Understanding the Digital Cardwall for Agile Software Development

In Agile software development, key artefacts used to support the process are the User Story (usually recorded on a Storycard) and Story Cardwall (usually a dedicated portion of a wall). These low-fidelity tools work together to help teams stay focused and self-manage their projects. The need to support distributed teams and team members makes the physical Cardwall impractical and teams are therefore migrating towards digital story management tools. We wanted to learn how to design a digital Cardwall that leverages the benefits of the physical Cardwall, while adding more value with features only possible in a software system. We conducted field studies of Agile teams and performed qualitative data analysis to understand the needs for digital Cardwalls. We then used these findings to identify guidelines for future design.