Exhausting the Scrum team, BPMN guide, Notion and Miro replacements, stakeholder communication and all the interesting things written this week about project management. We read all the posts and selected the coolest and most useful ones for you. Read, save and apply!

Basics and guides

Why is Scrum so exhausting?

Sprints are devoid of breaks, severely limit autonomy and do not allow enough time for preparation. No wonder today’s developers seem more depressed. The Scrum methodology is not compatible with the very essence of their work, and they are unable to change it. The only solution is to restore autonomy and professionalism in software development.

Let developers control both their craft and their workflow.

BPMN 2.0 is a universal approach to diagramming

The guide is useful for those who are just taking the first steps to standardize their approach when describing the logic of business processes, as well as for those who already have experience using this notation.

Requirements quality criteria with examples (Part 1)

Requirements quality criteria with examples (Part 2)

In an ideal world, testing should take place at all stages of the software life cycle, starting with design, when there is no product yet, but only a description of what the customer wants to receive. This description may be called a specification, terms of reference, or simply requirements. Requirements are checked for compliance with quality criteria. Often this process is described as a separate type of testing – requirements testing.

The material is in two parts – about key criteria, including completeness, consistency, correctness, feasibility, and others.

Business modeling in IT development

The business model describes the existing schemes and rules for performing certain work processes, and may also include recommendations for their change. What gives? Modeling helps to see what is happening as a system — to capture all participants, their work and relationships at a glance. In the course of modeling, new questions and nuances that have not yet been identified will necessarily emerge, especially regarding logic and expediency. Also, if at the request of interested parties or during the analysis it became clear that reengineering is necessary, the model will prompt the optimization criteria

User Story Map as an expectation management tool and beyond: practical tips

About how to develop large initiatives using a User Story Map at the Discovery stage (the initial stage of working out the task, in which the main requirements are revealed and the set business goals are analyzed).

A systematic approach to the implementation of the Kanban method using a STATIK workshop: A step-by-step guide

STATIK (from the English Systems Thinking Approach To Introducing Kanban) stands for “systemic approach to introducing Kanban”. It was developed by David Anderson and was conceived as the main approach to implementing Kanban in companies. STATIK shows how the system behaves in general, and not through the analysis of its individual elements. Material – to use this approach.

What is an iterative process in projects and in development

An iterative process is a step-by-step gradual improvement of a project or product. An iterative approach is a logical and reasonable approach for many areas. The authors provide an overview of its application in project activities, reveal advantages and disadvantages.

Working on mistakes: how the Agile approach helps to overcome the crisis

Longread about “facap management” (anti-crisis management of the company): why everything can go wrong and how to avoid it, and here is Agile and what is important to know when tackling a crisis.

Kanban board and WIP limits. How to eliminate workload in work processes

Why do unfinished tasks “burn”, how to visualize limitations to establish a dialogue with the business and increase the predictability of the process and, of course, how the Kanban board and the WIP limit will help us in this.

Project manager and team

Development team leadership

Tips that help manage a team and develop leadership from technical specialists of various profiles: how to formulate and convey values ​​to the team, how to be a guarantor of stability, not to hire people with weak soft skills, learn to build a system that works without you and much more.

How not to burn the team to the ground, or Why work-life balance is the task of the manager

Any manager can keep track of the team. And an energetic employee who loves his job will bring more happiness to the company than a burnt-out and tired one. The material is about how to motivate the team to maintain work-life balance.

How to build communication with stakeholders: from impact assessment to successful collaboration

Stakeholders influence all stages of the product life cycle: they participate in budget allocation, manage team resources and help set priorities. Understanding their roles and interests, proper communication and emotional engagement are key elements of effective product management.

7 Inspirational Books on Product and Team Management

In the review: “Five weaknesses of the team”, “Emotional courage”, “Goal. The process of continuous improvement”, “Complex decisions. How to manage a business when there are no easy answers” and other famous (and not so) books.

Conquering Chaos: How We Improved Systems Analysts’ Work and Built Collaboration in a Large Team

About how weak points in the work of the analyst team were calculated and how they were corrected to make everything work more efficiently. Briefly: we developed a template for writing and maintaining documentation, started a cross-roaring of colleagues’ artifacts, made communication permanent.

How to reconcile IT and business, making development predictable?

The situation: the team is overwhelmed with tasks, the backlog is swelling, there are many unplanned tasks from the business. What to do? The author believes that it is necessary to change the processes — to make them transparent and predictable. And also protect the team from “trash development” (when requirements arise and change on the fly).

Remote work in different time zones – research

Remote employees who live in different time zones often have to sacrifice free time for work communication. For whom such a regime is particularly difficult and how organizations can reduce the risks, this article describes.

Onboarding with a competency matrix: rapid onboarding of newcomers

Onboarding depends on how quickly a new employee will become an independent unit and a part of the team at the same time. The lack of a plan for the adaptation of newcomers and criteria for its evaluation leads to a loss of time and money of the company. A competency matrix helps structure and accelerate onboarding.

Hybrid schedule: how to organize work conveniently for everyone

Tools and recommendations that facilitate team interaction – both in the office and remotely. Among them: use of platforms with online access, expansion of the list of communication channels with employees.

Experience and tools

Agile in a functional project. Organization of work on IT rails

When talking about projects in the Agile methodology, the IT team is most often represented. The authors decided to apply agile to a project in the field of occupational health and safety. There are no serious specifics in the publication, but there is an example of “inventing” metrics with the help of AI and creating a change program for the team and workflow based on them.

Retro pain and confusion: how we set up team problem-solving and problem-solving

About how the authors introduced retro in a team that never had it – why is it necessary at all (the team grew, communications became more difficult), what rakes came (a lot of time) and what was achieved as a result (the emotional state of the team improved, processes became clearer).

How we automated project requirements management with AI and ML

With the help of AI, they invented software that automatically traces requirements between documents, which ultimately helped to significantly improve requirements management.

Automation of production management: how we simplified the development of new parts in building materials factories

The authors faced the problem of disparate systems when developing new parts, it led to unnecessary labor costs and problems with approval. The solution replaced everything with a single information system.

Redmine vs Business Growth: How we solved support scaling issues at Orion soft

About the experience of implementing an ITSM system instead of the good old Redmine, which was outdated (?!), crashed and generally led to an increase in workload and confusion in orders. They talk about the process of moving, finishing touches, difficulties and results.

Notion is dead, long live Obsidian

Testing the best self-hosted analogues of Notion

How I quit Notion and started working at TEAMLY. Personal experience

How jetMinds transferred all data from Notion to the Russian counterpart in 2 days

Notion really took off, and the result was a flurry of posts about alternatives, paid and free.

How we imported almost 17 million objects from Miro in 5 days

Let Miro stay with us for now (for some reason), but the Holst team shares the experience of transferring boards to their service. (By the way, we very easily moved from miro to this service as well and so far we are satisfied with everything, guys, thank you!)

10 Best Wrike Analogues

It also seems to be working, and this publication mentions the services weeek, LeaderTask, Strive, Kaiten, Planfiks and others as alternatives.

Top 8 analogues of GanttPro: Russian services for building a Gantt chart

The popular (and very convenient) service is still with us, but a list of successors is already being prepared for it: from Kaiten and Aspro to Bitrix24 and Advanta. A comparison table is attached.

Top services for project management from Russia and the CIS

Overview of domestic software and services, with key opportunities and shortcomings. On the arena are the same (Weeek, Shtab, Bitrix24, Megaplan, Yougile), and less well-known: Easy Project, OpenProject, Worksection).

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