Some of the teams I work with choose to have electronic kanban boards. Why? see for example 5 Reasons Why Electronic Boards Are Better Than Physical Boards a good new blog post from the guys over at Silver Stripe Blog.
My main recommendation to those teams is to insist on having a big visible board, preferably in a public non-meeting-room space. This is useful both to ensure the daily sync meetings are casual rather than formal, as well as to have a constant big visible control in your face, showing both your boards as well as other dashboards (e.g. Continuous Integration status, Defects Metrics, Production Analytics, etc.)
In LSSC11 the LeankitKanban guys came with big touchscreen LCDs, which seem a great direction to go with.
The question I then get asked, especially in Israel, is how do I find such a thing…
Following the reuse guidelines we preach when talking about good engineering practices, now that I’ve been asked 3 times, I’m collecting the relevant links in a post I can refer people to in the future, as well as to serve the general public looking for such information.
Note: I still haven’t seen such screens in action beyond the short demo mentioned above, so consider this information “AS IS”, not a review/endorsement. Also note I have no connection whatsoever to the vendors or sellers listed below. I just found some links on google. Hopefully a couple of organizations I’m working with will get such a board soon and I’ll be able to do an actual experience report.
See also pdastore in israel which has a variety of touchscreen LCDs
If you’re in the US and are looking for a real treat, seems like Horizon Technology are a good custom installer to check out. They provided LeankitKanban with the 82″ custom screen shown above. If you want to be the team with the biggest LCD touchscreen in town, that’s the way to go I guess…
Hope this helps. And if you’re in Israel and are setting up a cool electronic board/dashboard, let me know! I’ll be happy to drop by and check it out!
If you have good experience with other types of touchscreen LCDs, or a good review resource for those, please comment and let others know.
Thanks for the reccomendation of the Horizon Interactive products, but just so we are clear, it is Horizon Display, not Horizon Technology. I am certain if you (or your readers) go to the Horizon Display website, they will find a much more aesthetic experience and interactive dialogue.
Great article Yuval. Next time i am in Tel Aviv i’ll look you up. I travel to Israel once or twice a year.
I am equally intrigued by how interactive hardware and software deliver efficiency and productivity in project planning/executing.
Thanks for the correction Steve. Let me know when you’re around!
Hate to see the cost of an 82″ touch screen LCD ! Looks amazing but probably impractically expensive for most :(