From the course: Agile Software Development: Remote Teams

Where's the whiteboard?

From the course: Agile Software Development: Remote Teams

Start my 1-month free trial

Where's the whiteboard?

“

- For many people, there's one last element of co-location that they're hesitant to give up. Whiteboards. And by association, sticky notes. It's with good reason. Visual collaboration is critical for many projects. I know for me, there's just something about the tactile feel, even the smell, of all of the office supplies strewn out on the table that just makes me feel more focused and productive. How can you replicate that on distributed teams? Let's think about what we use whiteboards for. Whiteboards are excellent tools for documenting conversations as they happen in real time. That might be a session where folks generate lots of ideas, or negotiating what to work on next, or figuring out a business process, or any number of things. So the key to being able to find a tool that replicates on-premise functionality as much as possible will need to have the following elements. Uninterrupted flow. The tool you choose should be able to keep up with your conversation. If you need to pause your dialogue because your tool isn't easy to use, that won't give you the feel of in-flow facilitation that a whiteboard provides. Simple to change and restructure. One of the biggest benefits of the whiteboard is how easy it is to erase. Your digital tool should be easy to make sweeping structural changes to. Tools that are locked into a specific format or don't allow for much customization will likely lead to frustration. Multiple simultaneous contributors. Whiteboards make it easy for several people to add their thoughts at the same time. Just pick up a pen. Your digital collaboration tool should make it just as easy for a group to add their ideas. And finally, both visual and text. With whiteboards, it's just as easy to sketch out a picture as it is to write a list of bullets. Sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words. So it should be just as easy to add visual content as well as words.

Contents