What is the one focal point that catches every team member’s attention at the same time every day?  Of course it is their Scrum board. Some teams go through the motions and use their Scrum board because they are told to; for effective teams the board is a way to collaborate, manage work in process, keep track of impediments and know whether or not they are going to meet the sprint goal. Effective teams turn their board into a highly-visible collection of critical information about their effort. It becomes the heartbeat of the team and helps set the cadence for each sprint.

Their board might look something like this:

Sprint Dates and Goal – as a reminder of the goal and the timeline. Seeing the sprint dates can be helpful if users who will be testing attend the standups so that they understand the sprint timing.

Columns for each step in their development process – This can be as simple or as complex as the team wants – it usually evolves as the team learns and tweaks its process to ensure a smooth flow of stories. In the example above, the team experienced issues with too many stories waiting for user testing. They created a column to show which stories are ready for user testing to make it clear to users when something is ready for them to test. During standups, the Scrum Master points out any columns where an excessive number of stories are piling up. Even with Scrum, the team may set limits for how many stories may accumulate in each column before team members swarm to address a bottleneck.

Sprint Calendar – during sprint planning the team members estimate on which days of the sprint they think stories will be Done and also when they will likely reach any other significant milestones in the team’s process such as being ready for user testing. This is a way of performing a sanity check for the sprint plan.  It is also a way for the team to gauge whether or not it is on track during the sprint. When user testing is part of the Definition of Done, it allows the users to plan when they will be performing this testing. Putting team members’ planned vacation days on this calendar avoids surprises in the middle of the sprint. It can also help to put key SME’s or users’ vacation days on the calendar if these could impact the sprint.

Impediments – unresolved impediments. Making these visible is a way to track them and may have the side benefit of prompting outside stakeholders who attend the standup or visit with the team to help the Scrum Master by finding other ways to resolve them.

Additional Stories – these are stories at the top of the Product Backlog that are ready to be brought into a sprint but that are not part of the current Sprint Backlog. These are posted on the board so that they are readily available in case the team reaches the sprint goal early and can complete some additional stories in this sprint. Note that these are not called “Stretch Goals”. That term can be perceived negatively by the team, almost as if they are not pushing hard enough in the first place to meet the sprint goal.

Release Burnup – the bigger picture of what the team is working towards. This help avoid the sense of being in an endless churn of sprints with no end in sight.

For teams using Kanban, many elements on this board still apply but may need slight modification. Note the use of colors throughout the board.  It is amazing how teams will adopt color schemes or symbols that communicate the state of their work, highlight important events, serve as key reminders, etc. One type of information not included on the example above is an area for Technical Debt.  Creating an open area on the board for this invites the team members to note it as soon as it becomes apparent to them.  These notes can then be translated into backlog items during grooming. This encourages open discussion about technical debt and surfaces this information rather than just having it in the team members’ heads.

A note for teams that use online/electronic Scrum or Kanban boards: additional information such as the PTO calendar, Impediments and release burnup can be captured in story cards and placed in a column dedicated to that background information. The sprint calendar can be captured by putting Due Dates on each electronic story card. On a physical or electronic board, the story cards can contain as much information as the team finds helpful. Typically the story number, title, and number of story points are included.

Reflections:

• The Scrum or Kanban board can be used to communicate much more than just the status of the stories and tasks.
• The information on this board should reflect each team’s personality and process. It will evolve as the team learns.
• The Scrum Master can help the team during the standup by directing their attention to potential trouble spots on the board.