Agile Physical board vs Online board

When it comes to agile software development, most of the software development teams will be using a Scrum board (or a variant) in order to track the work in progress.

As the name suggests, an agile physical board is a traditional board displayed in the office (meeting room, project room, etc.). It can deliver the best results for smaller and local teams. Items in the agile physical board will be updated manually. Typically, using magnets or post-its.

An online tool will be used to create an agile online board. This will be a web-based board. It is possible to define rules accordingly, so that items in the scrum board gets updated automatically. This is ideal for the larger scrum teams.

 

If the team is small and local, it is possible to use an agile physical board. That’s because the agile physical board can provide a better chance for the people to visualize things. However, this might always not be the best approach available to move forward. In such a situation, it is important to go ahead with an online board. That’s because the online board will be updated automatically. The time and effort that has to be spent on managing the online board will be minimum as well.

Local teams are staying at one place. In such a situation, it will be possible for the team members to update the agile physical board in a convenient manner as well. They will be able to get the most out of the physical board and visualize content in an effective manner. This is not possible with managing large, remote teams.

— Slimane Zouggari