Agile visual management – Idea walls instead of white boards

In previous companies, we used white boards, glass boards etc for Scrum board.. In People10, we got most of our office walls painted with Idea paint (writable walls). There are everywhere, next to workstations, inside meeting rooms…Was expensive compared to regular white boards, but it seems like a big hit. Not just the development team, we use it for all sorts of brainstorming and idea generation, be it Marketing, Sales, strategy, HR…. And not to mention design, architecture, process mapping… and the best scrum boards ever 🙂

agile visual management through idea walls

Advantages : 10 year guarantee, unrestricted space, good quality writing, run your imagination wild…

Disadvantages : Expensive than boards, addictive – you cannot stop writing & drawing on the wall…

Visual management – Agile scrum board on idea walls

Check it out ! I would highly recommend it for any true ‘Agile’ office.

 

Idea wall for Scrum visual management ( white board )

 

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Co-founder of People10, a 'total agile' software development and consulting company http://in.linkedin.com/in/nishashoukath

5 Comments

  1. Mark DReplyMarch 9, 2012 at 10:01 pm 

    We did this too with the “Design Room” in our new office. We use the room only for standup discussion/drawing sessions. The room is 14′ x 8′. We have one wall of each size covered in IdeaPaint floor-to-ceiling. The 8′ wall is the the one with the door; we even painted behind the door. That much height and behind the door might have been overkill but we didn’t want people accidentally writting off the top, bottom, or side of the paint, leaving hard to deal with marks on the paint.

    Cost wasn’t so terrible except that we had it professionally done. That was a good thing becuase it does take a lot of prepartion; the wall surface needs to be very smooth. Even regular wallboard texture is too rough. One or two extra primer coats would have been better but sand-prime-sand was pretty good. The IdeaPaint itself smells awful until dry. We had the painter start late in the day but still had to send people home early because of the smell. The instructions say to give the wall a full week to cure before writing on it and we did. Now it is awesome.

    New 6’x4′ (24 sq-ft) whiteboards run $80-$200 depending on quality, tray, frame, etc. IdeaPaint runs around $150 for 40 sq-ft, no counting the professional painter.

    Alternatives include vinyl wallpaper-like write-on products like Memerase.

  2. Ashok PatwardhanReplyMarch 9, 2012 at 10:31 pm 

    Idea walls….truly nice concept. Pl.tell me how it is done
    in a simple office..as a project if I have to go in for it in my office..ashok patwardhan,..ashokjp42@gmail.com…98224 03282

  3. Tim HarrellReplyMarch 11, 2012 at 10:07 pm 

    Who sells IdeaPaint ?

    • Ramesh NoriReplyMarch 12, 2012 at 6:53 pm 

      Just visit Homedepot or Lowes and ask for Idea paint.

      We did the same and it is worth it over the long run.

      Also get a good digital camera simultaneouly so that you can take pictures of what was discussed and catalog it in a software like Evernote (WWW.EVERNOTE.COM)

      I must say this is a perfect AGILE collaboration tool.

      • Tricia SuttonReplyMarch 13, 2012 at 4:51 pm 

        The writable walls actually are great collaboration tools for any collaborative team, whether a agile team, a Lean Oobeya room, a process / value stream mapping work room, a training room, a learning space, a party space … (Right now I have rolling boards and they are also extremely popular with my nieces and nephews when they visit!)

        I absolutely ditto the comment about a GOOD digital camera. Phone cameras can be OK, but don’t give you as many choices for resolution, how and what you capture, what you focus on…

        If you have just a few people who are remote, you can also consider a good digital web cam that the remote folks can access to see what others are contributing.

        (If you have a mostly virtual team, then I recommend doing a virtual room/collaboration space with tools like Office 365, or WebEx Connect, or Mindtouch. You can also just have a perpetual web-meeting and have virtual white-boards for multiple location teams.)

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