The Scrum Alliance

The Scrum Alliance is a non-profit organization committed to delivering facilities, stories, courses, and other materials that will help Scrum users be successful. Founded by Ken Schwaber, Mike Cohn, and Esther Derby, the Scrum Alliance's mission is to promote increased awareness and understanding of Scrum, provide resources to individuals and organizations using Scrum, and support the iterative improvement of the software development profession.

View the Sprint Task Board animated simulation

The Sprint Task Board The Sprint Task Board is a common tool used by Scrum teams all over the world.

The Basics: A Sprint Task Board is a white board or a cork board (or just a wall for that matter) where the Stories and Tasks of a Sprint are represented by cards (3" x 5" inches or whatever works).

In practice, there are a number of ways this can be done - but typically there are 4 or more columns representing different states the work can be in.

I use 4 columns at this time:
- Stories
- Tasks
- In Progress
- Done.

You might find other columns useful.

Stories are placed in the far left column, and the corresponding tasks are placed in the "Tasks" column. When a team member is ready to work on a task, they move it from the "Tasks" column to the "In Progress" column, and initialize it to indicate they have taken on that task. A task in the "In Progress" column are actively being worked on. Once a task is completed, it is moved to the Done column, and once all tasks for a story are completed, it is moved to the done column.

Task board as a collaboration tool: The task board is a powerful mechanism for collaboration during a Sprint. It acts as a focal point for discussion about the work that is taken on and gives a real-time "living" measure of the health of the Sprint. It is also very useful during the planning sessions before the Sprint, and the retrospectives at the end of the Sprint.

Task board as progress meter: In actual use as the days go by the task board clearly displays when things are on track, and it is a good feeling to see the task cards moving to "in progress" and "done" in real time. At the end of the first week, about half of the task cards and at least some of the story cards will have moved to the "Done" column and a number of the task cards will be in the "In Progress" column.

The Fail-Early benefit: And just as importantly, if things are not moving, the task-board provides a very graphic indication that something is wrong, and this gives focus on that specific item that everyone will notice. This "fail early" or "early warning" feature is an important aspect of Agility. The taskboard works best for this when you can break each story into small tasks. When tasks take more than a day to accomplish, the cards become sluggish - they don't move, and it isn't clear that anything is getting done, or failing to get done. We can't always break all tasks down to such a small size, but it is something to strive for.

Team member involvement: As tasks are accomplished they are moved to the "Done" column immediately by the team member(s) who accomplished the task. We don't wait for the next stand-up meeting. We don't have the Scrum Master do it. As team members finish one task, they move it to done. After that they will review the board to see who is working on what - and where they think they can be most useful. Perhaps they will take on a new task, perhaps they will go help someone on an task already in progress where they can make things happen quicker.

The stand-up: During the stand-up meeting the task board is a focal point for verbal communication. The stand-up is a time of alignment for the team, and it is much easier and natural to relate what is being worked on, what has been done, and what is left to do by using a task board than it is using a projector or printed sheets. With a task board the team members can point to things, move cards to organize and group them to communicate relationships or dependencies, and write on the cards to capture details or ideas. The communication happens very quickly and naturally this way.

View the Sprint Task Board animated simulation
The key value of the animation: The animation condenses a two week iteration (or any length you are using) into a minute or less. This graphically demonstrates how a task board can communicate the health of the Sprint over time as the task and story cards move across the board. This "progress meter" feature is hard to get a feel for just by looking at a photo or drawing of a task board.

Ken Schwaber
Jeff Sutherland
Mike Cohn
Esther Derby