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User Story: As a new participant in an Agile world, I need to
understand why I need a physical task board so I can make best use of it and
not feel like I'm wasting my time.
Acceptance Criteria: Teams embrace the
task board and begin to experience the results that occur with synergy.
In Agile we can use many different tools
to help us track the work we're doing and provide our stakeholders with
information. Many of these tools include a digital task board; this can be
useful for teams, especially if they have remote team members or are a
distributed team.
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A physical task board is also a good place
to hold the daily stand up; gathering around this helps keep everyone focused
on what we're talking about and makes very visible the progress against the
commitment, or lack of.
But the main reason I coach to physical task
board is because of what I call the magic.
It's not really magic, but there is an effect that occurs for those teams that
really embrace the task board and the benefits are many.
Generally, when I mention that having a
physical task board--and holding stand up there every day--is a good idea and
one I highly recommend, I get the questions. "Do we have to have a task board; is it required?" "Why do we
need that and the one in the tool?" “Isn't that duplication of
effort?" “Do we have to hold stand up every day?"
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That’s usually enough for most teams to choose to try it; we can
try anything for a couple weeks, right?
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But that is when the magic begins.
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Then they plan some work, add it to the board, and start meeting
every day for stand up. Their update to one another is accompanied by moving
the tasks across the board and they begin to hold one another and themselves
accountable to the commitment they made at planning.
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They stop seeing the color of the post its and the cartoon images
on the board and see the work represented and how it progresses across the
board; and in fact, want to show off their board and explain what they’re doing
and that they figured out how to do something faster or more efficiently or
with better quality.
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Synergy is defined as, the interaction of elements that when combined produce a total effect that is great then the sum of the individual elements. A basic condition for synergy is that the key players must effectively interact with each other.
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Daniel Pink tells us
that what really motivates people are autonomy, mastery, and purpose. The autonomy
and purpose afforded by task boards lead to mastery of the skill sets, and/or
the work we’re doing that is depicted on that board.
There are many and varied reasons tasks boards work so well.
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