Many Agile teams use a card wall to drive their development processes, but a physical, tangible card wall simply doesn’t work with distributed teams.

Assembla’s cardwall view automates the “white board and sticky note” version of a Kanban or Scrum board and offers many advantages over a physical wall or board.  If you are using Assembla’s ticket tool, you can find this view under the ticket tab.

This card wall can organize the work of team members in many locations instead of just one. Everyone on the project, wherever they are, can immediately see who is working on what, what stage of development each task is in, and what which of their own tasks need immediate attention.

Set the default cardwall milestone by selecting the desired milestone filter drop down and simply click the check button next to the dropdown. Now when team members land on the cardwall, they will land on the current milestone representing current work in progress. 

Each column is automatically sorted by the priority of the ticket and cards are color-coded based on their priority – Very High, High, Normal, Low, and Very Low.

You can drag a card up or down to change its priority and order of the cards in a column. This helps you create a prioritized task list and run an XP or Kanban process where you sort the tickets in the “New” column and then pull the top ticket into a working status.

You can drag a card from one column to the next. The ticket will drop into a position that is automatically calculated from its date and priority.  Right-click on a card to edit other details, or click on the card to see the expanded ticket view.

You will want to create columns that match your workflows. The default workflow in Assembla is New > Accepted > Test > Fixed (done) but you can easily create additional workflow steps (e.g. Approve, Integrate, Review, etc.) in the settings sub tab. All open/working workflow classifications columns show in the unexpanded view, but click on the right side bar to expose closed classifications such as Fixed or Invalid. It’s that easy!

If your team uses or wants to use a card wall, why go digital?

• You have a distributed team
• With a digital card wall, instead of fumbling through emails and folders you can simply click on a card and expose the complete history of a task, including comments, files, commits, time expenditures, and much more.
• An activity stream and email notifications inform team members of project activity.
• You can effortlessly view user reports and ticket metrics with the click on a button.
• By going paperless, you can sleep better at night knowing that you’re saving a tree.

Configuration Hints:

• Set the milestone that you are working on as the default view for Cardwall tickets.  Pull down the filter selector at the top of the cardwall and select your milestone.  Now, click on the check icon to the right to save it as a default.
• Set the Cardwall view as the default by changing the settings under the "Ticket View" section in the Ticket/settings subtab. Now when team members click on the ticket tab, they land on the Cardwall view by default. 
• Customize workflows (columns) to suit the needs of your project by creating new classifications under the Edit Workflow section.

Are you starting a new project and want a space configuration that defaults to the card wall and has all the collaboration tools already installed? Click here to create a workspace that has been preconfigured.