Using Trello to Support Agile and Lean Learning with Scrum and Kanban in Teacher Professional Development

David Parsons, Rochelle Thorn, Milla Inkilä, Kathryn MacCallum

2018 · 32 citations · 17 references

DOIFull text

Open access

Concepts

TL;DR

Agile and lean concepts from industry are increasingly being brought into education, with Scrum commonly used to manage student learning and Kanban to manage learning flow, requiring a tool that supports both approaches, collaboration, ubiquity, and ease of use. The authors aim to report on using Trello to support Scrum and Kanban processes in the professional development of in‑service school teachers. They implemented Trello as a platform to run Scrum sprints and maintain Kanban boards for teacher teams. The experience report shows that Trello’s features can support collaborative agile teams and provides examples of its use in this context.

Abstract

Agile and lean concepts from industry are increasingly being brought into education. The most common way in which agile methods are used in the classroom is to manage student learning using an adaptation of processes such as Scrum, while the most popular adoption of lean thinking is to manage the pull and flow of learning via a Kanban board. Supporting such approaches with suitable technologies means finding a tool that can support both ways of thinking while also supporting collaboration, ubiquity and ease of use. We provide an experience report on how we have used Trello to support a Scrum process and a Kanban board for the professional development of in-service school teachers. We reflect on the suitability of Trello for this task, explain how some its features can be used to support collaborative agile teams and provide some examples of how it has been used in this context.

References

17