
  • Everyone on your team. Each person on the team should ideally be able to see each other person on the team. This absolutely includes the ScrumMaster and ideally includes the product owner. I do understand, however, that product owners often have responsibilities to other groups outside the development team and so may sit near them instead. Still, in an ideal world the product owner would be visible to everyone in the team workspace.
  • The sprint backlog. One of the best ways to ensure that everything necessary is completed in the sprint is to make the sprint backlog visible. The best way to do that is by displaying the sprint backlog on a wall, ideally in the form of a task board A task board is usually oriented in rows and columns with each row containing a particular user story and one index card or sticky note for each task involved in that story. Task cards are organized in columns, minimally including “To Do” “In Process,” and “Done.” In this way, team members are able to see work progressing across the task board during the sprint and all work to be done is visible at all times.
  • The product backlog. One problem with running an endless series of sprints is that each can feel disconnected or isolated from the whole of a planned released or related set of new capabilities. A good way to reduce the impact of this problem is by displaying the product backlog somewhere clearly visible. This can be as simple as keeping the shoebox full of user stories written on index cards on a table in the middle of the team’s space. Even better, tack the index cards with those upcoming user stories on a wall where all can see them. This allows team members to see how the user stories they are working on in the current sprint relate to others that are coming soon.
  • At least one big white board. Every team needs at least one big whiteboard. Locating this in the team’s common workspace encourages spontaneous meetings. One developer may start using the board to think through a problem; others may notice and offer to help.
  • Someplace quiet and private. As important as open communication is, there are times when someone needs some peace and quiet. Sometimes this is for something as simple as a private phone call. Other times it can be to think through a particularly challenging problem without being interrupted.
  • Food and drink. It’s always a good idea to have food and drink available. These don’t need to be fancy, and they don’t even need to be provided by the organization. I’ve worked with plenty of teams that buy a small under-desk refrigerator and share the expense of buying water bottles or soda for it. Other teams buy a coffee machine, depending on team preferences. Some teams rotate bringing in snacks, both healthful and not.
  • A window. Windows are often a scarce commodity and are doled out to an organization’s favored employees. One of the nice things about an open workspace is that windows are shared. Even if the view is only of our parking lot and can only be seen across three messy desks, at least I can see the window and some natural light.

It’s unlikely that every one of these will be visible from your workspace, but the more of them visible, the better. Let me know what else you think should be visible from within the ideal agile workspace.

Posted in Sprinting | 28 Comments »

Working With “Storyless Tasks”

Wednesday, May 21st, 2008

A question I get frequently is what to do with tasks that do not belong to a particular user story or product backlog item. Common examples I’m asked about include tasks like “update the build server to use the latest version of FitNesse.” Fixing bugs from prior iterations are another common example. I’ve sometimes heard of these tasks that don’t belong to a particular product backlog item or user story referred to as “storyless tasks.”

If you’ve been to one of my classes, heard me speak at a conference, or just poked around my website you very likely know that I have a strong preference for task boards whenever possible. Usually this means whenever a team is collocated or a few special distributed teams who want to do it. A taskboard will look something like this:

A generic task board

To answer the questions about storyless tasks, I want to answer in the context of using a task board. But the essentials of my answer will remain the same even if you are using a tool.

Most teams find it useful to include two additional rows on their task boards:

  1. Miscellaneous
  2. Bugs

Each other row on those boards represents a user story and the cards are the tasks to implement the story. The Miscellaneous and Bugs rows are essentially the storyless tasks. The Miscellaneous row holds things like “update the build server.”

I do not normally recommend that a team estimate these items in story points such that they would earn any points toward velocity by completing these tasks. Tasks in the Miscellaneous row are usually tasks that enable the team to perform the other work (or to perform it better or faster). It is reasonably safe that over the long-term any story points you’d consider assigning here will average out. This is yet another reason why I always stress that velocity is a useful long-term predictor rather than a predictor of the short-term such as what a team may complete in exactly the next iteration.

I often use a Bugs row on the task board for bugs that are either:

  • discovered during the iteration but unrelated to the stories of the current iteration (bugs related to stories already on the board go into the To Do column of the story’s row)
  • planned at the start of the iteration to be done during the iteration

If the bugs were planned into the iteration at its start, often a team does put a story point estimate on those bugs. Usually the bugs are estimated together–that is, “if we fix these 6 bugs we’ll get two story points.” Lots of teams with large defect backlogs plan to do something like bring in 5 points of bugs each iteration. So they estimate those a bit “backwards.” Rather than grab a stack of bugs and ask, “how many points do these 8 bugs represent in total” they keep adding bugs into the iteration until they feel they’ve brought in the desired number of points worth of bugs.

Posted in Sprinting | 19 Comments »