How Digaboard was started:

This idea started at The Motley Fool as an innovation day project. The concept was to ditch the traditional whiteboard and stickies that are typically used for standups (Kanban or Scrum) and use a large format TV for visual management of the tasks at hand. So, we built a simple interface to change task status with use of a Logitech MX Air Mouse. The concept was then taken further and we continued to develop a basic version for use on the IT operations team which uses Kanban practices. The team is now using Digaboard on a daily basis as their primary and only task board. Digaboard has completely replaced the old school physical whiteboard and stickies. Our conference rooms have 50” LCD TV’s which are hooked to desktops. The scrum-master (or Kan-master) shows up 1-2min before the stand-up begins to login and pull up the board. The team then interacts with the digital task board just like any other stand-up with a physical whiteboard.

Digaboard today:

Digaboard has now moved toward opensource because of the interest others have expressed in using the tool. For the past year we have started a small team comprising of Brandon Ragan (past code monkey and now IT operations guru), Dave Haeffner (past IT operations guru and now QA extraordinaire), and Linda Cook (the master of all scrum and lean practices). Our mission has been re-coding Digaboard with new features and searching for others that are interested in using Digaboard.

Our plans for Digaboard:

The current version of Digaboard is really a set of core features for visualizing tasks. We have a heap of features in our backlog (yes we do use Digaboard to manage and plan the development of Digaboard) that will further improve on the core features and design. At some point we will post release notes for the next release, but, our plans go much further than our next release… we will be introducing Digaboard in different forms other than manual install for easier installation and use along with some other innovative ideas we have for the Lean/Agile world. To keep up-to-date with the latest you can Follow us on Twitter.