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December 24, 2021September 30, 2023

How to Manage a Software Team: Creating a Framework for Success

It’s your responsibility as a software manager to make sure your staff is productive and successful. You don’t need to be a coder to be an excellent manager. Many great managers aren’t technically competent; what sets them apart is their ability to lead and inspire people.

But leading software teams isn’t necessarily easy, It can be extremely challenging for several reasons:

For one, coding is repetitive work, and it’s frequently done in isolation. It’s all too easy to overlook the red flags that a team member is burning out if you’re not vigilant.
Also, It can be hard for developers to prioritize. Software development entails several tasks. And many of them are important. Yet, you can’t do all of them at once.
Not to mention software teams are often remote. Remote software development has its advantages. But there’s also the danger of communication breakdown.
Last but not least, the software industry is notorious for its high turnover. This implies that you’ll have staff members come and go frequently, making it more difficult to establish a strong culture.

The good news is that you don’t need to be a corporate psychologist or a management expert to lead software teams. With the appropriate methods, you can make managing software teams a lot easier and efficient. This article will provide you with useful strategies for managing your software teams more effectively.

Your role as a software development manager

As a software development manager, you’re responsible for creating an environment in which your developers can be productive. It’s imperative that you provide your team with the resources they need, set expectations, and ensure that everyone is working towards common goals. And that’s no small task.

Traits of a good software manager

To be a successful software manager, you must develop an acute awareness of certain characteristics; You must be:

Encouraging
An effective communicator
A problem solver
Organized

Encouraging – First and foremost, you must be able to inspire people. As a software manager, you should be able to inspire and motivate your team. This includes setting a good example, being positive, and establishing goals for the team.

An effective communicator – You should also be able to communicate effectively with your team members. This means understanding what each individual on the team is capable of, as well as being clear about expectations and goals.

A problem solver – You should also be able to think critically and solve problems quickly while staying calm under pressure. You need to know how software development works to create an effective software team that will help you achieve your business goals.

Organized – Finally, you must be organized. There is a lot to keep track of when managing a software team. This includes overseeing project deadlines, tasks, and resources. And if you lose track of something, it can end up costing you a lot of time and money.

The qualities that make the best software managers are not necessarily innate. You might have some or all these traits naturally. But with effort, you will be able to improve your skills in each area over time.

For example, if you’re an introvert, it can be hard to communicate effectively with your team members. But by keeping your team in the loop and learning to ask questions, you can overcome your introversion.

How to build a successful software team

Now that we’ve looked at the qualities of a good software manager, let’s look at how to build a successful team. In this section, we will discuss the most important milestones in forming a successful team. We’ll examine the significance of recruitment, training, feedback, affirmation, and creating a productive working environment.

Recruitment

First, you need to find the right people. This means finding individuals who are smart, motivated and have the skills needed for the job.

Where do you find the right people? Hiring experienced developers is one alternative. This implies that you must look for people with the required skills and knowledge. LinkedIn, Indeed, Fiverr, Upwork, and similar platforms are good sources for competent individuals.

Another good approach is hiring recent grads or interns. The benefit is they’re often eager to learn new things, have the drive and passion for what they do. Many colleges and universities offer internship programs in which you may employ students who want to learn on the job.

Another advantage is that most of the time, they will work for less money, and you can mentor them to increase their expertise. However, depending on the person, you may need to put out a lot of effort into training.

Training

After you’ve built your team, the next step is to train them. To have a successful software development process that generates high-quality results, make sure to properly educate your staff members.

Training can be divided into three categories: Technical (knowledge and skills), soft (behaviors), and managerial (leadership).

Technical training means teaching your team coding languages, platforms, and technologies.

Soft skills are more difficult to master than technical knowledge because they do not have a clear set of rules that you can follow. For example, the ability to communicate is something that users must learn over time through trial-and-error or input from other people.

Managerial training is focused on developing the skills needed to be an effective leader. This includes learning how to motivate team members, set and achieve goals, and think critically under pressure.

The best way to provide training is by using a combination of methods: online resources (videos, tutorials, articles), hands-on activities (workshops, hackathons, meetups), and one-on-one sessions (conferences, meetings).

Feedback

After you have completed training, your software team will need ongoing feedback so they can continue to learn and improve their skills. Feedback offers many benefits: it gives people a sense of accomplishment and recognition, makes them feel more valued by the company they work for, helps identify what software development skills need to be improved or developed further, etc.

There are three areas for feedback:

First, is giving feedback for job performance. This feedback looks at the task itself and how well they performed in comparison with their peers or other software development professionals. Feedback for performance also should include an evaluation of the technical skills needed to accomplish that work (i.e., coding languages used).When giving feedback, don’t forget to be both constructive and positive. The aim isn’t to put someone down or deceive them; the objective is to assist them towards improving their abilities.
Second, is receiving feedback on the overall process you use to complete the software development. This includes an evaluation of how well the team works together, their communication skills, and the tools and technologies used.When your team’s processes are out of whack, software products may not reach their full potential. This type of feedback is essentially critiquing the structure or format of how work is done.This type of feedback should be received regularly (weekly or monthly) to ensure that you as a manager are aware of how your team is experiencing your dynamics and processes.
Third, is receiving Feedback for you as a manager. This can be difficult to do, as it requires a high level of trust and brave communication (i.e. honesty).This type of feedback should be requested from your entire team. And remember the goal is to help you identify your strengths and weaknesses as a leader. It will also provide insights on how you can further develop your managerial skills.Feedback can come in different forms such as verbal (in person), written (email), and nonverbal (e.g., with body language, tone of voice). It’s important to communicate feedback in a way that all team members can understand and use.

Affirmation

Next, you need to take the time to affirm all team members. Affirmation offers software development teams an opportunity to recognize each other’s strengths and has proven to be a powerful tool in software team building.

Affirmation helps build self-confidence, develop interpersonal relationships (e.g., teamwork), provide encouragement for future work performance, demonstrate appreciation towards others, and increase overall software team morale.

It’s important to realize that affirmation shouldn’t be reserved for software development experts; instead, affirm all software team members no matter their role or level of expertise (i.e., everyone).

A simple way to do this is with a daily standup meeting where you can recognize who did what throughout the software development process and for their efforts.

Affirmation is such a powerful tool because it doesn’t require you to spend money, but rather simply time and effort which can go a long way towards helping software team members feel appreciated.

The bottom line is that affirmation benefits software teams by creating trust between each other, developing communication skills (e.g., collaboration), and increasing software team morale.

Environment

Last, but certainly, not least is the power of setting the right environment. This means creating an environment that is positive and encouraging, where team members feel comfortable taking risks and sharing ideas.

Even if your team is remote, there are still things that you can do to create a good working environment, such as holding regular zoom meetings in which everyone discusses their progress and problems.

Be careful to not overdo it, meeting for the sake of meeting isn’t a good idea. Make sure that the meetings are valuable and beneficial to your team members, otherwise, they may get discouraged or demotivated very quickly.

What’s important is that you build an environment that creates a connection between your personnel and software products. This is done by providing the right tools, technologies, and training so software team members can feel confident in their abilities and be productive.

Creating this type of environment takes time and effort but is well worth it in the long run.

Summary

Software teams are the backbone of any software development organization. As a manager, it’s important to be aware of the different dynamics and processes that make up a software team.

4 Tips for managing software teams

Now let’s look at 4 tips for managing software teams. These tips will help you create an effective environment in which your developers can thrive:

Set expectations early – set your team’s goals at the beginning of each sprint or project cycle so that everyone knows what is expected of them.
Give your developers the tools they require. Providing your staff with the appropriate software for creating code, debugging problems, and so on is a good idea. Make sure you have an up-to-date version of the software they need and that you’re not asking them to use tools that are outdated or difficult to work with.
Additionally, give your developers time to learn new technologies if needed. They may be hesitant to try something new at first, but with a little encouragement and support, they’ll come around to it quickly.
Management software can be a game-changer. Use a tool like Teamly to help you keep track of what everyone is working on and how tasks are progressing.

Teamly is perfect for managing software teams. You’ll have the best project management tool needed to finish projects fast and efficiently. With Teamly you can see what everyone is working on, set and track goals, share documents, provide feedback, and more. Because your software team can see what everyone is working on, collaboration is easy and effective.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, keeping your software team members happy and productive is crucial to success in any industry, not just technology. So consider this framework when thinking about how you want to manage your next software project.

December 24, 2021October 30, 2023

Top 5 Elements Of Creative Strategy Development And Implementation Steps

When you begin a new project, one of the first things you do is form an initial outline – one of the essential elements of creative strategy development. This outline is one of the most important aspects of any new project and can be the deciding factor of its success. But one thing is often overlooked…

Creative strategy development is so much more than fancy words, clever designs, and standard sales tactics. While those are certainly important aspects, a creative strategy is made up of much more. First, let’s define creative strategy; then, we’ll go through the steps to develop and implement the creative strategy successfully.

What Is A Creative Strategy?

A creative strategy is made up of 2 essential parts.

First, the creative aspect. What typically comes to mind are design teams, writers, photographers, product designers, and digital media managers when we talk about creatives in the workplace. Creatives are the people who form the basis of new products and strategies, with an important set of elements in mind (we’ll break those down in a minute).

Second is the actual strategic planning that is done to help a new marketing project find high rates of success.

