Agile Stickies Board


While we are not yet in the era of "Minority Report", a regular White Board and stikies are good 25022009100enough. This is how we started on our current project - the classic way. An interesting observation I've made while going through several attempts to track the progress of a project at several companies - an attempt to "modernize" stickies and get rid of the board. Ways are multiple, from virtualization of the board, to going back to a file based tracking (Excel/Word).

From what I can see right now - non of those are as effective as the classic way. Reasons?

  1. Trying to capture progress not visually leaves out gray areas. When project is big, partition it, but don't rely on files or scrollable screen in an application - doesn't really work.
  2. Time estimate is a separate concern - progress for developers makes sense in stickes that are in "done-done" column, and the flow from left to right.
  3. The process should be simple, if it requires extra effort, it become rather an impediment, than an assistance, and eventually will be abandoned.
  4. Board is something that is a couple of steps away at worse, and a head turn at the best. File based solutions are failing this, applications require windows switching (context change) or worse, load time.27022009103

By sticking to the KISS principle with stikies, it is obvious what the status after just a week.

 

Have fun with stickies! :)

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