There are lots of apps out there designed to digitise the day to day activities of Scrum. Some are good, some are definitely not good.

One thing that I've noticed is that almost all of them try to replicate and replace the use of physical artefacts. Traditionally you'd see things like story cards pinned to a wall and a burndown chart (sometimes hand drawn) somewhere near your team. I'll use Nigel Baker's (AgileBear) term and collectively call these assets your "information radiator".

I think that replacing physical assets completely, in favour of storing them in some kind of application is a bad idea.

Here's why.

Removing this information from your physical space reduces the need to communicate verbally. This is definitely a bad thing. Relying on email or on communication through some other tool slows down problem solving. I guarantee a discussion will resolve a problem quicker than an email conversation.

A new team, or a team new to Scrum should be encouraged to communicate verbally. Given the opportunity to fall back into the old routine of emailing, waiting for a reply and then trying to decipher the response, slows down the process of decision making. So, is there a need for a digital alternative to physical artefacts?

Yes, in some cases.

At Fudge, we often work with product owners and team members in different countries and time zones. It isn't possible to have a single physical location for this information. What we do instead, is replicate the physical space in a digital format. We keep these two synchronised and distribute a revised digital version regularly, so that regardless of location, a team member knows what's going on.

Like I said, there are good and bad apps to help with this, but I won't mention either, other than Glu, a product we're working on at Fudge :-)