scrum: physical or virtual

Scrum: Physical or virtual walls?Paula de Matos

What is this talk about?

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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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Contact me

Email: pmatos@ebi.ac.ukLinkedIn: Paula de MatosTwitter: @Paula_deMatos

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