Essentially, creative strategy development is the process of identifying your marketing goals and designing a strategic plan to achieve them. It’s how you will lead your team in the right direction. These strategies allow you to create content that reflects the company’s values, engages customers, and solves a problem. A creative strategy will guide your business from its current state to meeting (and surpassing) your long-term vision.

5 Essential Elements Of A Successful Creative Strategy

While creative strategies can vary in their action plans and goals, there are 5 main elements of a creative strategy that play a vital role in its creation. These include:

Brand Awareness
This is the knowledge you have of what helps people identify your company, product, or personal brand. What are the long-term goals of your brand? What is the brand’s history? What has the growth of your brand looked like? What is your mission statement? What are the main values? All of these concepts play a vital role in the development of your creative strategy and must be well known to your marketing team.
Main Objective
The goal of the marketing strategy. (We’ll get more into this in the next section)
Target Audience
Who are you directing your marketing efforts towards? Knowing who you are talking to in your marketing will determine what strategies would best resonate with your ideal customer. Think of things like gender, age, demographic, financial status, likes and dislikes, etc. Many companies will even create a client avatar reflecting the ideal customer who the marketing campaign would be directed to.
Primary USP
The Unique Selling Proposition is why you’re the best person to be providing your service/product. The USP makes you stand out from your competitors by differentiating your offer (more on this below).
Tone
Many companies have created a tone guide for their marketing department to follow when creating any material for the company. This ensures that the voice of the company sounds the same across all platforms and is easily identified by their consumer base. A coherent tone across all of your marketing is essential in continuing to grow your brand and attract your target audience.

Process For Developing And Executing Your Creative Strategy

The process of developing and implementing a creative strategy is made up of 4 main parts: planning, developing, implementing, and measuring. Let’s take a deeper look at each one.

Planning And Development

Identify And Set Realistic Goals
Setting goals that reflect your company’s values and are in line with its long-term goals is the first step in planning your creative strategy. Goals can include things like boosting engagement on social channels, creating hotter leads in your funnels, increasing sales, etc. These goals, however, must be outlined appropriately to be successful. This is where methods like SMART Goals can be highly beneficial, ensuring they are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound.
Identify Your Audience’s Problems
What problem are you solving for your target audience? What are their pain points? When you consider these questions, it is important to go deeper than surface level. When you think about the benefits you’re offering them, think about how they solve the bigger issues in their lives.For example, if you’re marketing a system to enhance team management, you’re making it easier for managers to interact with their team. You’re also helping them maintain their projects through one system. When you consider the deeper pain points, you’re creating a product that serves your customers’ bigger struggles. These include providing those managers with regaining their time, tracking progress with ease, and making deadlines nearly impossible to miss, all from one singular tool.Identify your audience’s pain points, and create a strategy to highlight your ability to fix them.
Brainstorm And Choose Your Creative Strategy
When you’re developing a new creative strategy, a diverse team is beneficial. Diversity allows for a higher variety of perspectives, providing a better selection of ideas. Varying perspectives leads to higher rates of collaboration, producing more refined solutions and a strategy that will connect on a more personal level with your audience.A great way to begin planning your creative strategy is to work backward from the goals you’ve chosen. This will help you create a well-structured plan that keeps the timeframe of the project in mind.
Create Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP)
Specifically, your USP is where you’ll define why you’re the best option. This will position you as the authority in your industry and is the first step in building trust with your customers.However, before you can position yourself as the best option in the industry, you must first know exactly who your ideal customer will be. You can achieve this by researching your target audience at length. Being knowledgeable about who you’re targeting will help you develop a more directed, personable strategy. This will allow you to connect with your audience on a deeper level than your competition.

Determine How You’ll Measure Success
The easiest way to do this is to set milestones to gauge progress throughout the project’s lifetime. This will provide you with a way to adjust your strategy if you find it’s not aligning with your expected timeline.

Depending on your project, your key performance indicators (KPI) will fluctuate to fit the strategy, however, they may include:

- Click-through rates
- Number of new email subscribers
- Engagement on social platforms
- Number of sales
- Profits made over a specific amount of time

Implementing And Measuring

Pre-Test
When beginning any new marketing campaign, it is essential to pre-test your strategies in smaller pools. This will help you gain a better understanding of the potential success of your creative strategy. This will also provide you with the opportunity to identify any issues or shortcomings in your strategy and adjust them to be more successful.While in the pre-test stage, using an A/B test strategy is a great way to compare campaigns that have slight differences in them. This will provide you with the opportunity to see how each one performs and create your final campaign using the data collected from each.Once you’re satisfied with your pre-test results, it’s time to execute your final project and release it to your full audience.
Evaluate Your Campaigns
Once you’ve executed your final product, ensure you check in on its success at various stages. This will let you monitor its progress and pivot if needed. The best way to do this is to use your previously determined milestones to measure the likelihood of meeting your goals in their expected timelines.Another way to evaluate your campaign is to compare data from past creative strategies to the data being received from your current strategy. This will give you a strong indication of growth over longer periods of time and allow you to measure success on a larger scale. This also provides you with a unique opportunity to “bring back” previous aspects of a creative strategy that performed well in the past.
Optimize
If you don’t meet your goals right away, consider completing some additional testing of various marketing techniques (if time allows), while still maintaining the essential aspects of the project.If you do find your creative strategy failing, use it as a learning opportunity. Evaluate why your creative strategy may not have performed the way you had hoped. Take a deeper look into your USP, tone guide, and target audience research to determine if there are any aspects that may have been missed or need to be tweaked. Use all the data you have to make a more informed strategy for your next project.

Conclusion

Successfully developing and implementing a creative strategy is a powerful tool. Develop a creative strategy that helps you stand above the competition while remaining true to your company’s values and long-term goals. This will lead you to higher rates of success that benefit your company for years to come.

December 24, 2021December 24, 2021

Why Quality Assurance Tracking In the Workplace Is Essential For Success And Growth

To consistently deliver on the promise of high-quality work, an organization must ensure they have the appropriate quality assurance tracking system in place. Without this delicate checks-and-balances process, more errors slip through the cracks, workflows can potentially break down, and the quality of work is not usually up to company standards.

Having a quality assurance tracking system ensures everyone on the team has the support needed to deliver a final product in line with the company’s expectations. In order to achieve quality assurance in the workplace, let’s first define quality assurance.

What is Quality Assurance?

Quality assurance is defined as the process of meeting an organization’s standards and includes careful monitoring of each stage of production and delivery.

While the terms “Quality Assurance” and “Quality Control” are often used interchangeably in conversation, there are major distinctions between the two processes.

Quality control is the identification of various issues during project management and ensures the quality is meeting the required standards. Put simply, quality control focuses on the product and is considered a reactive process. Whereas, quality assurance is about the prevention of errors or other defects that may arise during projects and making sure the controls put in place are working effectively. This is through examination and review of the multiple techniques, methods, and processes dedicated to creating deliverables as expected. Quality assurance verifies the processes in place are not introducing errors or other complications and come before quality control. In other words, quality assurance is a preventative measure that focuses on process.

Let’s see an example of this in action.

Say we have a Human Resources team that is about to implement a brand new employee management system. No one on the team has previous experience with the system – an important factor acknowledged and reviewed by HR leadership. In order to ensure training and implementation goes smoothly for everyone involved, leadership has developed a way to assure quality from the beginning. Managers have assessed what documents are needed in order to have successful training. In the case of HR, a thorough understanding of the various moving parts is critical to the implementation’s success. Therefore, the HR teams need a highly-detailed standard operating procedure drafted in order to initially move through the basics of training, specific examples unique to the HR department in order to capture realistic data entry, and other documents that will help train the entire team.

During the process of training, it’s inevitable that particular workflows may encounter issues unique to the new system. This is a part of the quality control process, where defects are identified while trying to get to the final product. (In this example, the HR team’s final delivery is an accurate entry on employee information). The team can then discuss different solutions that may best fit their needs, and a process moving forward that captures the appropriate workaround. After the training is successful, and the team has proven they have a foundation of working knowledge to be able to do their jobs efficiently, processes can be refined to ensure high-quality work is delivered.

Why Is Quality Assurance Tracking Important?

