DEVOPSdigest

Nureva added new agile canvas templates to Span Workspace, including a heat map developed by Jeff Sutherland, the co-creator of Scrum and founder of Scrum Inc. and Scrum@Scale.

These ready-to-use canvases will save scrum masters and agile coaches prep time when working on common, recurring agile activities, such as user story mapping, backlog refinement, sprint planning, retrospectives and more. They’ll have access to helpful tools to manage day-to-day work, such as a scrum board and a Kanban board. There’s also a Span Workspace introduction canvas to help new users get started, including instructions on how to set Jira Software integration.

Span Workspace helps agile teams keep their activities focused and collaborative by allowing everyone to visualize and contribute to a Span canvas in real time using digital sticky notes, sketches, built-in templates and images from their personal devices and shared displays. The new templates provide a canvas for every ceremony and accelerate recurring activities. Scrum masters can quickly create user personas, organize the product backlog, take advantage of a color-coded scrum board and Kanban board to quickly visualize the team’s progress and help everyone achieve flow.

Using the Scrum@Scale heat map, team members can share how well they think their organization is doing in categories such as prioritization, strategic vision and more. Because Span Workspace is a cloud-based platform designed for real-time teamwork, it also allows distributed agile teams to work together in a shared digital space. Distributed participants can quickly contribute to every sprint planning session, stand-up meeting and retrospective as if they were together in the same room, without compromising teamwork or the agile process. This greatly accelerates the process and overcomes many of the challenges associated with distributed agile teams.

“Span Workspace’s user base is growing rapidly, and these agile canvas templates will help new and seasoned users streamline recurring agile activities and get products to market faster,” said Nancy Knowlton, Nureva’s CEO. “We are also thrilled to offer practitioners Scrum@Scale’s heat map, which will help them quickly assess the health of their agile organization in preparation for scaling Scrum.”

The new canvas templates and tools can be used in the following ways:

- User story mapping: Users can access tools and templates to create user personas, develop better user stories and add those stories to a product backlog.

- Backlog refinement: Users can organize their product backlog with help from the agile prioritization matrix and other visualization tools.

- Sprint planning: Users can access the QuickShare feature to quickly estimate user stories and then add them to a sprint planning chart that will map your stories from discovery to done.

- Scrum board: Users can take advantage of a color-coded scrum board to quickly visualize their team’s progress through a sprint.

- Kanban board: Users can set WIP limits on a color-coded Kanban board that will help everyone on their team achieve flow.

- Retrospective: Users can quickly and anonymously gather input from their team about what went well, improvements needed and action items.

- Scrum@Scale heat map: Users can quickly assess the health of their agile organization, in preparation for scaling Scrum. Using notes and groups in Span Workspace, team members share how well they think their organization is doing in categories such as prioritization, strategic vision and more.

- Span Workspace introduction canvas: This canvas walks new users through what they need to know to get started, including how to share canvases, create custom templates and set up Jira Software integration.