Agile *

When it comes to optimizing overwhelmed daily workloads, to-do lists may not cope. In this case, it's worth to look for something that will keep track of all tasks your team is working on and tasks that are yet to be started, as well as to show the full picture of all the tasks that are completed.

A powerful Kanban board is the solution. This excellent project collaboration tool is widely used in software development, digital marketing, construction, innovative solutions and among other cases where there is a steady workflow of tasks. The Kanban approach helps teams to visualize workflow, analyze processes and achieve greater task management efficiencies. In this post, we describe 14 Kanban tools with advanced features. Compare them and choose the best one right for your needs!

Teams that apply popular Agile practices explain why they have chosen this methodology in their own ways. For someone, it seems obvious to work with obligatory and “sacred” Agile; someone can define non-binding or controversial practices. In any case, Agile is one of the most popular methodologies in project management nowadays. Its practices and concepts are appreciated by many developers and managers around the globe.

What are these powerful practices that make Agile popular and trendy? Here we share the list that is definitely incomplete but foundational.

Every «hype» thing or event has a certain regularity: the more people talk about it, the less they really know about it. Scrum is not an exception. You may find hundreds of relevant articles and IT news, where it may seem that there is only one best Agile methodology and this is Scrum. A large Agile family contains various powerful methodologies and Scrum is not the sole system of implementing Agile principles. However, this methodology is still actively used all over the world.

People go mad about Scrum: many IT blogs write about it, many practical courses promise to teach all Scrum features, many companies want to see a working experience with Scrum in CVs, and so on. Scrum conquers them all. In this post, we define why.

Given: A company which uses the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) to scale Agile development across the organization; 10 development teams combined into one big team (Agile Release Train, according to SAFe terminology) to deliver a common product; the need for a two-day quarterly planning (PI Planning) to determine the work plan of IT teams for the next 3 months *; three development offices with the distance between the most remote ones exceeding 6 thousand kilometers and corresponding working time difference of 5 hours; previous planning experience which implied usage of analogue boards / whiteboards / highlighters / sticky notes and respective physical presence of all key employees in the same room.

* This heavyweight construct “The work plan of IT teams for the next 3 months” threatens to increase the size of the text significantly, so hereinafter I’m going to replace it with “the commitment”. Accordingly, to draw up and adopt a work plan will be “to commit”.

Why do we need this?

1) Fatigue with analog methods of work. While spaceships are plowing the Space, and Elon Musk is boring his tunnels, we, the IT guys, have been persistently writing with highlighters on sticky notes sticking them on the boards — there is really some kind of dissonance in this, isn’t there? That’s what our commitment looked like a while ago:

Accumulating technical debt may lead your company to a crisis. But it may also become a powerful driver of massive process changes and help with engineering practices adoptions. I'll tell you about it on my own example.

What do you get when you cross an IT department, a faulty Sprint review, determination, and pizza? Greatness, that's what.

Иногда молодые команды разработки охватывает неразбериха.

Это случается в тот момент, когда они ещё не до конца разобрались, что такое эджайл; проджект и продакт спорят, кто из них кто, а задачи каждый ведёт сам по себе. Или все уже всё знают, но планировать спринты не получается — задачи не прорабатываются, демо и ретро проходят нерегулярно.

У нас тоже была похожая история, но мы нашли свой путь.

Это рассказ от команды личного кабинета Яндекс.Кассы, и подробнейшая инструкция для тех, кто хочет улучшить своё планирование.

Как всё было