Quality assurance tracking is important in the workplace for a few key reasons:

Motivates the team – The team is likely to stay more motivated and on track with their various assignments as there are established processes and controls in place, providing much-needed structure and clarity in essential procedures. Everyone is essentially held to the same principle of producing high-quality work. This creates a unified mission, one that everyone strives to achieve. The review process for quality assurance helps keep operations smooth and succinct, incorporating feedback from the core team, and allowing them to thrive in an effective environment.
Creates transparency – In addition to increasing employee motivation, quality assurance also helps create transparency in the workplace, a huge contributing factor in healthy and positive work cultures. Because processes are consistently being measured and monitored, the team is regularly updated on any significant changes. If, however, the established processes no longer make sense due to the demands of the company and external clients, the team has an opportunity to provide their input on how to improve workflow. There’s a level of trust built at this level as employees see how carefully managed and supported their work is.
Preserves integrity – A final work product in line with the company’s requirements is the goal for everyone on the team. With quality assurance in place, the standard is consistently met (or goes above and beyond), preserving the integrity of the work and the mission the organization is set out to achieve.
Greater awareness of current procedures – Quality assurance tracking enables leadership to have a greater awareness of the processes surrounding the team. Foundational knowledge is needed in order to stay proactive about procedures that no longer serve the company. Quality assurance tracking also ensures that managers and leads are able to train new employees in the correct methods and techniques that are appropriate for the roles. Without this awareness of current procedures, there is little to no way of effectively monitoring what processes are working and what are considered detrimental to the team’s progress.
Consistent operations – Quality assurance tracking ensures operations are running smoothly and producing solid deliverables. One of the greatest benefits of having quality assurance is achieving consistency in all work-related procedures. Nothing demotivates a team like unorganized and confusing processes. The running of consistent operation is key to stabilizing the team and the organization as a whole. According to Qualio, business researchers state that businesses with inconsistent processes are 5 times more likely to negatively impact customers than the delivery of a poor product. Developing and reviewing processes that minimize the risk of disastrous results like this is paramount to ensuring a company’s overall success.
Happier customers – Because quality assurance allows for reliable delivery of the team’s best work, the happier (and more confident) the clients will be with the company as their provider. The final product will be in line with what they expected to receive and bolsters the reputation of the organization as a whole. There will be fewer overall defects or hiccups that can impede a customer’s satisfaction with their product and their trust and support of the company increases.
Continuous improvement – Quality assurance helps a company embrace the constant need to adapt and make important improvements that help a business move forward into the future. With a continuous drive to improve upon themselves, organizations can reap huge benefits such as strengthened employee performance, increased engagement, and flexible leadership. This makes it easier to cultivate a work culture unopposed to facing complex issues and helps the team to actively seek out more effective methods of problem-solving.
Effective decision-making – Since monitoring and assessment of the organization’s processes occur in real-time, leadership is able to make objective decisions based on recent and accurate data presented before them. They can use this information and make strategic and effective decisions in commiseration with their fellow colleagues. The goal is to achieve continuous improvement, so the decision-making aspect of any workflow and operations is crucial as it moves the team closer to the company’s main goals. Quality assurance also ensures the decision-making process within their own team is done in a proactive manner and not a reactive one, which can make or break the quality of final products and increase stress amongst the team members.
Saves money – Quality assurance is an important layer of support for a project’s life cycle and contributes to an organization’s business growth. A lack of quality assurance during essential operations can cause a loss of time, resources, and money. An effective quality assurance tracking system allows the company to save money by decreasing the work (and time) that’s necessary to continuously fix defective products. The more the final deliverable is error-free, the more the customer base will trust in their hard-earned efforts and continue to purchase from them. Catching issues along the way, and in earlier stages of development, will help reduce the development cost and stay within a designated budget. In the long run, having excellent quality assurance measures allows the organization to increase its profitability.

Quality Assurance Tracking In Any Profession

Let’s take a look at how quality assurance is used throughout a variety of different professions.

Healthcare – To determine a hospital’s capacity for providing service and care, quality assurance measures can be used to determine staffing capacity (nurse-to-patient ratio), the number of beds available, types of specialties and services, etc.
Education – In order to support schools in their innovation and creativity with students, there needs to be a regular, systematic review of school leaders, student assessments, subjects, and other evaluations to continue the trajectory of quality and efficiency.
Construction – One of the biggest issues facing professionals in the construction field is the amount of work that needs to be redone as some of the team may not have the resources they need in order to do the job correctly (or completely) the first time. A quality assurance measure preventing this type of rework is developed to prevent these types of issues from reoccurring.
Scientific Laboratories – In order to avoid critical mistakes that waste time and resources during routine experiments, quality assurances in laboratories include measures such as regular documentation of experimental methods, double-checking labels as part of the process before beginning certain tasks, or removing the possibility of contamination by following a strict protocol for sterilization.
Business – To keep the processes moving and error-free, businesses can develop detailed checklists, perform audits of past assignments, review process documentation and standards before project kick-off to ensure that operations for project management are on a solid foundation.

Despite the different nature of these fields, there’s a common thread that ties them together: a consistent method of quality assurance tracking that examines the processes so the company meets its goals.

In Conclusion

Quality assurance tracking is beneficial for an organization as it helps ensure that tight protocols exist, supporting the entirety of the project (and team) and resulting in a high-quality deliverable. Understanding the fundamental operations of the business and looking to improve and expand the processes will help shepherd everyone towards success.

December 24, 2021December 24, 2021

The Craft of Smart Planning: How to Handle Defects in Scrum

Have you ever planned a car trip? Sometimes when you finally get out on the road, everything works like clockwork: the highways are empty and the sun is shining the whole time.

However, on other occasions, all the hotels are booked, or you hit inclement weather that delays the trip for days.

Planning a project with agile is no different. Even in the best planned sprints, the deliverable deviates from what was anticipated. These defects need to be addressed in order to deliver a quality product.

Yet, fixing defects increases a project’s scope, making it very difficult to forecast the completion date.

There’s no cut and dry method for managing defects. However, the ceremonies and roles in the scrum framework provide methods for tracking them. Let’s look at some approaches for handling defects in scrum, as well as some of their pros and cons.

1. Fix Defects During the Sprint

The most straightforward way to fix a defect is to work on it right when it’s detected. This solves the problem straight away.

However, a good agile team produces work at a consistent pace, and fixing defects mid-way could pose a challenge to this principle.

A time-consuming defect impacts the outcome of the sprint. In a sprint where two user stories were planned, fixing a defect may mean only one is brought over the finish line.

This causes the team’s velocity to go down. (Velocity is measured in the total point value of stories a team completes during a sprint.) A velocity that see-saws, producing a lot of work in one sprint, and very little in the next, isn’t agile.

Routinely fixing defects as they’re discovered also skews the story point estimates, making it hard for teams to plan sprints going forward.

2. Add Defects to Product Backlog

Another approach to handling a defect is to add it to the product backlog as an individual story.

This “work is work is work” mindset gives a defect equal weight as any other user story. The defect is assigned points, and completing it adds to the team’s velocity.

This is a good approach, in that it gives the developers credit for the time spent working on the defect.

However, this also has a way of incentivizing defects. When developers receive gold stars for working on defects, they aren’t concerned about preventing them in the first place.

A second option, then, is to add the defect to the product backlog but not assign it any points. Although this is probably a superior approach, it can be disheartening to a team. Time spent working on a defect detracts from time it would spend on a user story. The team feels like it’s taking three steps forward then two steps backward.

As you can see, handling defects as they’re detected is a bit of a conundrum. It’s hard to both fix them and maintain a constant velocity.

Utilizing the planning and reflecting ceremonies in scrum helps to resolve these complexities. Let’s look at some of them.

3. Play Planning Poker

When a team notices a lot of defects showing up during a sprint, sometimes this means the stories are too complex, and need to be broken down.

Planning poker is a method for estimating the complexity of a story. Teams “play” this during sprint planning.

In this game, team members use cards with numbers on them to rate the complexity of individual stories. So as not to be influenced by other team members, the point values are assigned privately, then the teammates reveal their estimates at the same time.

A higher point value indicates more complexity, meaning a story would take longer to complete.

The point values are based on the rapidly increasing Fibonacci sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55). An estimate of 55, for example, indicates a lot of uncertainty around a task. In this instance, the story should be broken down into simpler tasks so the team has a better understanding of the work entailed.

A point assignment of 3 or 5, however, indicates the work is fairly straightforward and predictable.

Making accurate story point estimates keeps velocity constant and enables a team to complete everything in its sprint backlog.

When a team becomes familiar with software work and puts some time into making these estimates, it’s able to assign point estimates that take potential defects into account.

4. Identify Patterns in Defects

In order to track and manage defects, it’s helpful for a team to categorize the types of defects it encounters.

One type of defect in software development is build defects, caused during the development process. Another are release defects, which are defects that have passed the user acceptance testing (UAT), and made it to market.

After a team has worked on several sprints together, it’s able to identify patterns in its defects and plan accordingly.

For example, high incidence of build defects indicates the team needs to focus on improving the development process. A pattern of release defects indicates a need to improve its UAT.

A sprint retrospective is the ideal time for a team to discuss any patterns it detects, and work to collaboratively improve its processes and systems.

5. Refine the Definition of Done

Each iteration, or sprint, in the agile cycle works toward creating increment to pass onto the end user. When a team pushes to create this increment, it may not go through sufficient testing, resulting in a sloppy product with many defects.

In order to manage defects, a team needs to create criteria for what it means for increment to be code complete. Usually, this entails more than just writing the code.

It may include identifying and clarifying technical debt in the product backlog, and implementing processes for testing and reviewing increment before its release.

A thorough “definition of done” sometimes entails having a “done checklist.”

6. Hold Sprint Retrospectives

The sprint retrospective is the ceremony most scrum teams skip. However, consistently practicing this ceremony helps a team handle defects.

A retrospective allows a team to address systemic issues and defects as they occur, and prevents a scenario where a team needs to dedicate an entire sprint to fixing all the defects in the previous weeks’ work.

Whenever a sprint produces defects, the team has plenty to discuss at the retrospective. It’s important for a leader to allow the team to run this discussion. The scrum master may guide a conversation, but he or she doesn’t direct it.

7. Elect a Good Product Owner

It’s essential for a team to have a product owner who knows what’s what.

One of the agile principles is about “maximizing the amount of work NOT done.” When a product manager grooms the product backlog, he or she is looking for the stories that are going to really move the needle for a project, not necessarily those tasks that keep the team busy.

