A web application to randomly select a question for the daily standup.
To spice up a daily standup a set of specialized cards is often used. Those cards contain questions regarding agile principles, handling a kanban-board, etc. Every day one of the cards is picked at random and will be answered by the team or a team-member.
A well-known set of cards is ASK KANBAN by Huge.io, which contains 10 different cards with a good range of questions regarding everyday agile working. Read more about them on Medium.com.
But when a standup happens virtual (e.g. via video-call) a set of physical cards can be bit unhandy. Why not use a simple web application to serve those cards, which can be operated online by any team-member.
On the first start, the Agile Cards web application (agilecards.py) will generate a list of all images/cards found in the static-directory. Supported formats are PNG (recommended), JPG/JPEG and GIF, see the agilecards.cfg for more. This list will then be shuffled and the first image/card can be picked on the select-screen by clicking the pick a card-button. Every time a question from the image/card is answered and the ok-button is clicked, the state of the list is updated and saved to disk (agilecards.state). When the list has been completly picked, it will be regenerated and shuffled again, to restart the whole process.
To revert the pick of an image/card, replace the word select in the URL with undo. To regenerate and shuffle the list of all images/cards before the last card has been picked, replace select in the URL with reload.
To have a logo in the middle of the select-screen, place an image which name begins with "logo" into the static-directory. To start the standup with a introductory banner, before picking an image/card on the select-screen, place an image which name begins with "banner" into the static-directory.
- Python 3 - https://www.python.org/
- Flask - https://palletsprojects.com/p/flask/
- Apache2 - https://httpd.apache.org/
- libapache2-mod-wsgi-py3 - https://packages.debian.org/en/libapache2-mod-wsgi-py3
Update list of packages and install the required ones:
apt update
apt install python3 python3-flask apache2 libapache2-mod-wsgi-py3
Install the Agile Cards web-application:
cd /var/www
wget https://github.com/PhilSwiss/agile-cards/archive/refs/heads/main.tar.gz
tar -xvf main.tar.gz
mv agile-cards-main agilecards
chown -R www-data:www-data agilecards/
Start and test the web-applicationa at: http://127.0.0.1:8080 (see agilecards.cfg for more)
cd agilecards
python3 agilecards.py
...
CTRL-C
Create a config-file for Apache2:
nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/agilecards.conf
Copy and paste the following lines to the config-file:
#<VirtualHost *:443>
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName agilecards.example.com
ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
DocumentRoot "/var/www"
RedirectMatch ^/$ /agilecards/
<Directory "/var/www">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Require all granted
</Directory>
#SSLEngine on
#SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/agilecards.example.com.crt
#SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/agilecards.example.com.key
#SSLCertificateChainFile /etc/ssl/agilecards.example.com-chain.crt
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/agilecards_error.log
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/agilecards_access.log combined
WSGIDaemonProcess agilecards threads=2
WSGIScriptAlias /agilecards /var/www/agilecards/agilecards.wsgi
<Directory /var/www/agilecards>
WSGIProcessGroup agilecards
WSGIApplicationGroup %{GLOBAL}
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>
Enable the config and restart Apache:
a2dissite 000-default
a2ensite agilecards
systemctl reload apache2
Access the web-application at: http://agilecards.example.com/agilecards (see agilecards.cfg for more)
NOTICE: Make sure to activate SSL & 443, when using in production or on a public network.
You may use Docker for easy deploying and running the Agile Cards web-application.
If not done yet, install Docker, this can be done with:
apt install docker.io docker-buildx
Change directory and get the package:
cd ~
git clone https://github.com/PhilSwiss/agile-cards.git
Put your logo, banner and images/cards into the static-directory or a new directory created on the same level as the static-directory. You may also remove images/cards from static which you do not need.
Now it's time to build the Docker image with the command:
DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 docker build -t "agilecards" .
Deploy the container or just run it with:
docker run --name "my-agilecards" agilecards
By default, the Apache service is listening on port 80. For testing purpose only, you may publish this port to your local (e.g. to port 8080) machine running the container with:
docker run -p 8080:80 --name "my-agilecards" -d agilecards
To use images stored on the Docker host instead of the ones inside the container, you've to bind-mount the folder
docker run -p 8080:80 --mount type=bind,source="/home/user/agilecards/images",target=/var/www/agilecards/static --name "my-agilecards" agilecards
Stoping a container leads to loose of the state file since the storage of a container is not persistent. But you may bind-mount the state file as a local file
docker run -p 8080:80 --mount type=bind,source="/home/user/my-agilecards.state",target=/var/www/agilecards/agilecards.state --name "my-agilecards" agilecards
The Docker daemon needs write access to the file & location!
NOTICE: In production or on a public network, please use a reverse proxy with SSL termination like nginx or Apache.
There are some build-time options you may set:
- HOSTNAME - hostname of this service, defaults to agilecards.example.com
- WEBMASTER - webmaster e-mail address, defaults to webmaster@localhost
- IMAGESOURCE - directory with logo, banner and images/cards to use with this service, defaults to static/
If you like to use a different directory for storing your images/cards, this directory must be created on the same level as the static-directory. The build command then is (in case the new directory is named images)
DOCKER_BUILDKIT=1 docker build --build-arg="IMAGESOURCE=images/" -t "agilecards" .
- agilecards.py (the web-application itself)
- agilecards.cfg (config for the web-application)
- agilecards.wsgi (config for Apache mod_wsgi)
- agilecards.state (state for the web-application)
- static/logo.png (official Agile Cards logo)
- static/examplecard(1-3).(.jpg/.jpeg/.gif) (card examples for testing, patterns by Brandon Mills)
- templates/*.html (templates for the rendered webpages)
- Dockerfile (for building and deploying this service with Docker)
- ask-kanban.sh (a script to download the "Ask-Kanban"-cards by Huge.io from Medium.com)
- Move the config to a separate file (agilecards.cfg) - Done implemented in version 1.9
- Serving a favicon.ico via Flask - Done implemented in version 1.9
- Adding a simple admin-page with: undo, reload and image-management
There is no warranty for the scripts or it's functionality, use it at your own risk.
If you have any suggestions, bug reports or annoyances please report them to the issue tracker at https://github.com/PhilSwiss/agile-cards/issues
Development of agile-cards happens at GitHub: https://github.com/PhilSwiss/agile-cards