Scaling the card wall

I love the smell of Sharpies in the morningor, how I learnt to stop worrying and love the card wall.

Friday, 2 March 12

or,Scaling the card wall

Friday, 2 March 12

About me

Friday, 2 March 12

About me

• Politics wonk

Friday, 2 March 12

About me

• Politics wonk

• Developer on GreenHopper at Atlassian

Friday, 2 March 12

About me

• Politics wonk

• Developer on GreenHopper at Atlassian

• @jameshatherly on twitter

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Friday, 2 March 12

Card walls are awesome

Friday, 2 March 12

Card walls are awesome

• ... but they’re absolutely terrible

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Card walls

• “We don't learn to do arithmetic using a calculator. No, one starts with simple addition and by the time your ready to learn division it is done using pencil and paper (long division old school). Requiring the student to do the hard work of the long division process may help them to understand the conceptual division problem and the solution technique.”

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What makes me tick

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What makes me tick

• What growing pains can we expect?

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What makes me tick


• How have others overcome similar growing pains?

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What makes me tick


• How have others overcome similar growing pains?

• What are the common patterns to these solutions?

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Outline

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Outline

• Background

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Outline

• Background

• Experiment

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Outline

• Background

• Experiment

• Further Research

Friday, 2 March 12

Outline

• Background

• Experiment

• Further Research

• Commonalities and Applications

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Why card wall

Friday, 2 March 12

Why card wall

• Low friction

Friday, 2 March 12

Why card wall

• Low friction

• Low barrier to entry

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Why card wall

• Low friction


• Simple

Friday, 2 March 12

Why card wall

• Low friction


• Simple

• High transparency

Friday, 2 March 12

Why card wall

• Low friction


• Simple

• High transparency

• High visibility

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Why not?

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Why not?

• Forces teams to be co-located

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Why not?


• Visibility/transparency argument not so strong

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Why not?


• Visibility/transparency argument not so strong

• Requires data entry to get tooling benefits

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Manifesto for Agile Software Development

• “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools”

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How we roll

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Scrum shock therapy

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Scrum shock therapy

• http://rapidscrum.com/shock.php

Friday, 2 March 12

http://rapidscrum.com/shock.php


Scrum shock therapy


• For education

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Scrum shock therapy


• For education

• For self improvement

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Cat-fooding a physical card wall

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Findings

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Findings

• Most findings were unsurprising

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Findings


• Card walls are fiddly

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Findings


• Card walls are fiddly

• Seriously lo-fi

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Findings

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Findings

• Serious hindrance to working from home/working remotely

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Findings


• No persistence

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Findings


• No persistence

• No search

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Findings


• No persistence

• No search

• No linking

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Finding

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Finding

• Tooling

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Finding

• Tooling

• Mylyn

Friday, 2 March 12

Finding

• Tooling

• Mylyn

• Linking commits back to stories

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Finding

• Tooling

• Mylyn

• Linking commits back to stories

• Reporting & charting

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My favourite quote from the experiment

• “handwriting is not a talent shared by everyone”

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So what was good?

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So what was good?

• Collaboration and discussion became synchronised

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So what was good?

• Collaboration and discussion became synchronised

• Better communication on issues and subtasks

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Where to from here?

Friday, 2 March 12

Where to from here?

• Card wall with manual synchronisation

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Where to from here?


• batched

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Where to from here?


• batched

• manual data entry

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Where to from here?


• batched

• manual data entry

• fragmented discussion

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Really?

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That’s it?

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So what are the alternatives?

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• Let’s reconsider our old wallboard

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• self-synchronising

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• inherently distributed

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• can include extras - builds, etc

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• can include extras - builds, etc

• non-interactive - deal breaker

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Same goes for...

Friday, 2 March 12

Same goes for...

• sprint.ly

Friday, 2 March 12

Same goes for...

• sprint.ly

• Trello

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Same goes for...

• sprint.ly

• Trello

• Scrumblr

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Same goes for...

• sprint.ly

• Trello

• Scrumblr

• any web-based cardwall/taskboard tool

Friday, 2 March 12

Same goes for...

• sprint.ly

• Trello

• Scrumblr

• any web-based cardwall/taskboard tool

• If you’re used to a physical card wall, the interaction model just isn’t quite right

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Alternatives

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Alternatives• Smart whiteboards and

other touch-capable screens

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• Expensive

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• Expensive

• Again, the interaction model is just wrong

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Alternatives

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Alternatives• QR codes on your card wall

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• batched synchronization

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• no data entry, automated reporting

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• stories & tasks are addressable

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• still a problem for working from home

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• still a problem for working from home

• no audit trail - not really a problem for agile teams

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Examples

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Alternatives

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Vodafone web team card wall

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• Winner of 2010 ultimate wallboard competition

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• Pretty much the coolest thing ever

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• RFID chips for each card, readers update in software back-end on status change

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• Changes which bypass the card wall trigger a change printout

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• Changes which bypass the card wall trigger a change printout

• A whole lot more

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• Hands-on set up - RFID cards, RFID readers, label printer, projector, video camera

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• Non-portable

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• Non-portable

• Minor lag of changes getting onto the wall

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• Non-portable


• Contains some ‘hacks’

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• Non-portable


• Contains some ‘hacks’

• Still, awesome.

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Potential alternatives

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• SAP research InnoBoard

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• Cool tech, really nice potential card wall replacement

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• Platform developed, ref-app is based on collaboration, not agile development.

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• Platform developed, ref-app is based on collaboration, not agile development.

• They want to do other applications on top of their platform, agile makes sense

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Commonalities

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Commonalities

• Bi-directional propagation of changes

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Commonalities


• Real-time (or near-to) updates

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Commonalities



• Central and tangible

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Commonalities



• Central and tangible

• Allow for changing status, assigning to someone, adding new cards (kanban specific)

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Commonalities

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Commonalities

• No manual steps (other than set-up)

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Commonalities


• Some level of traceability

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Commonalities


• Some level of traceability

• Automated reporting & chart generation

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Enter: Microsoft Kinect

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We’ve tried this before

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• My colleague Shihab and I worked on this last year

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• Blinded by cool tech, we lost sight of the “solve one problem and solve it well” ideal

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• Blinded by cool tech, we lost sight of the “solve one problem and solve it well” ideal

• Shipped a tech demo, got some positive feedback, went nowhere with it

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Keen to try again

Friday, 2 March 12

Keen to try again

• But curious as to whether analog-or-death types agree with me that there’s value

Friday, 2 March 12

Keen to try again

• But curious as to whether analog-or-death types agree with me that there’s value

• Feel free to share your thoughts afterwards

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Recapping

Friday, 2 March 12

Recapping

• Card walls face problems, not just as the team grows, but also as the organisation the team exists within grows

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Recapping


• Current alternatives can’t solve every problem, but they might solve your’s

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Recapping



• No silver bullet

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Recapping



• No silver bullet

• No free lunch

Friday, 2 March 12

Technology

Scaling the card wall