By addressing any technical debt in the backlog, and selecting cleanup stories for the sprint, a product owner addresses defects as they arise.

Keeping the stories broken down into small, manageable amounts of work also helps to manage defects.

8. Run a Hardening Sprint

The goal for a scrum team is to deliver increment at the end of an iteration.

However, when a team hasn’t sufficiently dealt with defects during individual sprints, a hardening sprint is helpful for cleaning up messes and clearing up bottlenecks.

It’s good to be transparent in the product backlog as to the necessity of a hardening sprint by disclosing any technical debt. This lets the stakeholders understand what is going on.

The hardening sprint is generally used as a last resort.

When a team has a solid definition of what “done increment” looks like, stories are broken down with accurate estimates, and retrospectives are utilized, then a hardening sprint shouldn’t be necessary.

Conclusion

Handling defects has a lot to do with good planning and reflecting.

The scrum framework of working in iterations and then reflecting provides many opportunities to fix defects, and to resolve systemic issues that cause them.

Sprint planning and sprint retrospectives are central ceremonies for managing defects. Tracking the types of defects a team comes across is also key.

The good thing about agile is that you’re fixing defects as they arise. In this respect, it’s far superior to waterfall, which allows defects to pile up until the end of the project. At this point, when there’s literally thousands of defects, it’s impossible to address them all.

So even if your scrum team has to run a hardening sprint, or the velocity see-saws from time to time, it’s in a much better place than it would be using waterfall!

Managing defects is particularly challenging in a distributed agile team. Teamly’s sophisticated project management software offers a wealth of resources to keep remote teams agile. Come check us out today!

December 24, 2021January 7, 2022

7 Benefits of Outsourcing to India

A rising number of organizations are looking for better, more efficient ways to improve their business processes and save on costs. One of the ways in which a company can make this happen is by outsourcing essential and non-essential functions to a third party either inside, or outside, the United States. One of the most desired outsourcing destinations in the world is India.

India has become an in-demand and increasingly popular resource for those looking to outsource some work outside the country. According to Classicinformatics, 80% of firms in the US and Europe chose India over any other country for their outsourcing needs. There are a variety of benefits as a result of choosing to outsource to India – the talent pool alone is expansive, offering more opportunities – that can help streamline and create a robust (and international) workflow process within the company. Here is what you need to know about outsourcing to India. Let’s first define outsourcing.

What is Outsourcing?

Outsourcing is the practice of hiring a third party to complete services or other business functions that originally were done in-house by the company’s own employees. One of the most prevalent examples of this in action is within the Information Technology (IT) field. Some companies may choose to hire IT developers or tech support from another business without making them employees of the organization as it helps cut down on costs. Other areas that are frequently outsourced include one-time projects, marketing, customer service, or financial services. Let’s take a look at another small example. A small business has a need for editing services for its marketing materials. Instead of hiring a new employee to do this work (or increasing the workload of one of the existing team members), the company decides they’ll hire a contractor to perform the essential functions needed for editing only. This saves the company time and money when outsourcing this particular need and helps free up the team to focus on their main objectives.

It’s important to keep in mind that when considering the possibility of outsourcing work, there are three distinct types:

Offshoring – Outsourcing work to a different, distant country
Nearshoring – Outsourcing to a neighboring country often with the company’s own time zone
Onshoring – Outsourcing within the company’s own country

Offshoring and nearshoring have been the most popular choices for a company looking for a way to save on costs.

What are the benefits of outsourcing?

Outsourcing may prove beneficial to an organization for many a variety of reasons:

Opens up a wider possibility for talent – Companies will have more access to a variety of different skills, resources, and experiences. Most importantly, the availability of highly-specialized skills in widely considered challenging fields becomes an appealing option for companies looking to provide a competitive edge.
Allows the core team to focus on main goals – If a company decides to outsource some of the more time-consuming, non-essential business functions, then the core team can focus on its main objectives, have more room to implement strategic decisions, complete more company-wide goals, and get more work done faster.
Streamlined processes – With parts of the work outsourced to a different firm or company, the organization as a whole can review, clarify, and refine more of its internal operations, create streamlined processes that make sense for the entire team and execute on best practices that benefit the company.
More flexibility to meet the demands of the market – As with any business, the market constantly fluctuates. Outsourcing parts of the business operations can help create a flexible way for the team to meet any changes from external clients and provide everyone with resources to meet the demand.
Access to more innovation – Outsourcing some work can also mean increased collaboration between thought leaders and experts in their respective fields. This exchange of ideas can allow for more creative thinking between the two companies – an opportunity to learn from the other. Outsourcing could even potentially lead to other areas of evolved partnership.
Lower labor costs – When a company chooses to outsource, there are lower labor rates or reduced (or no) fringe benefits costs. According to CapitalCounselor, the top reason why 70% of companies decide to outsource is cost reduction.
Tailored services – Whether it’s a single project that needs to be outsourced or an entire division of the business, outsourcing can provide a simplified way to find a way to get the work done efficiently and quickly. It’s completely tailored to the business need, with professionals highly skilled in that specific niche. For example, if a business is looking to outsource its accounting division, engaging with a company specifically involved in the financial industry can open up a wealth of opportunities at a fraction of the cost.

While there are indeed many benefits to outsourcing, we should also consider some of the disadvantages.

What are the disadvantages of outsourcing?

With outsourcing, of course, comes some risk:

Time-zone differences – Especially if the company chooses to offshore some of its business practices, a drastic time-zone difference can have huge ramifications on the team and workflow. It takes careful planning and coordination to ensure all relevant parties are included in essential meetings and decision-making processes. Time-zone differences will also need to be accounted for when it comes to project management. If a few individuals on the team are in a variety of time zones, this will need to be considered when setting up a timeline for when assignments are due. If not managed correctly, this could create some delays (and misunderstandings) in the delivery of final projects.
Language barriers – Outsourcing to a different country also comes with having potential language barriers that could make certain tasks difficult. Unfortunately, some messages or instructions can be lost in translation or misinterpreted entirely. If the outsourced company doesn’t have a firm understanding of English, translators aren’t readily available, and the internal team doesn’t know how to carefully and tactfully communicate in a way that bridges the gap, there are bound to be many complications in the process, which could cause heavy delays and setbacks. Offshoring can also present some cultural barriers in addition to language ones. For example, cultural barriers can affect how employees and contractors interact with each other, share ideas, or manage disagreements. It can even seep into relevant areas such as negotiation, trust development, and prospective deals.
Loss of some control – When a company decides to outsource some of its work, that means potentially losing some control over those particular processes. The company loses some of its grip on monitoring how the work gets done. This means trust plays a heavy role in outsourcing. It may take a few cycles of consistent, high-quality work to achieve this level of trust and reliability.
Hidden Costs – Outsourcing work is generally perceived as being a cost-saver, however, companies must still be extra cautious about lengthy contracts, making sure they have their HR or legal department read any commitments thoroughly. There could be hidden fees, unexpected costs, or higher hourly rates that the company didn’t account for.
Increased Criticism – One of the major criticisms of outsourcing is the idea that more work opportunities and chances to further develop one’s professional career are given to outsourced companies, particularly outside the US, which has drawn criticism over the years. Much of the complaints are inevitable, with some of the public having a strong opinion about outsourcing to other companies overseas. It’s important to keep in mind the company’s needs and if outsourcing is truly a way to create a better and bigger future for the internal team.

Now we have defined outsourcing, how it can benefit organizations, and the various disadvantages companies may come across. With India being a favored resource for outsourcing, let’s talk about why companies choose to outsource to India.

Benefits of Outsourcing to India

India is likely on its way to becoming a tech leader by the year 2030, which is just one of the many reasons why companies decide to outsource to India. According to OutsourceAccelerator, India ranks as one of the top resources for outsourcing, especially for its services in IT and Software Development. Here are some of the other most important factors that make India such a vital asset in the global market:

