Scrum allows Agile teams working on complex projects and delivering winning products by solving problems adaptively. This popular straightforward method is widely used to handle projects and get things done. Scrum projects more accurately fulfill customers' needs because they encourage continuous feedback.

There is no need for detailed analytics to understand that Scrum continues to grow in popularity just because of its many benefits and general effectiveness. And the important merit in this belongs to a Scrum Master. In this post, we extol and praise the role of a Scrum Master, without which no Scrum project succeeds.

The increasingly competitive job market demonstrates that performing only based on hard skills alone is no longer sufficient. In project management reality, hard skills contain creating work breakdown structures, managing a project budget, earned value assessments and critical path charts. All these skills require technical background and applying professional knowledge and tools to perform well. What are the soft skills of leadership and how they help to uncover project managers' facilities?

Every manager knows what it is like to solve a problem. This is a daily activity for many people and it usually leads to the best outcomes. If you ignore or admit problems in your business, competitors can quickly pass you and your company will hang behind.

Any action that is aimed to solve a problem should identify this particular problem and its causes. Understanding the causes, you'll be able to set priorities and choose alternatives for the best solution, as well as directly implement this solution. The ability to solve internal and external problems timely and make responsible decisions is what managers should learn from the very start of their career. In this article, we’ll identify powerful problem-solving activities and analyze some effective techniques and exercises for teamwork.

Books with the word «Agile» in their titles began to appear on the shelves of IT experts and other industries' professionals after 2001. The term was used during the declaration of the Agile Software Development Manifesto. Agile describes a software development methodology that is characterized by short life cycles leading to frequent product releases.

Today this iterative or incremental method affects various aspects of development and business including project management. What are the best sources to learn Agile? This post covers 10 powerful books that may enhance the skills of project managers and their teams.

Профессиональная литература с термином «Agile» в названиях стала появляться на полках IT-экспертов после 2001 года, когда термин был использован во время представления Манифеста Agile.

Agile описывает методологию разработки программного обеспечения, которая характеризуется коротким жизненным циклом, способствующим частым релизам продуктов. Сегодня итеративный метод влияет на различные аспекты развития бизнеса, включая управление проектами. Где лучше всего получить полное представление о гибком подходе? В этом обзоре — 10 мощных и актуальных книг, которые помогут усовершенствовать навыки руководителей проектов и их команд.

In any business, it’s not a good practice to constantly switch from one methodology to another. Most software development teams prefer to work with one-defined project management method. However, there are lots of companies who try to combine the best features and practices of different methods to create their own unique approach.

In this post, you will learn some basic facts about Scrumban and how to combine two popular Agile methodologies – Kanban and Scrum to make this hybrid approach perform better.

Scrum includes a series of special meetings, commonly referred to ceremonies, which assist to facilitate all the methodology’s processes.

Scrum strongly enforces the goals and time boxes for everything, including the ceremonies. This post covers these outstanding events and identifies the goals for each as well as their necessity. Take 7-8 minutes to figure them out.

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.

Large companies and big teams always consist of various strategic departments and roles. Therefore, it's not a rare case when people face confusion in understanding some job positions.

Is it always clear to understand what the key responsibilities of different managers within one team are? For example, the roles of a product manager and a project manager have much in common. Supposedly, one of these PM’s have heard at least once in life the cheesy question «Is there any difference at all?" However, do not hurry to blame and shame the people who confuse their functionality. Product Manager and Project Manager are completely different roles. The goal of this post is to define clear differences between two strategic positions in software development companies to keep you out of all doubt.

A product manager is a key person who typically presents ready product solutions to the wide external world. To be considered a successful and professional product manager, you should have enough experience, enthusiasm and, of course, professional management skills, strong communication, and other essential abilities. Professional qualities help product management experts to competently manage, present, and bring the product to the market.

The Agile methodology consists of various mandatory concepts and artifacts. A product backlog is one of them. This is actually a set of requirements received from the business and formulated in the form of development tasks.

Backlog grooming is not a magic wand; it's a comprehensive activity aimed to ensure that all the tasks are always in clear order. How can the grooming process be improved? And what are the special things about it?

Whether you are a project management guru or just a beginner, you’ve definitely heard about Gantt charts. At first sight, these diagrams might seem chilling and complicated, however, they are not as mystifying as you may think.

Gantt Charts assist project managers and their teams to improve their productivity and efficiency of workflows and ensure timely tasks execution. The charts can be applied to small projects and the most complex ones. What are the secrets of the diagrams developed by Henry Gantt and what people in project management used before they were created?

Young product managers aim to rapidly learn the fundamentals of their role and master the craft. However, there are no magic power, specific book or a class that can give you 100% of professional mastery.

You want it all, you want it now. But it will surely take some time to make you a product management guru. This post contains a set of relevant resources about product management for those who prefer to read, listen and watch.

Successful decisions are being achieved by the efforts of individuals. Their collaboration is the key to success. No matter if they have won a basketball champ or released a new software product.

Where does the team path to success begin? In this post, we share ten essential tips on how to improve team meeting discussions and describe five powerful methods that accelerate brainstorming sessions. IT professionals, this will perfectly suit you too.

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.

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.

The working arsenal of any project manager consists of own stable methodological reserves and secrets of management. Everyone strives for effective business outcomes based on their own intuition, practical experience, professional tools, and well-known techniques. These outcomes can be achieved if there is no chaos in the project life cycle, and the manager knows what to do at each stage, including determining the critical path of the project.

What is the value of determining the critical path and why is the critical path method (CPM) necessary? In this post, the example of how to determine the critical path. So, let's repair the old backyard swimming pool with the help of CPM.

There are many ways to work out the order and privilege in which your product features should be brought to life. In fact, someone often tempts to go just with their gut. Feature scoring is a low-cost and convenient way to define the relative value of any number of things you may work on.

It is difficult to imagine a situation when a product manager does not face prioritization challenges. Can you quickly decide what to place to the first place?

Any product timeline requires a clear order and only qualitatively decomposed and managed tasks will lead you to a decent and successful product release. In this case, you will not successfully perform without a powerful prioritization. Where to start and how to define the most appropriate prioritization method? Especially if you are a newcomer in the product management world? Here we describe the ICE scoring prioritization method that empowers product managers to choose the right features for development.

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.