At Aconex India, we use both physical agile boards along with jira, trello and few other boards. Our physical boards are economically creative as shown below. We keep them simple enough to recreate it or modify it.

Theme is public transport

Theme is ocean zones

Standups referring the physical boards

One of the problems that we had using the physical boards was that we could not track the age of the card in a lane and we had no idea on how many times it moved back and forth the flow. This was sometimes required to understand the timeline of a story card. So, we wanted a way to get that data. The solution should also be easy enough to use in the standups, otherwise the team will stop using it.

Postcards

That is when we remembered a post card. A post card has a

from address

to address

stamps with date and location

This is simple and gives us a good idea on the timeline of the post card journey. So, we introduced stamps for our agile boards.

This is giving us a good idea on how many times the card was tested, how long the card was on hold, etc.

Reward for using the stamps

To encourage the team for using the system, we added a small reward system. There are two bowls near the physical boards.

If the team fills the smaller bowl with finished cards, they can trade the bowl full of cards for a budget to go for team lunch. After the team lunch, the cards in the small bowl will be emptied into the large bowl. Once the large bowl is filled, the team can trade it for a team outing for a couple of days.

Copy of my article www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-postcards-improvised-our-agile-story-cards-balashanmugam