Little to no language barrier – One of the major disadvantages of outsourcing to a different country is the language barrier. According to Maps of the World: Top 10 English Speaking Countries, India ranks at the top of the list at number two with just over 125 million people being English speakers – the second largest in the world after the US. This means that communication with an Indian workforce will likely be smooth and the language barrier minimally disruptive, opening up some avenues in which they can provide additional services like customer support.
Increasing talent pool – The talent pool in India increases each and every year. Another statistic from Classicinformatics states that over 3.1 million graduates from various colleges and universities are added to the growing job pool. With this massive amount of knowledge flowing into India’s workforce, outsourcing companies have a wide variety of different levels of expertise and skills they can rely upon to deliver outstanding work. Talented experts in their field are brought on to make meaningful contributions to the company, which in turn, can result in a fluid exchange of ideas, increasing cultural competencies, and can create a multicultural appeal. Additionally, the onboarding process moves rather quickly. Under regular circumstances, a company needs to go through a full and fair recruitment process in order to hire the perfect candidate. However, the hiring process in itself can be a long road. From the posting of the job ad to sourcing, interviews, and finally selection, the prospective employee must then undergo a background check which can take anywhere between a few days through a couple of weeks (and assuming there are no glaring red flags that would cause a company to rethink their decision). After this, the onboarding procedure can begin with a selected start date and an additional meeting with the company’s HR department to complete all the necessary legal paperwork. When a company outsources to India, skilled professionals are available almost immediately. Once the contract is reviewed and signed, these professionals can start right after the agreement is fully executed.
Unparalleled IT workforce – The Indian workforce supplies one of the world’s most robust IT services and offerings. Booming with advanced technology and excellent web customization, navigation, solutions, and development, the Indian IT workforce has been known to stay on top of emerging trends in technology to meet the demands of this specific field and advance their skills. The infrastructure devoted to IT services has boasted big companies such as Trigent, Clarion Technologies, Netgains, Qburst, and GirnarSoft. According to a white paper by Backoffice Pro, the Indian IT industry has expanded into the US, Europe, and Latin America. Over 200,000 graduates are added every year to the Indian IT workforce, resulting in India having the youngest employable population in the world (the average being 29 years of age). In the age of digital advances, this particular population will be key in the development of the technology market and its evolving innovation.
Reduction in costs – Because of India’s large population and cost of living, there is a lower cost for labor. This is a stark contrast to the US which has a high cost of living compared to the major of other countries. When you factor in all the different variables that go into an employee’s overall cost including the cost of fringe benefits, equipment needed to perform the job efficiently, taxes, competitive pay package, and other incentives (especially for a higher-level position), the cost of US labor can be quite high. According to the same white paper by Backoffice Pro, a developer in the US can cost a company $50-80 hourly, compared to an Indian developer who could charge as low as $15 hourly. This drastic reduction in cost can allow a company to have more flexibility within its budget and make strategic decisions towards its staffing needs depending on its unique circumstances.
High-quality work – Because of the level of skill and expertise from the highly-trained Indian workforce required in various business markets, the result is likely in high-quality work and services. In order to provide the best quality, the Indian workforce is usually up-to-date on the latest trends and the technology needed to facilitate a fast transfer of work with opportunities to collaborate and share ideas and resources frequently. Not only is the turnaround time reduced, but the work also comes at a much lower rate.
Stable Government – With India’s stable government and one of the world’s largest democracies, this minimizes the risk of any international work disruption that could potentially wreak havoc on internal work processes.
Ensures a company is sufficiently staffed – Another major benefit of outsourcing to India is building a layer of reliability and retention for the core business team. If the workflow ever threatens to overwhelm the team, a company can then rely on its outsourced team to provide support where needed. An efficient way to do this in the workplace is to assign certain tasks to the contractor, ensuring that they still receive meaningful work and preserving the workflow of the team.

There are a variety of benefits that come with outsourcing to India, and it’s easy to see why companies would choose India as its number one choice in outsourcing considering all the valuable advantages. While the IT field prevails as India’s most valuable source of expertise, there are other areas of business that benefit from outsourcing to India.

Extensive Industry Coverage

It isn’t just IT services that have gained huge momentum over the years as one of the top choices for outsourcing to India. Other vital areas of business outsourced to India include:

Retail
Media
Manufacturing
Customer support/services
Accounting/Financial/Payroll services
Data management
Call center
Software development
Human Resources
Procurement

There is much opportunity here for a company to outsource these different functions. As a result of this wide range of services, India remains in the top position as the world’s most preferred country for offshoring services.

In Conclusion

There is an increasing number of benefits when a company decides to outsource to India. Aside from cost savings and a wider talent pool, a company has a chance to expand its global network and influence and create streamlined processes that benefit its entire system. 68% of companies in the US now frequently outsource their services in hopes of alleviating their core team and building a method of operations that ensures high-quality services and outcomes.

While it’s certain that there are many advantages to outsourcing to India, it’s equally as important to understand some of the risks naturally associated with any type of outsourcing decision for a business. It’s essential for companies to remember that a full assessment of their needs is vital in this decision. It must be an absolute necessity for the current state of the team and the organization in order to begin the process of outsourcing its services as there could be some unexpected costs. However, if the demand is present after a careful examination of the company’s business processes, then the benefits of outsourcing to India could outweigh any risk.

December 24, 2021January 7, 2022

Master Your To-Do List and Get Things Done

To-do or not to-do… that is the question!

But if you are reading this, you have decided that you need to do a to-do list.

The name describes its function: a to-do list is simply a list of tasks that you would like to accomplish. There are quite literally millions of templates designed to plug and play but having a deeper understanding of the psychology of to-do lists will ensure you are using this powerful tool to its full potential.

What is the Difference Between a To-Do List and a Checklist?

To-do list and checklist are terms that are often used interchangeably, but there are some very important distinctions to consider.

A to-do list is a specific list of tasks that you wish to accomplish in a set amount of time, usually daily but sometimes more long term.

A checklist is a to do list but it is specific to a repeatable process.

For example, maybe you are going camping this weekend. On your to-do list for the day, you will see “pack for camping trip”. The act of packing is a task that you wish to accomplish that day so it belongs on a to-do list. If camping is a regular activity for you, it is helpful to have a camping packing checklist. Though you have gone camping before, having a checklist will take the pressure off of our brain to remember what it was that you packed (or forgot to pack) last time.

You may think that you have done something enough times to not need a checklist but some of the brightest minds in the most complicated professions make use of checklists… and in some cases, it actually saves lives! Dr. Atul Gawande, author of The Checklist Manifesto and responsible for the Safe Surgery Initiative and Checklist, was able to reduce surgery related complications and deaths by over 35% with his simple yet effective checklist for surgery procedures. He found that simple steps were missed in preparation for procedures, even by the best of surgeons. Having a consistent and standard checklist took the pressure off of an already intense process by having a simple 19 point one page checklist to refer to.

Okay, so you may not be performing life saving surgery but if some of the smartest minds make use of this simple system, it is safe to say that implementing it in your own life will also have a positive impact.

Creating Effective Checklists

Greg McKeown, author of Effortless: Make It Easier to do What Matters Most, has a simple 4 item list to consider when creating your checklists:

Observe your process
Record your process
Refine your process
Teach your process to others

Greg is a big fan of actually recording yourself during the process and note what could be done better. Recording yourself may help you find efficiencies in your own process. Teaching others your process is a great way to retain the information and may even help someone else be more productive. In completing these steps, you are effectively creating a template checklist that can be reused by yourself or others.

Consider your everyday tasks and note what repeatable processes would benefit from a checklist.

Your Brain Likes To-Do Lists

The human brain is plastic, meaning that it is capable of changing as we take in new information or form new habits.

Think about it, we can literally change how our brains are wired by implementing helpful systems. Once we form a habit, it becomes automatic which is actually a great way to conserve our brainpower for more complicated tasks.

Your brain is a big fan of to-do lists. When you write down your to-dos, it gives permission to your brain to let them go. We tend to use our brain as this short term storage unit when that isn’t how it works and is not optimal for your productivity or energy.

Jot it down, your brain will thank you.

The Brain Dump

A clear brain is a happy brain.

Before you even think about drafting to-do lists, you need to perform a brain dump. A brain dump, like to-do lists, is pretty self explanatory: take what is taking up space in your brain and dump it onto a page or digital document.

Every. Single. Thing.

The first time that you do this, you may feel a bit overwhelmed. Chances are that you have been relying heavily on your brain to store unfinished tasks or ideas and have quite the backlog. Fortunately, you will start to feel lighter as you pour everything on to the page.

Have you ever wondered why unfinished tasks tend to take up so much space in our heads? Why do they pop up at the most inconvenient times? Russian psychologist Bulma Zeigarnik called this phenomenon the Zeigarnik effect. He suggests that unfinished tasks create cognitive tension and your brain keeps bringing it forward in an attempt to keep it in our short term memory so as not to forget it.

The magic of a brain dump is that you can get these tasks and ideas out of your head and to a safe place so your brain doesn’t feel the need to constantly remind you. Letting your brain rest will keep it energized for more demanding and important tasks.

Try scheduling a regular time for brain dumps. While once a week would be great, but even once a month would make a big difference in how you feel. Try doing a brain dump at the end of the week and you may find that you spend less time on your weekends ruminating about unfinished work to-dos.

To-Do List for Mental Health

Creating to-do lists can keep you on task but they also have surprising mental health benefits.

Most people today will describe feeling overwhelmed or stressed which is an unfortunate reality of our hustle culture. While the pandemic certainly has people rethinking work and life balance, most people are still left with heavy workloads and conflicting priorities.

Not only will writing down your daily tasks help to keep you organized, there is a real reward when you check off an item on your list – it is called dopamine. Dopamine is the “happy” hormone and we feel it because that checked off item represents an accomplishment – big or small. Even if a task can be done quickly, take a minute to add it to your to do list if only just to check it off because that small dopamine hit may just carry you through to the next task and the one after that.

While it is important to keep your professional work out of the space that you sleep in, having a notepad beside your bed to jot down to-dos will get them out of your head and actually help you to sleep better. The Zeigarnik effect is a notorious disrupter of sleep and the last thing you should be thinking about at the end of the day is unfinished or pending tasks. With practice, you will be able to jot these to-dos down at the end of your workday instead of before you go to bed. Knowing that there is a place for these thoughts, should they creep into your head, provides you with a sense of comfort knowing you won’t fall asleep to the tune of pending to-dos.

Feeling as though you are productive and are contributing to something outside of yourself is a cornerstone of mental health and to-do lists can help you accomplish that. There are times in our day where we have some unexpected time on our hands – Clients cancel, flights are late, or any number of unexpected things come up that give us unaccounted for blocks of time in your day. When you have a to-do list handy, you will likely be able to move to another task. You will feel productive which is a great boost to your overall mental health.

