Dangerous Information Radiators

I learned a few days ago that a simple information radiator such as a task board can be extremely threatening. Our PM/Scrum Master on a project announced a recent unilateral decision to switch meeting rooms simply to escape the dangerous distractions of a task board. Apparently the team found the task board a more useful way to keeping tabs on progress, but the PM preferred a spreadsheet and didn’t want to allow for any other options on visualizing progress.

The bigger picture is that we’re still fighting a lot of problems with understanding that Scrum is built around the idea of self-organizing teams not command and control PMs. If the team decides on an approach that’s working for them it isn’t up to the Scrum Master to overrule them and then attempt to enforce it via dictating.

Who knew a yellow sticky note was dangerous.