Infact the board is perhaps the last (and most visible) part of a system that requires a bit of thought to construct and even more to keep adapted.

And I would wager if you had a team that

a) intereacted really well;
b) tuned to team-optimise
c) with a high cross functionality

you could without a visible board and it would be a better Kanban system than most!

And with all due respect Tobias – Good Scrum is not Kanban by another name. The mindset (I think) you need for Kanban is slightly but significantly different. Different enough that a good Scrum team may struggle to work well within Kanban even.

Maybe you are like Neo from the Matrix, Tobias, and you see Scrum in everything and in a few years time we will all realise is just Scrum done well – such is the fate of visionary

Mike

You are correct. I am trivialising the taskboard as a way of articulating how Kanban Systems should not be trivialised. I don’t mention Scrum at all – Good Scrum and Good Kanban will be remarkably similar (although not identical), and both provide valuable paths to success.

Karl

All good ScrumMasters (and Scrum team members) insist on “story swarming”, to the point where good teams I’ve worked with do not even task out a story until they are all ready to work on it. WIP is limited to one task per person or pair at any given time.

Further, the Scrum taskboard is not a fixed or limited thing. Teams use it to display all kinds of information, as relevant to their work and the goals of the organization. There is nothing to stop teams displaying backlog items-in-waiting or completed stories ready for release. The only restrictions in Scrum are the imaginations of the participants. Saying “Scrum doesn’t do XXX” is just a cop-out. Scrum doesn’t do anything. People do things.

I guess you can call what you do “Kanban”. I just consider it part of Scrum. Seems simpler to me.

But having said all that, I have to add that I think Karl Scotland is awesome, and if you ever get the chance to do his rhythm workshop — go for it!

I’ve commented on this post here [http://www.agiledesign.co.uk/scrum/task-boards-and-kanban-boards/].

I wonder if you are trivialising the use of task boards by many practitioners, the principles of limiting WIP (less explicitly) and exposing a wider view of the value stream is not uncommon in Scrum teams.

Regards

Dave.