Meetings and Question to Group

[Tina]

All,

We won't have a February meeting but I will work on getting us back on
track (maybe even with a few changes) in March.

In the mean time, I would like some feedback on the following
question.....

Why should a team have a project board when they are using a tool such
as Jira or Rally?

Thanks,
Tina

[Ryan Hoegg]

A task board and a computerized issue tracking system are only ways to communicate about the work your team is doing.  One or the other are not your only options.

Task boards are visceral, immediate, and public.  They give team members a physical place to interact with the work the team is doing.  Whether you are using iterations or kanban, any team member can simply walk up to the board to find the next thing they should work on.  Team members will observe one another moving tasks from left to right, which provides positive reinforcement and team cohesion.  Observers can easily gain a rough idea of the teams progress by looking at the board from time to time.  They can also find out in more detail what the team is working on by simply reading the cards in the "Doing" column.

Issue tracking systems are permanent, distributed, and on-demand.  Team members and observers can interact with the work stream at any time from any place.  A record is kept of every item of work and user action.  Anyone can configure the system to notify them about any kind of event, or not to notify them at all.  Interested people can search history to see all the information about an item of work that was completed recently or long ago.

I'll stop here; I'm curious what others might add.

--
Ryan Hoegg

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[sch...@cox.net]

Tina,

In my project, we used both Rally and a project board. Rally kept track of the overall status of the project, and was accessible to our geographically distributed clients. The project board kept track of the user stories and tasks of the current iteration, and Rally was updated from it. Although this was a little bit of overhead, we had a large enough team to justify it. I liked the fact that the local project board helped the team focus on immediate goals, while the larger picture was maintained in a different context that was more understandable by the clients. Also, there a good sense of tactile feedback from moving your tasks and stories through the lanes, something that still seems lacking in online storyboarding applications.

HTH,
Scott