Pierre here. After getting my Scrum Master Certification with Danube I was eager to move the scrum artifacts from the digital to the actual physical space. I had this fantastic plan to build a wooden mobile scrum board. One that would look nice and we could take into our different scrum meetings.

On my first attempt to realize this plan, the shop was closed. Bummer! I had forgotten that most shops were closed on Monday mornings. On my next attempt, the shop didn't carry the type of light yet nice looking wood I had envisioned for our board. After finally finding a shop with the right type of wood, it didn't offer the right size. That is when I remembered Jimi Fosdick‘s words. He was our scrum trainer and told us that we needed nothing but some painter's masking tape and Post-It notes in order to get started. He said: “It doesn't matter how it looks! What's important is that you actually do it! And there is no excuse for not doing it!”

I bought the tape in a do-it shop around the corner. Back in the office, a nice and clean white wall in the our Liip lounge seemed like the perfect spot for our scrum board. Within five minutes the whole thing was set up.

  1. The team met on the sofa.
  2. We planned a sprint.
  3. We started working.
  4. It was that easy!

When we were fourth day, our sprint burn down chart actually went down for the first time. On the same day, we had our office-wide team meeting in the lounge and unfortunately the projector was making usage of the exact same wall we chose for our board and charts.

So we tore the whole board down and started looking for a better spot to let the scrum artifacts live. That's when someone noticed a tiny **blackboard** . It was located just besides a door and didn't offer any space to sit around it. I guess this is why to that day, no one had ever used it. But it was perfect for our **daily standup meetings** . Using different **colors of chalk** , we drew our **Scrum Board ** on the blackboard and set up the sprint burn down chart using the tape.

This is how a roll of tape and some Post-It notes changed our everyday lives at work. We have been using this board over the last three months. To this day, no one has expressed any regrets about going physical with the scrum artifacts. On the contrary, we feel even more in control of our sprints. And sure, for when things are distributed and need to be online we still do use the amazing Greenhopper.

So what are your experiences with physical vs. virtual scrum boards?