About boards
Boards support transparency, a key element of agile teamwork. Unlike the backlog, which stores work to be done in the future, boards are the primary workspaces for work in progress.
Boards usually correspond to the workflow the team follows. The board consists of several columns, where each column represents a step or a status within the workflow. In Scrum Mate, a board needs to be at least three columns representing the To-do, Doing and Done essential steps of a workflow.
There can be more than one board on a project
While there is only one backlog on a Scrum Mate project, there can be many boards on it. Each board can represent a specific workflow or can be assigned to a different team. A startup company, for example, can have three different boards:
- Development: for work related to software development and operations.
- Content marketing: for work related to marketing, blogging, publishing.
- UX/research: for work related to UX research and design.
Boards in Scrum and Kanban
The two most popular agile frameworks are Scrum and Kanban. Both frameworks have a strong relationship with boards. The way these methods use boards is, however, different.
| Scrum way | Kanban way |
| A Scrum team fills up its board at the beginning of each sprint and aims to complete all work within the timeframe of the sprint. | A Kanban team tries to limit the number of work-in-progress on the board. Kanban teams don't fill up their board upfront. |
| A Scrum team tries to “lock down” its board after they started their sprint, and resists to add new work to the board during the sprint. | A Kanban team pulls new work continuously, as their resources are ready to process it. |
| A Scrum team delivers working product at the end of each sprint. | A Kanban team delivers working product increments immediately when they are ready to be released. |
While those approaches have significant differences, teams can beautifully combine them to achieve their highest performance. Scrum Mate uniquely helps agile teams to choose their preferred method without any administrative overhead.
Teams can use the same team board either they employ Scrum or Kanban. If they want to work in Scrum Sprints, they can simply start a sprint on the team board.