A Whiteboard — the ultimate agile secret weapon
It’s true, I’m in love with whiteboards and whiteboard markers. I get excited when I see a whiteboard. I get depressed when I see it covered with old drawings that nobody cares about anymore. But, hey, it’s not so bad, because you can just rub off the old stuff, and you’re ready to go. I remember many years ago working as a consultant in a government office where there was a whiteboard covered in the most intricate diagram and a big sign written on it that said ‘DO NOT WIPE OFF’. Guess what I did? Well, I needed a whiteboard.
Now before you begin working with a whiteboard, there are some important precautions to take. First of all, check the markers are actually for whiteboards. If not, they’re permanent markers for flipcharts, and we all know what happens then. First you feel like an idiot, then you have to go find some alcohol or something to get it off. You might ask why people keep the permanent markers together with the whiteboard markers, but there are some questions we will never know the answer to.
OK, but what makes whiteboards an Agile secret weapon? How can something so low tech be a weapon, or secret? If you’re interested in requirements, epics, user stories, tasks, sprint planning, estimation, any of that — then they’re great. Why? Because you just throw a few actors, ovals, lines, and tags up on the whiteboard, and just watch as people get it. Don’t talk, talk, talk. Draw something. A picture is worth… well, you know what it’s worth.
And if the other guy doesn’t understand, or has a different idea, he just takes the pen and changes it. And if it’s wrong, you just wipe it off and try again. It’s fun. There is something really great about the way a whiteboard pen moves on the surface of a whiteboard.
Let’s say you’re a product owner and your talking to the development lead about the upcoming sprint. Or say, you’ve got 10 stories in mind and you’re trying to figure out which ones are most important, or which ones are have dependencies. What are you going to do? Whiteboard! Easy.
It’s almost the same as the physical story cards and the physical Kanban board. Yes, you can do it all electronically. But it’s just not the same. Why not? Because you can’t get the feeling for the big picture.
Here’s a story. I was visiting a town in Germany last weekend that I’ve visited a few times before. I’ve always used Google Maps to get around. But this time I went and got a paper map from the tourist information office so I could figure out the tram routes to get from one place to another. All of sudden, it all made a lot of sense to me. I had a sense of the whole shape of the town, that I’d never got using Maps.
When I draw something on the whiteboard I get a sense of the whole thing, of the big picture. That’s what I want. And I’m not using some fancy CASE tool, and then having to put in Confluence, and then maintain it when things change. No, I just draw it and then I talk about it and then I rub it off. It’s only a pictorial representation of what I’ve got in the backlog. It’s valid on the day at the time I draw it. That’s it. Then I can rub it off.
But remember before you begin to make sure you have the right kind of pen. And if your pen runs out of ink, go get some more, or you’ll find yourself writing with the only pen that still has ink — and that’s normally yellow.
Peter Merrick PhD is an agile consultant and trainer who specializes in requirements, user stories, epics, vision and all things backlog related. He’s also a tango dancer, writer and performer. Peter runs public workshops in Advanced Product Ownership in Berlin. You can find out more about the course, and about Peter by visiting his Medium collection ‘Agile storytelling’. medium.com/agile-storytelling
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