Types of To-Do Lists

Generally speaking, there are two main types of to-do lists – short and long term. Before dissecting the different types, it is important to understand how to be SMART with any type of list.

SMART To-Do Lists

Every task on your short or long term to-do list should be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time Bound.

Specific

It is tempting to have less items on your list and be more vague in their descriptions. You may decide to write down “prepare for team meeting” as an item on your list but being more specific will be more helpful in managing your time and keeping you on track. Ask yourself what exactly is needed to prepare for this meeting:

Is there any preliminary research to be done?
Do you need to draft an agenda?
Are there minutes from a previous meeting to review?
Do you need to prepare a visual presentation?
Have they been sent a reminder?
Is there any documentation you will need to print?

The one task of preparing for a client meeting was easily broken down into 6 possible SMART tasks. While this may add more items to your list, they are more specific and will help ensure that you are fully prepared and don’t miss anything.

Measurable

When it comes to ensuring that a task is measurable, you need to consider what it will look like when it is complete. If you have a task on your list to clear your inbox, a measurable indicator of the task being completed would be an empty inbox. Another task may be to find a better deal on a company cell phone or internet plan. The measure involved in that task’s completion would be a reduced phone or internet bill.

Oftentimes, measurement isn’t a specific number but more about the status of the outcome. If your theoretical client meeting ends with a happy customer, your measurement would be in terms of satisfaction.

Attainable

Be real, do you think you can actually finish your end of year report in one day with 20 other items on your to-do list? Likely not.

Refer back to the first item in the SMART acronym, specific. Break a task down in a way that is designed to set you up for success and be reasonable with the time and energy that will be required of you to complete it.

Perhaps completing an end of year report isn’t attainable in a single day, the best you can manage is the outline of the report or the collection of supporting materials. That is okay! When you set attainable to-dos, you are setting yourself up for success (and a nice dopamine hit).

Relevant

Is the task on your list relevant to your end goal? The answer to this question can depend on how you manage and categorize your lists. It is helpful to have several lists to lump relevant tasks together but also to ensure that you have goals that those tasks will combine to reach. Grouping tasks together will also help you maintain focus. Jumping from client meeting presentation to end of year report will cost you time in the switch so it may be more efficient to dedicate your morning to writing related activities and afternoon to meetings, lumping the relevant tasks together.

If you have a list in front of you, it may be helpful to actually write the goal at the beginning of the list. Ask yourself if you check off every item, will you be steps closer to that goal? If you are writing an end of year report, every task on that list should take you one step closer to completing that specific and measurable goal.

Time-bound

Deadlines are essential. You can run with the assumption that the items on your to-do list are due by the end of the day which works for some, but certain tasks will have deadlines that exist within the run of the day and should be noted. Noting deadlines will help you prioritize your daily activities, taking the guesswork out of the flow for your day.

Short Term To-Do Lists

Short term to-do lists are more familiar and include those that you would use for daily tasks. These often look like a notepad with checkboxes on your desk, a magnet pad on your fridge, or a list written on a whiteboard. These items are generally one time items like those specific to a particular task such as preparing for a work presentation. To-do lists are also often used for household chores and maintenance.

A work to-do list may look something like this:

Check voicemail
Send email to client regarding the status of the venue
Choose a template for the end of year presentation
Send in lunch order before 11:00am
Draft agenda for team meeting

A personal to-do list may look something like this:

Drop cupcakes off at the school before 9:00am
Fill up gas tank
Pick up part for the lawnmower
Clean cat litter
Wash bedding

While there are endless possibilities when it comes to individual lists, these examples all clearly demonstrate a specific task that can be done in a regular day. When a time isn’t specified or the task is non-time specific, it is safe to assume that the task simply needs to be accomplished at some point during the day. The cat litter can be changed anytime but the cupcakes need to be dropped off before the class party.

Long Term

Anything that cannot be completed in a day is considered an item to add to your long term to-do list. If you go to the next metric, it would make sense that you may also make use of weekly or even monthly to do lists. While not as detailed, these lists provide a bigger picture or an overview of the period of time and can be referenced in order to develop effective daily lists. For example, your weekly to-do list may note certain reports or presentations that are due. This list can be used to develop more specific items to be done in the course of a day to make the larger task more manageable.

Another example could be a larger project such as reaching a certain sales goal by the end of the year. This one item could live on your long term to-do list and be further broken down by goals for the month and weekly actions that will help get you there such as running a promotion or drafting a plan.
When you consider the utility of long term to-do lists. It is easy to see how long term to-do lists can be helpful for breaking down daily tasks to help you reach your goals.

Master To-Do List

While it does fall in the category of long term to-do lists, it is worth specifically mentioning the master to-do list…The to-do list of all to-do lists.

Think of a master to-do list as an organized brain dump, a place where you can add any tasks for both short and long term lists. If you have done your brain dump properly, you should end up with a number of items, some of which have nothing to do with each other all in one place. It is helpful to use a digital document so that you may easily copy and paste, grouping similar tasks and breaking down larger ones.

With everything in one place, you can pull from your master to-do list and add to your daily, weekly, or even monthly lists. Some items may remain on your master to-do list for a while and that is okay, you can get to them when they become a priority and they will be safely stored and out of your head in the meantime.

Creating Templates to Increase Productivity

We often find ourselves doing the same or similar tasks over and over again in our professional and personal lives. If this is the case for you, it may be helpful to create some templates that you can use to save time and energy.

If you travel regularly, it would be helpful to create a checklist of the items that you know you will need. Even if you have traveled dozens of times, having a list will ensure that you haven’t forgotten anything and take the load off your brain from having to dig around and find information from your past. Remember, even surgeons do it.

Another handy use of templates would be for work. If you work for an organization that plans events, it would be helpful to have checklists for pre and post event planning. Given that the event planning process looks similar each time, you can look professional and be prepared at the same time.

Invest some time to create templates that will save you time in the long run.

To-Do Tips

Big or small, short term or long term, to-do lists can help you reach your goals.

What do you wish to have accomplished at the end of the day? Perhaps you have a report that is due, a meeting with a client, or graphics to design for a new webpage. In an ideal world, you can picture the end of your day having accomplished the tasks specific to your goal.

But it isn’t enough to simply write “complete report” on your list. Depending on the type of report, you may have some research to do, some feedback to collect, or even need to design a template that can be used for future reports.

Bring it all back to your goal and the specific actions you need to do to accomplish it. Here are some final tips to ensure that your to-do lists are as effective as possible:

Be SMART – Make sure that every item on your list is Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time Bound.
Prioritize – When did “priority” become “priorities”? Having multiple priorities simply waters down the importance and significance of having a single one. That does not mean that you only ever have to-do lists with only one item but it does mean that you understand that you have an order to the tasks that you wish to accomplish.
Pick a Medium – While some people can manage both digital and physical lists it is best to pick one and stick with it.
Use Categories – Keeping your to-dos organized by using categories will help keep you focused on the task at hand. It isn’t enough to breakdown work and personal, having categories within these lists will benefit you.
Schedule Prep Time – Your to-do lists are not going to make themselves, put some time and consideration into drafting them and ensure they align with your goals of the day.

To-do lists are an incredibly helpful tool that you can use to stay focused and boost your productivity. Plan a brain dump, create a master to-do list, and start organizing your tasks in a way that will serve you.

December 24, 2021March 28, 2023

Work From Home? Here is how to Separate Your Space

Not only are more people working remotely, but one Owl Labs study says that half of their respondents indicated that they would not even consider returning to a job that didn’t offer at least part time remote options. Currently, In the U.S. alone, almost 70% of workers are working from home.

Early in the pandemic, you didn’t have to look far to find people making makeshift offices in spare bedrooms, dining room tables, or even closets! Innovation and creativity fueled a new wave of people learning how to work with what they had available and set up a workspace that has been traditionally supplied to them. Almost 2 years later, most people have gotten at least somewhat comfortable with their at home workspace and have been more than willing to share their tips and tricks for making it work at home.

Consider Your Work Needs

First things first, you need to consider your professional needs before you start rearranging furniture or emptying closets. For example, a photographer’s workspace will look different than a corporate office workers space and will make use of different technology and gadgets.

To figure out the space you will need, list the technology and other space related needs that you require:

Laptop or desktop computer?
Fancy audio setup or basic headset?
Space for books or paper documents?
Physical or digital notepad?

If you have (or plan to have) a desktop computer set up, you may need a bit more space than someone who works from a laptop and the same can be said if you will have paper documents that you will need for reference. For some, the dining room table is a great place because they like to spread out and see everything that they are working on at once. For others, the kids get home at 3:00pm and it is a mad dash to clear the table for homework and supper.

Another aspect to consider would be the need for privacy. While the dining room table is appealing, you may need to have a space to take client or work related calls. Every job will look different but you need to consider what kind of physical space you will need to be productive and comfortable.

Create a Work Specific Zone

When the pandemic first hit, the line between work and home was not just blurred, it was obliterated. Work documents were mixed with children’s homework or pillows were used to prop you up in bed with a laptop. Everyone did the best they could but it is time to make your set up a bit more permanent and reestablish the boundaries between work and personal life.

