In Agile we use avatars on our agile boards. Avatars are small graphical representations of the team members. I’ve seen everything from James Bond to Simpson characters. Avatars rarely look like their owners, unless you are using photos!

During sprints avatars criss-cross the board attached to User Story cards.

Here’s my first Avatar which I made in 2005.

So why use avatars?

They help remind and inform everyone what is going on with the individual User Stories. When you look at a team’s Agile Board you can see which team member is working on which User Story. It’s a fun way of tracking work that is very visual.

So what should your Avatar look like?

Now I used to believe that an avatar could really be anything. However as I’ve started to work with bigger teams. As part of scaled agile teams, in Agile Release Trains using SAFe. I have realised that photos are better than random images. If I’m new to the Agile Release Train photos mean I can generally track down the person easily.

I think photo avatars are better because it’s easier to see who’s doing what. When there are up to 16 teams you sometimes don’t know everyone well enough to remember their avatar so photos are simpler.

Photo’s are also easier to get! I know a coach who just snaps a photo of you on his phone and before you know it you’re on a board!

The other advantage to photos is stakeholders can identify team members by their faces.

So let’s see an example board:

Cartoon avatars

Photo avatars

Improving your avatars

You can add the team members name to the images. I’ve seen this done a lot with cartoon images and it’s an improvement.

But it works even better with photos.

There’s obviously no such thing as the ideal avatar. Every team is different and every agile board should reflect their circumstances.

Just keep it simple and consistent!