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Analysis of a paper- and software-based Scrum task board

Segers, Jan (2012) Analysis of a paper- and software-based Scrum task board.

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Abstract:The company that hosts this master thesis project is specialized in offering consultancy in terms of an agile software development method called Scrum. One aspect of a Scrum consultant is to advise the client for making Scrum related choices regarding a certain artifact that is called a task board. A task board can be based on plain paper or on a dedicated software tool. The purpose of this master thesis project was to get insight into the advantages and disadvantages of a paper-based respectively software-based solution to form a common ground for Scrum consultants that have to advice their clients in this regard. To do so, I created in this master thesis guidelines that help companies to decide in choosing the matching task board variant. This master thesis project draws on input from multiple sources. Available literature has been reviewed, company-internal and company-external experts have been consulted, and field research has been performed by visiting companies that use Scrum to investigate their task board usage. Finally, a set of Scrum software tools has been evaluated. Criteria for comparing software with paper have been identified and defined, next to identifying and defining criteria for a software versus software evaluation. The results of this master thesis project have shown that paper offers more advantages in terms of a task board than software-based solutions. However the latter become more and more important in times of increasing globalization. The evaluation of Scrum software tools backed up the findings of the paper versus software analysis, which showed that software-based approaches currently suffer from shortcomings in various areas. During the evaluation of the companies that were subject of the field research, an intermediary solution, which combined the advantages of both variants without introducing any crucial disadvantages, was found. Next to the software versus paper analysis and the evaluation of software tools, company characteristics have been determined based on the companies that were evaluated. Using the results of the software versus paper analysis, the Scrum software tools evaluation and the company characteristics, guidelines in form of a simple decision graph were created. This decision graph is an easy, yet effective tool for consultants who have to advise companies that face such a decision. The conclusions of this master thesis project are the following: • A paper-based task board outperforms its software-based pendant in terms of accessibility, motivation, haptic quality, costs, availability, overhead & communication. • A software-based task board outperforms its paper-based pendant in terms of flexibility, integration, archiving & distance. • Companies that want to explore Scrum should stick to the paper-based task board, as it is easy to set up and, moreover, cheap. • Companies that have multiple Scrum teams, which on top of that also might be geographically dispersed, are literally forced to use a Scrum tool and thus a software-based task board to cover other aspects like reporting, administration, etc. • The intermediary solution suggests using a paper-based task board that is backed up by a software-based task board. The disadvantages of this solution are increased costs and overhead, however it combines all remaining advantages of both solutions and is thus a bestof- bread solution for companies that have multiple Scrum teams as described above.
Item Type:Essay (Master)
Clients:
BOR!SGLOGER
Faculty:BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences
Subject:85 business administration, organizational science
Programme:Business Information Technology MSc (60025)
Link to this item:https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/62136
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