If you are lucky enough to have a spare room to use as an office space, the boundary is simply an open or closed door. If you have a smaller space, set clear rules for yourself such as an open or closed laptop indicating if you are at work or at home. The more obvious the distinction between work and home, the more likely you are to actually respect that boundary. It is easy to check just one more email or jump on one more call when you have fluid work/life boundaries and that is what you want to try and avoid. Your work zone isn’t just a physical space, you need to respect (or set) reasonable work hours.

Boundaries can also be set by the clothes you wear. While working in your PJs is tempting and sometimes called for, it may be helpful to actually get dressed as if you were going to work to help set the tone. Shut that door, close that drawer, pull across that curtain, figure out your boundaries and make them clear so that you are able to tell the difference between work and personal life.

Get Creative and Personalize

Chances are that your home office space is already better than any cubicle in terms of having a personality. Exercise your creative muscles and create a space that you are inspired to work in. Be sure to include pictures of loved ones, plants, fun stationary, even a diffuser or candles if that is your thing.

Pinterest is great for ideas for small home offices, some favourites include:

Closet office conversions – removing the doors from a closet can instantly create a dreamy office space that can be hidden away with a sliding door or curtain. With a built-in desk, a couple shelves and a bit of paint, you can have an instant office space. Check out Pinterest for some creative ideas because there is no shortage of inspiring closet offices!
Spare room office combo – if you happen to host a lot, chances are that you have a spare bedroom. That space is valuable and you may still want to keep it available to guests but you still need a dedicated and private office. No worries, you can have both! If space is an issue, you can always trade in a bed for futon, daybed or Murphy bed if you want to get really fancy. When company comes, a temporary set up elsewhere in the house will do.
Fold up office – Remember the murphy bed suggestion? You can also get desks that fold up! These are more commonly called wall desks and take up very little space. They can be set up in a spare room or even a common area in your home. Instead of clearing the dining room table once a day, you can simply fold up the desk and it will be ready and waiting for you tomorrow.

Get Comfortable

Maybe you have created a cute little nook for work, complete with succulents and a vision board… but is it comfortable? Ergonomics should be a top priority for your workspace. Pinterest images of a laptop in a perfectly lighted Bohemian themed room may look pretty but the natural screen height of a laptop is not designed for long term work and comfort. Consider desk as well as screen height so that your body is properly aligned to reduce injury. You may not think that a desk job could be hard on your body but it can wreak havoc on you if you develop bad habits. Mayo Clinic has a great article outlining the basics of an ergonomic work space.

Part of your comfort also involves airflow and lighting. If the weather allows it, open a window or two and make sure that fresh air is circulating in your space. If opening a window is not an option, be sure to schedule time in your day for a walk or even step outside occasionally. Setting up near windows is a great way to get some natural light which also looks great on video chats. Make sure the light is in front of you to avoid being backlit. You can also invest in a light therapy lamp that mimics natural light if you find your office in a darker basement or closet with little light.

Clean and Organized

Home offices are as unique as the people who have them and organizing will look different to everyone. Here are 5 tips to keep your small home office organized and clutter free:

Go paperless: In this day and age, the majority of documents and work can exist in a digital space or be scanned.
Create a filing system and make use of storage containers: For the few paper items you will need, having a small portable filing system will keep you organized and paper off your valuable workspace. Storage containers will also serve this purpose but be sure to label them to find what you need easily.
Have a physical inbox: Even the most organized of us have spaces around our home and cars where paper clutter tends to collect. Anticipate it and have a physical inbox where everything goes and commit to clearing it at the end of each day
Utilize wall and drawer space: From pegboards to floating shelves, you can customize your vertical space while keeping your workspace clear and functional. In the same spirit, having several drawers to keep office supplies will also keep your workspace tidy and decluttered. You may also want to consider cable management to not have cords taking up more valuable space on or around your desk.
Keep a notepad handy: digital or paper, having a place for quick notes will help you resist the urge to have little bits or paper or sticky notes cluttering your space and distracting you.

Find Your Community

You are not the only person working from a home office, people around the world are doing this too and are full of experience and suggestions. Finding (or creating) these groups will help keep you accountable to good home office habits as well as inspire you to make the best use of the space you have.

No matter what kind of space you are working with, you can set up a small home office that works for you.

December 24, 2021December 25, 2023

13 Tasks All Business Owners Should Delegate to a Virtual Assistant

Tasks to delegate to a virtual assistant

The role of virtual assistant has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years. Along with the general remote working and freelance boom, VAs have grown from an odd curiosity to a rewarding and lucrative career. More importantly, their impact on businesses has been shown to be incredibly powerful and worth the investment many times over.

In this article, we’re looking at some of the core tasks that any small business owner or contractor could assign to VA. Grouped into 3 categories—administrative, financial, and personal—these are tasks which can radically free up your time and, therefore, add tremendous value to the business.

We’ve also taken a look at exactly what a virtual assistant does, who could benefit from hiring one, and a few key pointers for attracting the best VAs to your job posting.

What is a VA?

Virtual assistants are self-employed workers that company owners bring in to tackle work that frees up their time for more crucial tasks. The role has skyrocketed in popularity in recent years since there’s a huge opportunity gap for both sides:

For entrepreneurs or business owners — Free up a significant amount of time every week or month, ability to hire in-demand skills in one person, flexible contracts, eliminate tiresome jobs.
For virtual assistants — Good pay, flexible hours, work from anywhere, respectable profession.

The fact that virtual assistants work entirely remotely and are usually part-time are the main differentiators from traditional or executive assistants. Engaging a virtual assistant has been revolutionary for a huge number of business owners; not only does it free up time and eliminate the jobs we like least, it also gives the brain more energy to put into the highest-value tasks, making us even more effective at completing them.

Finding the right VA can be transformative for any small or medium business.

Who should hire a VA?

Generally, it’s either small business owners, entrepreneurs, or successful freelancers that engage virtual assistants. The reason why is pretty straightforward: these personas have enough complexity in their work that they massively benefit from outside help, but aren’t so established, profitable or busy as to need a full-time assistant.

One reason VAs are so in-demand is that they are capable of providing a hugely broad set of skills. While running a business does require skills that no one else in the company has (and there are jobs no one else can complete) the majority of your job probably isn’t like that.

In fact, most company owners spend most of their time doing simple logistical, administrative, sales and financial work. Work that skilled virtual assistants can do to the exact same standard and for a fraction of the cost of your time!

So that’s the real answer: anyone who wants to free up their time to perform higher-value tasks (i.e. the kind that make the company more profitable) should consider hiring a VA. Once you’ve gone down that road, you won’t believe how you ever ran your business without one.

#1—Administrative

Administration is probably the biggest area where business owners can benefit from a virtual assistant. Most of us know these tasks take up a lot of our time, but we have no idea just how much until we’ve been liberated from them. These are the most impactful administrative tasks which your VA can manage on your behalf.

Calendar & meeting management

Running your own business automatically means signing up for a disproportionate amount of time spent scheduling and attending meetings, events, trips, and lunches. You’ve got constant “catch ups” and reviews, pitches, employee reviews, creative sessions—in any industry, being the boss means having everyone fight for a piece of your attention.

But while many of these conversations are essential to running the business successfully, actually organizing them isn’t suitable work for a CEO. Let your virtual assistant take the reins! This can include:

Routing all meeting requests through your VA for approval
Giving your VA authority to schedule any calls, trips, or meetings during the day
- The key is discussing your preferences with your VA, in detail, before they start. Let them know what your biggest priorities are, any exceptions to rules, or times you aren’t to be disturbed.
Providing reminders about any upcoming meetings and their agendas
Giving your VA the authority to reschedule appointments

One of the most crucial tasks you should give your VA (which you’re probably not already doing yourself) is soliciting agendas for every meeting. Make it your VA’s job to request an accurate agenda along with every meeting request. Not only will this make your meetings more productive (since thought has gone into exactly what needs discussed) but your VA can then distill and share that agenda with you, verbally or in print, before each meeting.

The more meetings you have every week, the harder it is to be prepared and present; VA-led agendas fix this problem! Note that we said many of your meetings and appointments are essential—but not all of them. Use your VA as a filter for the meetings which don’t actually need to take place. Unlike you, your VA has no qualms about saying “no” and protecting your valuable time.

Email and communications handling

You probably receive a huge number of irrelevant emails every day. Any virtual assistant worth their salt can efficiently manage your emails in a fraction of the time it takes you—and also to a much higher standard.

By giving your VA access to your emails (with all the necessary securities in place) they can proactively manage your emails: not those you send but those you receive. They can filter emails into different folders or organize by priority and send spammy messages straight to the bin.

The result is a clean, clear inbox of messages that actually require responses. This will massively reduce the time spent meandering around your emails, but also stop that list of “unread” emails hitting 4 or 5 digits.

If you want to take things a step further, give your VA permission to respond to certain emails on your behalf. Commonly this can include:

Meeting or appointment requests (as seen in previous sections)
Pitches or proposals (standardized response)
Enquiries from potential customers (standardized response)
Personal emails
Enquiries about purchases, invoices and billing

Whatever remit you give your virtual assistant, let that authority extend to emails too—you’ll make a fortune with the time you save!

PS—If there’s something truly urgent, your VA can always update you so you don’t miss out.

