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9 Types of Collaboration Software Solutions for Managing Agile Teams

Reading time6 min
Views1.7K
One of the most effective factors for improving any business is the ability of its employees to perform together as a team. Managers should not only improve their professional skills, learn new methodologies, apply innovative growth hacks, but also try their best to build strong and effective teams. It's all about strong collaboration that is achieved not only through daily face-to-face communication but also through professional online collaboration tools.

Here's the list of tools' types, that you may need for your Agile team’s best performing. Take a look and see if you're missing anything.

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TRIZ: The Problem-Solving Methodology for Product Managers

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time11 min
Views2.8K

Background

As a product manager with over a decade of experience, I'm always looking for new ways to enhance my skills and help other product managers advance in their careers. One area that many companies focus on during the job interview process is analytical and creative problem-solving. And as product managers, we encounter these types of challenges on a daily basis. It's important to stay sharp and continuously develop our problem-solving abilities. That's why I made it a habit to practice a logic puzzle every day. But I also wondered if there was a common approach to solving these puzzles. That's when I discovered TRIZ – the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. In this article, I'll provide an overview of what TRIZ is and how it can be applied in product management. Then, I'll apply TRIZ principles to solve a series of logical puzzles, showcasing the power and effectiveness of this methodology. So whether you're an experienced product manager looking to enhance your skills or someone who enjoys a good brain teaser, read on to discover the power of TRIZ!

If you find TRIZ to be a useful tool for problem-solving and innovation, there are many resources available to help you delve deeper into the methodology. The TRIZ Journal, for example, offers enough information on TRIZ, including case studies, articles, and other resources. You can also find books and online courses that provide a more in-depth look at TRIZ and how it can be applied in different industries and contexts. So if you're interested in learning more, there are plenty of opportunities to expand your knowledge and apply TRIZ to your work.

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IT risk management

Reading time13 min
Views2.5K

When you have an IT, which supports all aspects of your organization automated performance and you have a firm confidence that IT executes well, there is always a chance that something could go wrong in technology or in related IT processes. Depending on complexity of IT environment varieties of risks scenarios could arise. This article as a summary of different faithworthy sources aims to help you in getting high level understanding on what could go wrong and how you can predict it in a more conscious way.

My name is Maxim Tornov and I have been working in various IT areas for a long period of time. Since then, for over 14 years I am working in the area of IT/IS risk management with focus on in IT/IS audits, internal control implementation and assessment.

I am sure that at the present the topic of Information Technologies risk management became more vital. Organization’s efficiency in IT risk management directly affects the achievement of various organization’s goals, goals which have dependency on IT, those goals may include reliability and efficiency of business processes, the organization's compliance with regulatory requirements, the integrity of financial reporting, and many others.

I sincerely hope that this material will be useful to you and may give you some new ideas that you can contribute to the benefit of your personal development and the development of your organization's risk management culture.

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PVS-Studio team's kanban board. Part 2: YouTrack

Reading time28 min
Views1.4K

Hello everyone! Welcome to the second part of the PVS-Studio Team's Kanban Board story. This time we'll talk about YouTrack. You'll learn why we chose and implemented this task tracker and what challenges we encountered. We don't want to advertise or criticize YouTrack. Nevertheless, our team thinks JetBrains has done (and keeps doing) a great job.


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Content marketing stamina — the easy way for startup founders to get ahead of their competition

Reading time4 min
Views1.5K

Content marketing is an endless endurance race. You can’t put a cap on business growth, even if you’re a tech industry giant. A single success is not enough — every time you reach the finish line, it moves further away. Retaining your existing customers is no walk in the park either. When you go silent, you are actively ignoring your audience. There’s no way around it — you need to pump out content.

However, doing that day in and day out requires a lot of stamina. So let’s look at why we get tired in the first place, and figure out how to avoid it. [Previous article: The true cost of free labour].

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Architecting Architecture

Reading time6 min
Views2.8K

Architect. This word sounds so mysterious. So mysterious that to understand it you are almost forced to add something. Like “System Architect” or “Program Architect”. Such an addition does not make it clearer, but for sure adds weight to the title. Now you know – that’s some serious guy! I prefer to make undoubtful and around 10 years ago added to my email signature “Enterprise Architect of Information Systems”. It’s a powerful perk. Like “Chosen One”. With architects it is always the matter of naming, you know. Maybe that is why the only way to become an architect is to be named as one by others. Like with vampires. One of them has to byte you! That is probably the easiest way to earn the title as there is no degree or school to grant you one. And if there’s a troubling title, somebody’s making a trouble, and the only reason for making a trouble that I know of is because you’re an Enterprise. Huge old and complex multinational corporation. Like a one-legged pirate. Strong and scary, but not a good runner. You own your ship, you had good days, you have some gold, you need new ways.

To get to new treasures and avoid losing the second leg to piranha regulators and local business sharks swarming waters near every enterprise ship – every pirate has a map. A map is a list of major features and requirements in desired order and priority.

