Scrum Board : Physical or Virtual?

Scrum Board is a tool that helps Teams make Sprint Backlog items visible.

Scrum board made up of horizontal and vertical swimlanes that track the progress of stories and tasks committed to during a Sprint. Usually, the board is divided into several progressive column, such as “To-Do, On-Progress, Testing, Done”. Team members participate by moving their work items along the board from “To-Do” to “Done” when they’ve completed the story or task.

Scrum Board can be Physical or Virtual, I’ve been using both in my past & current experiences. In this article, I would like to share my point-of-view of the pros & the cons for each Scrum Boards.

Physical Board

Physical Board from my previous Projects

Pros + +

• Visibility! Nothing beats the visibility of Physical Board. Build a giant-size Scrum Board close to the Scrum Team. Physical Scrum Board are visible all the time. Everyone can see the Board, not only Scrum Team but also Stakeholders, Business Team, CEO, CMO, everyone!
• Transparency! Being visible all the time, everyone will know what is the current status of the Sprint by just looking at the Board and no need to bother Development Team by asking the progress. Everyone can also know the impediments & blocker that happen (in this case, I prefer to add “Impediments” Column in the Board, so it can be visible as well)
• Do the Daily Scrum in front of the Board. It can be very effective
• Best for the team that new to Scrum and want to start implementing Scrum Framework in their Development Process

Cons — —

• You need to have a big wall to be used as a Scrum Board. Or some space if you use Whiteboard for the Scrum Board
• If you have so many stories in Sprint Backlog (+ adding some sub-tasks), you will need a huge space and sticky notes as well
• Story Points can be used but usually you will need additional effort to calculate the Burndown Chart & Velocity.
• You can not track historical movement of the Story / Task
• Sticky notes are tend to fall or even worse, went missing!
• Not Paperless 😆. You will use a lot of sticky notes & at the end of Sprint for the Stories that was Done, most likely you will throw it away to Trash (One of my friend are giving me a hard complaint on this & suddenly he give me link of Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth🤦‍)

Virtual Board

JIRA Board Example

Pivotal Board Example

Trello Board Example

There are many tools nowadays that provide Virtual Scrum Board : JIRA, Pivotal Tracker, Trello, etc. Each tools has its own characteristic, simplicity & also limitation. I will not discuss the pros & cons for each tools, it will be for the Virtual Board itself.

Pros + +

• No space needed, since it’s “Virtual”. So if you have many stories & sub-tasks, it won’t be an issue
• Historical changes & movement are logged & can be tracked
• Integrated with other tools (ex: github, confluence, etc)
• Story Points on each stage are calculated automatically by system
• Auto-generated Reports (Burndown Chart, Velocity Chart, etc)
• Real-time notification through email
• Suitable for team that already acquinted with Scrum Framework
• Paperless! We make the world a better place 😊

Cons — —

• Less Visibility. Scrum team need to open the Board in his PC or laptop (unless you have dedicated TV monitor to shown the Board all the time)
• Less Transparency. Not all people have access to the tools, so they need to ask the Development Team for the progress of the Sprint. Actually, we can give stakeholders access to the tools, but we also need to consider the quota of the license itself
• Need to pay license for the tools (some of them are free)
• Minimizing human interaction in Scrum Team. IMHO, the best way to coordinate is with direct human interaction rather than using messaging tools, email, etc.

Conclusions

Which Board was the better one? Is it Physical or Virtual?

The answer is depends on team agreement. Both Boards are actually a powerful tools that will help team make Sprint Backlog items visible.

But if you ask me, my answer will be like this :

1. Use Physical Board at first. The goal is so the team are learning & understand about Agile & Scrum Framework
2. Once they already acquinted with Agile & Scrum Framework, we can shift to Virtual Board

Well, that was my answer. What about you? Please share your thought on below comment.

Cheers!