What are some useful uses of whiteboards?

[Ted Nieblas]

Retrospectives are an easy use for whiteboards, but I struggle to find other uses for them. Can anyone give any suggestions or examples where they have been used to increase collaboration or simplify a process?

[Shivam Sharma]

It’s great to see how others are using this tool. I personally use it for internal documentation, creating databases, and whiteboards for experimentation, not for professional use.

[Liz Tanner]

Question for you, @Ted Nieblas if you feel comfortable answering: Are you in a full or mostly onsite role and company?

The reason I ask is, I've been a remote/solo tech-L&D IC since 2011. I use and have used whiteboards extensively in cross-functional, global, remote asynch environments with various clients, industries, tasks, roles, etc. But, it donned on me: If you do not work nor collaborate w/ or in remote, hybrid, asynchronous teams, and all personnel essential to the progress and success of your projects are also onsite?

You're not going to use a digital whiteboard when you can walk to a conference room w/ a real-life whiteboard! 😄 And, if you are in a purely onsite outfit, I want to give appropriate suggestions for that environment, not unusable remote-based junk.

[Dirk Bromberg]

Whenever we used a physical board in the past...

So also, for concept work with devs or drawing an idea of a process or a business. Sometimes only for a few days. Then we move them to real documentation images.

[Emily _ DevSamurai]

I’m using the whiteboard for brainstorming and mapping out the customer journey. To me, it's all about visualizing key touchpoints and ideas in a way that’s easy to understand. Instead of getting lost in a sea of words, it’s incredibly helpful to draw everything on the board, making the process much clearer and more interesting. Ideas inspire more ideas.

[Aristóteles Quintanar]

I really like to use it for brainstorming!

[James Rickards _Spark-Nel_]

For me it's more a case of what do I not use Whiteboards for...

1.) Process and other Technical Designs
2.) Team Kanban board
3.) Planning a project through work breakdown structures
4.) Story Mapping
5.) Embedding screenshots of applications and discussing changes.
6.) Visualising information architecture design changes