3.3.6 Agile rituals using Mural
In this section, we'll dive into the world of Mural, a powerful digital tool designed to facilitate collaborative work, brainstorming, and project management. Mural is a virtual whiteboard platform that promotes visual thinking, making it an excellent choice for educators and students exploring Agile learning practices. This introduction aims to familiarize you with Mural's interface and core features as well as showcase the creation of Mural board’s for the AgileXR project.
Step 1: Create your Mural account
Begin by visiting the Mural website and click on the "Sign Up" button. Walk through the registration process, providing your name, email address, and a secure password.
Mural offers both free and paid plans, each tailored to specific needs. The free plan provides basic functionalities, while paid plans offer advanced features.
Step 2: Navigating the Mural Dashboard
Dashboard | Workspace | Notification Center |
The dashboard is your Mural home. It provides quick access to your canvases, shared projects, and recent activities. | Workspaces on the other hand are organizational units where you manage your projects. You can think of them as virtual office buildings with rooms for different purposes. | The notification center keeps you informed about changes, comments, and mentions related to your projects. |
Each Workspace, as mentioned above, can have multiple different rooms ( either open, private or confidential) as well as folders for structuring a project or a team.
Step 3: Canvas Management, Tools and Widgets ( explore how to create, organize and manage various canvases for different projects and understand the tools available within Mural as sticky notes, shapes, connectors, etc
To begin, you'll want to create a canvas. This can be done by navigating to a workspace and clicking "Create a new canvas." Mural provides a variety of templates to choose from or lets you start with a blank canvas.
As you work on multiple projects, it's important to keep your canvases organized. Mural allows you to group canvases within workspaces based on your needs.
Mural offers a versatile toolkit, including sticky notes, shapes, connectors, text boxes, and more. These tools can be used for brainstorming, planning, and visual storytelling.
In this video you can find the description of the toolkit as well as some basic examples of the different components.
Step 4: Collaboration and Communication ( using Mural’s real-time collaboration features, including commenting, mentions and live cursors
A super nice feature of Mural is that multiple users can collaborate on a canvas simultaneously which makes collaboration easier and faster.
Mural allows users to leave comments on specific elements or sections of a canvas for instant communication or mental notes to not be forgotten.
In order to mention a user or a team member you can use mentions (@username) and enhance real-time collaboration.
Step 5 : Mural for Agile Project Management
Agile project management is all about flexibility and collaboration, and Mural is a fantastic platform to facilitate it. Here's how you can utilize Mural for Agile project management:
Kanban Boards: Within Mural, you can create visual task boards. Each task can be represented as a sticky note or card on the board, which can be moved through different columns to signify their status, such as "To-Do," "In Progress," "Review," and "Done." This visual representation provides clarity and transparency on the project's progress.
Sprint Planning: Mural is an ideal tool for conducting sprint planning sessions. You can allocate tasks, set priorities, and collaborate with team members in real-time to plan your sprints effectively. This ensures that everyone is on the same page and has a clear understanding of their responsibilities.
Sprint Reviews and Retrospectives: Mural's collaborative features are invaluable during sprint reviews and retrospectives. Team members can share their insights, accomplishments, and areas for improvement within the same canvas. This fosters open communication and the continuous improvement that is at the heart of Agile methodologies.
Mural offers a variety of templates that you can build up on them or fine tune them based on your needs.
If you're eager to explore Mural's incredible capabilities and get hands-on guidance, look no further than Mural's official YouTube channel. It's a treasure trove of video tutorials, demonstrations, and expert insights. Whether you're new to Mural and want to start with the basics or you're seeking advanced tips and tricks, this channel offers a wide range of resources to cater to your needs.
Step 6: In the framework of this Erasmus+ project AgileXR, Mural templates have been created that you can use at your school.
Download the Agile Templates below
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