Scrum Board Setup Tips and Tricks

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
WhatsApp

I’d like to share with you some tips and tricks for setting up a scrum board I usually share with my clients. The bottom line is that too many tools have too many features that support old ways of thinking. Let’s look at the various items one by one.

Subtasks

Like the human tailbone, subtasks were once useful but are now mainly a source of pain. When we worked in Waterfall we measured progress with completed subtasks, but in agile when stories are short, subtasks are a burden.

A burden for developers who need to mess with subtasks using the ALM tool.

This a burden for managers who measure progress using a burndown chart that usually relies on subtasks estimation. That’s a burden because burndown charts may time tell an incorrect story (all work done but nothing is working) – progress should be measured by “done” stories, usually a burnup chart.

Using subtasks should be a choice given to developers. If you find it useful then use it. I prefer just discussing the work to be done with the other people working with me on a story. If needed we can write it down on a whiteboard, but usually, there is no need to write it down as the story is so short. We just do the job.

Showing subtasks on a scrum board takes the focus from stories getting done to subtasks. It makes the scrum board too clattered and worse of all it lets people focus on their specific job and not on the story getting done. Bad subtasks! Bad!

Swimlanes 

Another evil thing is swimlanes. Second only to subtasks.

People usually need swimlanes because there is too much information on the board. That’s indeed a problem. Many times it will be … subtasks! If it isn’t subtasks it may be either the stories are too small or the team is too big. Or maybe something else.

The idea is we need to see why are there too many items on the board and handle that problem.

The big problem with swimlanes is that it distracts you. When you have swimlanes it is difficult to see what is now in progress. This is because usually there will be items in the “to do” column which will make the swimlane too wide to see all the items in one column.

Your focus is on the things that are now in progress and that’s what you need to see.

Many times there is a swim lane per team member. This will hint that we are trying to make sure people are utilized. Like the manifesto would say, it is important to make sure people are utilized but it is more important to get stories done.

Sometimes team members ask for a swimlane per developer. This tells us that people really care only about what they need to do and not about the team. This brings us to the next item:

Story Assignee

Almost all tools allow one person to be assigned to a story. (Leankit allows many). If you want to assign more people you can use subtasks. However, we already discussed subtasks and the conclusion was quite clear.

We will usually need to assign more than one person. In many places, at least one developer and one QA will be assigned. More than that, we will be happy if people can swarm on stories – having several people working on one story is fun and contributes to teamwork and thus very effective.

So, what do we do?

Many tools allow the addition of custom fields. For instance, Jira. I usually recommend clients working with Jira add a custom field called “assigned team members”. The field type should be multi-select. You will need to manually add the list of all team members. Once you do that you ask the tool to present the information on the card on the board and suddenly – voila! You have a strong scrum board where you see the people involved in every story. That’s great.

Last but not least – Columns

Most tools start with the standard “To Do – Doing – Done” columns + a backlog. (read here about the critical difference between backlog and to-do). That’s great! Why touch it? Please don’t.

Many teams will add a “Test” column. And a “pull request” column. And there are more.

The problem with these additional columns is that they are good excuses for things getting stuck. If there is a “dev” column and a “Test” column it means it is really all right to finish dev (I’m done!) and QA can be done later. Reminds you of subtasks? correct, it is similar.

If the sprint is only two weeks long and stories are short, there should be no reason for these additional columns. Just get done with the story – and please no stories! Remember we already have the names of all involved people on the card – just get it done with.

Conclusion

A scrum board should be very simple. There is a list of stories to do. Some are in progress, some are already done. We know who is working on what. That’s it. Don’t let fancy features distract you.

You may be interested in one of our Agile Up! workshops where we help you use popular Agile ALM tools such as Jira and TFS more effectively.

