How to Write Great Agile User Stories
User stories are a valued component of agile or scrum development. In project management, user stories helps keep teams focused on the end goal of “why” a feature is needed. It also helps to provide a deeper context for everyone working on sub-items related to a larger feature. Writing user stories for agile or scrum is […]
Startups and Agile: 4 Things that Work
At Sprintly, a good percentage of our customers are startups (or agencies that work closely with startups). I’ve spent the past few weeks talking to many of them about what’s working and not working in their product delivery process. It’s interesting to me how much I see repeating patterns across these teams. Here are 4 […]
Don’t fight over tools
Every team needs tools (software, SaaS, apps) to get the job done. However, choosing those tools as a group can be frustrating. Some people like GitHub, others like Beanstalk. Developers want to use Slack to communicate, but management wants to use email. Employees want to use Macs, but the IT department wants to buy Lenovo. […]
What is Slack’s secret to growth?
My coworking office recently had to decide which group chat application we were going to use. We’d started with Kato because it was free, but members soon started to complain: Can we use Slack instead? The reason our members wanted to switch wasn’t because of features. Functionally, Slack and Kato are very similar. Both applications […]
How do I go from “maker” to “manager?”
Interested in making the jump from engineer to manager? I’ve taken a number of practical steps since making this transition myself. Hopefully these help you in your new leadership role! Codify and communicate your opinions on best practices You can’t expect to get others to work the way you do without first figuring out what […]
How Yoyo Wallet ships better software
For our fourth instalment of the the How to Ship series, we interviewed David Winterbottom, an engineer at Yoyo, about how his team ships software. 1. What does your company do? Yoyo Wallet is an app that enables mobile payments and automated loyalty. With a laser like focus on what is important to our customers […]
Don’t leave developers in the dark
As a teenager, I remember playing strategy games like X-COM, Civilization, and Red Alert. These games use a mechanic known as “the fog of war.” When a player starts the game, they are immersed in an overhead map that is shrouded by darkness. The only way to reveal your surroundings is to explore. As you […]
Product management advice for developers
We received great feedback from the development community about “Your Developers Aren’t Slow”. This is a guest post by Matthew Wear where he responds to our post with insights learned from his own development career (he’s been an engineer for 10 years). Matthew currently works at WellMatch as an Android Engineer, and was formerly at […]
Your developers aren’t slow
“Why didn’t we ship last week?” As managers, it’s easy for us to blame our team for missing deadlines. But are slow developers really the reason you’re not shipping on time? At Sprintly, we have a lot of data on developer cycle time. We track how long it takes them to complete different types of […]
Does your team need a mission?
Mission is the reason your team members get out of bed every morning. It answers the question, “Why are we creating software?” A mission statement should describe why your team exists; it’s your higher purpose. How does this apply to creating software? Your team is made up of human beings, and they’re going to be […]