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700 Employees and Multiple Continents: How Alconost Built an Officeless Business Model

Reading time6 min
Views1.2K


We decided to take the «no-fixed-office» route from the very beginning of our company. For a boutique translation agency focused on the IT industry and working remotely with clients, this seemed like a natural fit. 15 years later, Alconost has over 700 employees spread across the globe, including translators, marketing professionals, PPC advertising experts, sales staff, editors, localization managers, and video production whizzes. And, still, we think an office isn’t the most effective way to operate. As one of the company’s co-founders, I can share just how we managed this.

Not having an office makes the most positive impact on business growth

Our clients are located throughout the world, and our managers often have to send emails outside of normal business hours. When you’re dealing with major time differences, problems could easily take days to resolve. But not for us. Our employees aren’t bound by the limits of the standard 8-hour workday, and we can count on them to respond to emails and queries promptly whenever possible. Getting a quick response is key — even if it’s just to hear “I’ll look into this and get back to you tomorrow.” It’s a win-win: the client feels better and we’re happy.

We like the officeless life not because it allows us to take our time. In fact, it’s the opposite, and we can clock our turnaround times in minutes, not hours. Half of the orders made via our online translation platform — Nitro — are delivered in less than 2 hours. And anyone who emails us with questions or inquiries about Nitro can count on a reply within an hour. This kind of response time simply isn’t possible with fixed office hours.

Written by Alconost
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How to Run an Impressive Kanban StandUp Meeting?

Reading time5 min
Views6.4K
Daily internal meetings in the format of stand-up or just a short team's gathering are aimed to optimize work processes and synchronize work. The tradition to arrange such 15-20 minutes meetings has been firmly established in the activities of most modern businesses. Agile development teams also practice these everyday meetings. However, Kanban, Scrum, or XP meetings differ and include their own rules and principles.

Here you'll find some essential arguments to support the importance of daily Kanban meetings. We'd like to share our thoughts about the main concept of Kanban meetings, their value for the workflow and tips on how to hold them properly.

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How to Achieve a Balance in Product Management With the Lean Prioritization?

Reading time5 min
Views2.9K
Dealing with priorities is a constant necessity in product management and development processes. In order to improve professional skills, product managers should find time to explore and try using simple and complex methods and frameworks to determine priorities.

The Lean Prioritization approach is one of the simplest and most accessible methods that help product managers with managing task backlog, especially when it needs to be done quickly and efficiently. This post is about the power of Lean Prioritization.

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Want to eliminate Agile? Define requirements

Reading time6 min
Views1.6K

Sometimes it seems that jokes about management implementing Agile to do more with less aren't far from the truth. I've rarely seen development teams understand Agile as anything more than a set of ceremonies, most often associated with Scrum.

In my experience, attempts to optimize team performance often boil down to changing the internal processes within the team itself. Meanwhile, critical decisions are made outside the team, remaining in a waterfall model. This creates a disconnect: on one hand, company management strives for the flexibility of Agile, while on the other, they continue to follow rigid patterns, limiting the team and preventing it from fully realizing its potential.

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Context switching

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time4 min
Views1.1K

Hi! My name is Slava. I am currently working as a leading Product and Senior Project Manager at Uzum Bank. One of the leading digital banks in Uzbekistan.

We are growing fast. Really fast. Speaking in numbers, our interest income has increased x10 over the past year (!).

And, as in any similar projects with rapid growth, we constantly lack qualified personnel. So I and my colleagues always have a lot of work to do.

I have two teams with completely different products, and I also manage some projects as a project manager. And I have my own small business – an online tea and coffee shop. And in conclusion, I am the father of two small children)

So, I hope this makes it clear to you that I have faced all the problems, such as working at night, lack of sleep, working in a noisy environment, calls with crying children in the background, calls during breakfast on the wheels, when I take a child to kindergarten (never do that!) etc. and so on and so forth XD

You can ask me: how do you manage to do everything?
The answer is simple: I don't XD

But. This forces me to build a system that helps me quickly switch between different types of tasks, focus quickly and complete them over and over again.

So, today I want to tell you about one of the things, that can completely ruin your day. And sometimes – whole week. It's called "context switching".

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ABBYY: Mobile Technologies – Retrospectives

Reading time3 min
Views515

- Continuous Improvement is also a Project, a meta-Project, a maintenance that usually lasts longer than the main development project.

- If you can fit into the Sprint boundaries with your development cycle, then the concept of Retrospective as it is formulated in SCRUM may also suit you. But if you are bigger and not oriented on CI/CD, then be ready to make a hybrid of SCRUM with classical Project Management – thanks God SCRUM is good embeddable (proven by SAFe) !

- What is left out in when we run retrospectives quarterly? – Plan and Check. The placeholder of classical SCRUM Retrospective is quite suitable for that purpose, surrounded, of course, by some additional groomings, providing required action plans and decompositions up to sprint-length steps.

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Business Process Management Part 2. How to

Level of difficultyEasy
Reading time12 min
Views19K

This article is written in a how-to style. It is based on my personal experience and opinions, so it may omit some steps that are common in BPM practice but that I have not encountered in my work. The topic is broad, and each section deserves a separate article. Therefore, if you are interested in a specific topic, please comment, and I will prepare a more detailed description.

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