Subscribe for Email Updates:

Categories:

Tags:

Hybrid Work
An Appreciative Retrospective
ARTs
Elastic Leadership
Agile Development
EOS®
Team Flow
Jira Cloud
Webinar
Systems Thinking
Principles of Lean-Agile Leadership
Agile Techniques
Scrum Guide
chatgpt
Agile for Embedded Systems
BDD
Process Improvement
Risk-aware Product Development
Lean Agile Organization
Scrum Master
Lean-Agile Budgeting
Agile Outsourcing
Lean and Agile Techniques
Agile Contracts Best Practices
Perfection Game
Planning
Lean Agile
Scrum
Kanban 101
Release Train Engineer
Manage Budget Creation
ART Success
Program Increment
GanttBan
speed at scale
SAFe DevOps
Agile Risk Management
Lean Startup
Sprint Retrospectives
Games and Exercises
Iterative Incremental Development
System Integration Environments
Certified SAFe
Large Scale Scrum
RTE
Agile Product Development
IT Operations
Jira Plans
Change Management
Limiting Work in Progress
Continuous Deployment
Introduction to Test Driven Development
LAB
Agile Marketing
Managing Risk on Agile Projects
Scrum Primer
PI Objectives
Agile Program
Acceptance Test-Driven Development
Nexus and Kanban
Nexus
Agile Assembly Architecture
Professional Scrum with Kanban
Risk Management on Agile Projects
Pomodoro Technique
Scrum Values
Continuous Integration
Enterprise DevOps
Implementing SAFe
transformation
Agile Release Management
A Kanban System for Software Engineering
Lean Agile Basics
Introduction to ATDD
Sprint Planning
lean agile change management
Continuous Planning
Agile Basics
Nexus Integration Team
Spotify
Agile Israel Events
Releases Using Lean
Atlaassian
RSA
AI
The Agile Coach
ATDD
Kaizen Workshop
Risk Management in Kanban
Software Development Estimation
Achieve Business Agility
Professional Scrum Master
Kaizen
ScrumMaster Tales
Agile Mindset
Artificial Intelligence
Nexus vs SAFe
Nexus and SAFe
TDD
Kanban Game
Lean Agile Leadership
Agile Release Planning
Tips
Kanban Basics
System Archetypes
Legacy Code
Value Streams
Legacy Enterprise
Agile
Sprint Iteration
Agile Games
Presentation
Jira admin
Agile Community
NIT
RTE Role
Slides
Implementation of Lean and Agile
Engineering Practices
Frameworks
Scrum Master Role
System Team
Rovo
Atlassian
Kanban
Certification
SAFe Release Planning
Effective Agile Retrospectives
Jira
The Kanban Method
Tools
Retrospectives
Agile Delivery
Lean Software Development
Agile Testing Practices
Product Management
ROI
Agile in the Enterprise
Portfolio for Jira
Code
AgileSparks
Daily Scrum
Lean Agile Management
AI Artificial Intelligence
Scaled Agile Framework
Scrum.org
Lean-Agile Software Development
Story Slicing
ATDD vs. BDD
ALM Tools
Operational Value Stream
Confluence
WIP
predictability
POPM
Test Driven Development
Agility
User stories
Software Development
Lean Risk Management
Coaching Agile Teams
QA
Scrum and XP
Covid19
What Is Kanban
SAFe
Agile Project
Continuous Improvement
Agile and DevOps Journey
LPM
Agile Project Management
Professional Scrum Product Owner
Accelerate Value Delivery At Scale
Lean and Agile Principles and Practices
Agile Israel
Entrepreneurial Operating System®
Managing Projects
PI Planning
Keith Sawyer
Video
Lean Budgeting
Quality Assurance
Development Value Streams
agileisrael
Agile India
Reading List
Continuous Delivery
Product Ownership
SA
Applying Agile Methodology
speed @ scale
Advanced Roadmaps
Rapid RTC
Amdocs
SPC
Built-In Quality
LeSS
Agile Games and Exercises
DevOps
Agile Product Ownership
Business Agility
Kanban Kickstart Example
Agile Exercises
Self-organization
AgileSparks
Logo
Enable registration in settings - general

Contact Us

Request for additional information and prices

AgileSparks Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter, and stay updated on the latest Agile news and events

This website uses Cookies to provide a better experience
Shopping cart