Net Objectives is a partner of VersionOne and we use their product internally. In the past I have personally recommended VersionOne as a tool provider without hesitation. In my opinion, and in the opinion of our company as a whole, VersionOne was the best agile management tool available.

Now that we have that out of the way, let me say that VersionOne just upped the ante in the tool space with their new Taskboard view. In the past I've had a difficult time answering the question of why a team would want to use a tool over just having cards on the wall. Now there is a real answer!

If a team is co-located, cards on the wall work great, but it causes you to do some things manually. For example, burn-down or burn-up charts are usually done on a computer, which means someone is taking data and entering it somewhere. In addition, many teams are co-located by not all necessarily working in a large, open, team room. Instead there is a team room everyone goes to on a regular basis. So in order to switch to a new task or story, a team member ends up having to go to a new location and deal with something physical. I know this isn't ideal, but I'm talking about the reality of how things are usually arranged. In this particular case, wouldn't it be nice to have a tool that did everything cards on the wall did, but was on the computer? Heck, if you want it to be cards on the wall in the team room, get a cheap, big LCD monitor and display the taskboard view on that in the team room!

Now think about the non-ideal case. Multiple teams, multiple projects, not co-located, across timezones, etc. In those cases, imagine having cards on the wall, in real time, globally available, on each desktop. Wouldn't that be awesome! Well, that's what VersionOne has done. In my opinion, this changes everything in the agile tool space! For teams that learn how to do an agile process with cards on the wall (the generic case everyone teaches because they don't know what tool will eventually be used), this allows for an easy transition. If they just use the taskboard view, then they have lost nothing, but gained the ability to have it wherever they want it, whenever they want it (anyone telecommute???). On the other hand, if they start using other features, they have lost nothing and gained whatever they decide to utilize. Teams can grow into the advanced features over times, without having to decipher how to use them all up front.

I can't even count how many times I've heard the phrase "I don't believe in tools because cards on the wall work so well." My response now is, you're right, but I'll take electronic cards on the wall because I don't have to worry about:

• cards being lost
• sticky notes falling off cards
• cards being destroyed
• not being able to read someone's handwriting
• keeping up with the team when I'm out of town
• having to ask someone to read me a card when I telecommute and need something new to work on

I see this as truly groundbreaking. I have a number of suggestions for VersionOne to implement, and I'm sure their other customers will as well. It will be interesting to see how this view is used and grows within the product.

I know people that are anti-tools for agile teams will disagree with me no matter what, but I have to ask why? If cards on the wall are good, why would the ability to do that electronically (use a large LCD display instead of actual cards) be worse? Besides that, aren't cards on the wall actually tools of some sort?