Interactive Kanban — Blending Digital and Physical Resources for Collaborative Project Based Learning

Abstract

Using team projects for teaching agile product development processes requires regular task status reports, following evaluation and further planning. In such scenarios, task boards (like Kanban) provide the most efficient means of centralized team tracking with frequent task status updates. Regular task boards are physical equipment (i.e. whiteboards) having the working area divided in task status zones (i.e. to do, done, in progress), while tasks are noted down on cardboards and then pined to the board. The current paper proposes an improvement in the process of teaching and tracking product development processes classes by implementing a computer-aided task board with real time tracking features. Tickets are defined and created online, then printed and pinned to the physical task board and tracked by a camera. Processing is applied to detect any changes in board status, with real-time update online. The advantages of the proposed blended solution are discussed.