Showing daily progress

Showing daily progress is a key concept in Agile. To keep the whole team on track and to keep everyone on track there are charts and task boards. I’m going to talk about creating the task board, reading the task board, updating the task board and sizing the task board.

Creating the task board, to start creating I think the best way is to first know what a task board is. “Often managers will use the task board as a signal of progress”, that being said this a board that shows the progress of the project to the team. Now, how does someone create the task board? “It’s usually displayed on a large white board with marker columns. Sometimes it will be simple tape on a white wall”(Rose) Typically, a team will make use of whatever they have around them to make their board with their tasks.

Reading the task board, “A quick glance at the board should tell you everything that you need. It should be simple and clear”(Rose) Reading the task board isn’t just for the task but also can be read into, to find out the morale of your team. If you’re the scrum master than you should visit the board frequently to see if it’s well populated or not. If it is then it shows your team is committed and passionate, if not then you need to find out if the team is working well together.

Updating the task board, the first thing to know is that the developers should be the only one updating the task board. If the project manager start to move things around it can mess up the flow going on now. Normally, the task board will be updated during the stand ups and each task should be the work for one developer.

Sizing the task board, “in Agile, it's very important to size the work in each sprint. It's a key part of how the team plans out the project.”(Rose). Basically, this board is a representation of how many tasks are left, it’s also there to keep the developers on task. If the task isn’t on the board, the developer should not be doing it.

This is just a picture of a task board from Google images!