The role of visual board in Project Management

Abstract

The aim of this research is to investigate how project managers are using visual boards to successfully deliver their obligations and to outline why such basic tool still exists in today’s organization. The methodology used to carry out this study is qualitative combining semi-structured interviews and observation. The findings from these interviews show that there are several benefits with visual boards for the project manager e.g. improved communication, easier resource planning and improved motivation. These benefits have been categorized into informal and practical benefits. The discussion shows that the boards can work as a boundary object i.e. an artefact that enables and constrain knowledge sharing across boundaries. Working as a boundary object, the visual boards can be of help to overcome syntactic, semantic and pragmatic knowledge boundaries. Moreover, it has been shown to overcome social and emotional communication challenges through the improved motivation and that it brings people from different hierarchical levels together. The conclusion of the study is that the role of visual boards can be divided into a practical and a social role for the project manager. The board can be replaced by an IT-solution. However, the value of the physical limitations has to be considered.