Travel arrangements

The more your job requires travelling for business, the more value you can get from a good VA. To name just a few, here are ways your VA can streamline your business travels:

Research flights and accommodation — Share your travel preferences with your VA then let them screen options on your behalf. They can then present a list of options (times, prices, unique benefits) so that you can make your choice in seconds, not hours. They can also commit time to finding special deals to reduce company costs.
Booking travel — Once you’ve established a relationship with your VA, we recommend giving them full authority to pay for travel arrangements using company funds. Now instead of researching and paying for these trips, you can be handed a clean itinerary of what’s happening, when, and where.
Arrange transport — On the ground abroad, you need to navigate around the area. Your VA can be instrumental in coordinating your various events, meetings, or entertainment. They can book hire cars, arrange drivers, book taxis, or even plot the walking routes you’ll want to take to dinner.
Manage social time — If you’ll have free time on the trip, allow your VA to explore the local options that suit your tastes. This could be obtaining day passes for the local gym, booking a tee time, finding a nice restaurant for dinner—whatever you like to do, tell your VA and let them organize it for you.

Perhaps most vitally, your VA can continue to manage your communications: both domestically (so you don’t have to deal with everything while you’re abroad) but also on your trip, liaising with the local partners or clients you’re visiting.

Data entry

Data entry takes a near-infinite number of forms which all share a specific trait: it is boring but necessary. What isn’t necessary is doing this number crunching yourself. Many VAs are experts in collecting, sorting and inputting data into whatever software you need. Digitizing documents, preparing product catalogues—whatever it is, free up your time by letting your VA take charge.

Social media management

There’s a growing expectation for senior management and leaders of companies to be more involved in their digital communities, largely through some amount of social media presence. But the vast majority of senior company figures are not posting their own content or forming their own replies to posts.

Over time, your VA can become the person who knows you best in the entire company. You’ll be communicating with them constantly and, depending how you utilize their expertise, they might be heavily involved in the day-to-day running of the business, perhaps even sitting in on major strategic meetings.

Use this knowledge (and the fact many VAs are social media aficionados) and let them run your social media on your behalf. Rather than creating time to think up ideas, write & edit and then schedule them (as well as responding to comments and interacting with connections or followers) you could have one short strategy meeting every month to decide roughly what needs posted.

If this seems like a minor point, then remember that’s exactly the point: you want a VA to take on as many of your minor tasks as possible. It’s all about marginal gains: if you VA can take over 10 minor tasks, it adds up to a significant release in your schedule.

#2—Bookkeeping

While it’s more applicable for smaller businesses, getting your VA involved in financial management can save endless headaches and lost time. We’ve split this section into the 5 main areas where virtual assistants are most commonly deployed in finance and bookkeeping.

It’s important to note your VA won’t be a qualified accountant. What they can do is follow basic protocols around taking payments, issuing invoices, issuing receipts and checking over payroll—work that regularly falls into the owner’s remit!

Invoicing & collecting payment

Chasing clients for payment is the absolute least effective use of your time. Payment is absolutely critical to the business, but your strategic guidance and person management is something no one else can provide.

The beauty of a VA is that they can command more respect than the average employee (since they can operate with your name) and they usually have experience in using invoicing software. Allow them access to open accounts so they can promptly chase late payments, offer friendly reminders, and send receipts.

If you can trust your VA, this eliminates a potentially massive time suck. More pertinently, chasing clients for payment can be a huge source of stress, which bleeds into the rest of your work. Eliminate all of this by letting your VA run the show.

One final upside to this approach for smaller businesses or contractors is that communicating through an assistant lends a certain level of prestige. This can be influential in impressing clients.

Making payments

If the company needs to buy in some last-minute equipment for a project, book a venue for the Christmas party, or has any other short-notice expenses which need taking care of, your VA is the perfect person to take on the work. The same goes for fast payments to one-off contractors or bonuses; once your VA has access to the purse strings, you can move from handling those payments yourself to spending a few seconds giving instructions before returning to your other work.

If they’re already familiar with the company finances (which they will be if you’re using them for any bookkeeping) then you can advise on budget or payment methods as needed. VAs are famed for only needing this kind of instruction once and getting the job done right every time after.

Recordkeeping and expense tracking

It is a legal requirement to retain an organized log of all receipts and invoices from your business’s purchases and expenses. These are vital for ensuring you pay the right amount of tax. However, it’s also a time-consuming and arduous process.

While modern digital apps have made combining digital and print receipts much easier, doing so—while organizing them clearly by date and matching a receipt to every single expense—requires a huge amount of time and diligence. This is a priority for the business—but it should not be a priority for you personally.

Any qualified VA will be able to sort and file your records faster and more efficiently that you can. More to the point, it costs your company significantly more to do this work yourself, since your time is considerably more valuable than a $15-$30/hr virtual assistant! Simply show your assistant how your platform works (don’t be surprised if they already know how to manage recordkeeping better than you) and leave them to it.

Payroll oversight

It is your responsibility to make sure everyone gets paid the right amount every month. While this sounds easy, you know that problems can crop up and administrative errors do happen. But rather than combing through the accounts every month, why not assign responsibility to your VA?

They’re almost certainly familiar with the accounts already (and if not, what are you doing?!) and can simply send you a summary of the monthly payroll. You can retain responsibility, but with a commitment of only a few minutes per month. As with most of our suggested VA tasks, this is a no-brainer way to optimize your time and, as a result, positively impact the business.

Paperwork

Every business has financial paperwork. Sure, much of it is on the computer now, but it’s still paperwork and it’s still arduous to complete. Everything from purchase orders to new starter contracts, tax returns and insurance documents need to be carefully completed, filed and stored.

This is virtual assistant heaven. Not only will any good VA be an expert at this kind of work already (meaning there’s no need to train them up) but it’s also the type of task they love tucking into. Going forward, whenever you need to find a specific document or pull out a number from the past, your VA can hand it to you immediately.

Sure beats digging around your disastrously messy filing cabinet and spreadsheets for hours!

#3—Personal

In addition to everything we’ve discussed so far, one of the biggest areas where business owners and entrepreneurs find VAs make the most impact is in their personal lives. Running your own business requires a huge amount of time and mental effort, and sometimes the lines between home and work life become blurred.

Worse, we put so much time and effort into maintaining the business that important personal matters can fall by the wayside. Remembering birthdays or date nights, working until the shops close, failing to prioritize hobbies or personal time—these are problems for business owners of every scale.

But with a proactive VA, that no longer needs to be the case!

Shopping

Running your own company tends to mean working every hour God sends. While that might be necessary to get your business off the ground and growing fast, it usually comes at the cost of personal time and headspace.

When birthdays are coming up or Christmas is round the corner, it might well be the last thing on your mind. This is the perfect area to delegate to your VA. Not only do they have an intimate familiarity with your calendar (including birthdays and special occasions) they’re also proactive and can devote time to making the right purchases—time that most business owners simply can’t afford to give up.

Vacations and travel

When your VA is already managing your work travel, having them help outside of work is a natural extension. Booking and organizing vacations and trips isn’t difficult, per se, but it is time-consuming. You need to spend hours looking at flight and accommodation options, activities, and prices—and repeat these searches for multiple sets of dates.

If you’re in charge of organizing the family summer vacation, then put your VA in charge. Tell them broadly what you’re looking for then let them investigate. You can then have another quick meeting where they lay out all the best options, including the prices, photos, descriptions of local amenities and whatever else you want to know.

Then your job is simply to pick an option, maybe suggest a couple of changes, and everything is done. And if you don’t normally handle the holiday bookings, maybe you could volunteer knowing your VA has got you covered? As well as earning some great kudos from your other half, you’ll end up taking a wonderful vacation.

Kids, school and childminding

One of life’s biggest struggles is juggling a business and family. When your work is an extremely important part of your identity, you can’t easily “switch off” or bail out to deal with your kids. More to the point, with your insanely busy schedule it’s easy to forget about important events like the school show or an arranged play date.

Enter the VA. With an intimate knowledge of your calendar, your VA is the perfect solution to combining work and parenting easily. They can arrange your schedule so that you don’t miss your kid’s performance, but without needing to make last-minute apologies clients either.

Organizing childcare, buying presents, arranging playdates—there’s a lot of minor administrative work your VA can do to help you balance the precarious act of business ownership and parenting at the same time.

Putting together a good job description

If everything we’ve suggested so far sounds too good to be true, then realize that there is one small caveat: the best virtual assistants won’t work for just anyone, or for low pay. These people are absolute life-savers who can indirectly transform your business and personal life—and they know it. Like any worker with such a valuable skill set, they command respect and are rarely “free agents”.

The best way to catch the attention of high-quality virtual assistants is simply to advertise well. Your ad needs to be eye-catching of course, but more importantly it needs to be candid and honest: share your actual expectations and hopes for your VA, and make it clear what kind of work you do, your salary budget (and whether it’s negotiable) and what time commitment you expect.

And if you aren’t sure about any of these things, then explain that in your job advert. Tell any prospective VA that you want their insight into what they can offer, what they charge, and what time commitment they think is reasonable. You’re hiring for expertise that doesn’t currently exist in your company—use that expertise to figure out what you need!

Remember that the vast majority of VAs work part-time for their clients. So whatever hourly rate you see—$15, $30 or $50+ an hour—remember that you’re not looking at a full annual salary, and also try to remember how much money you’re saving by employing them in the first place.

Conclusion

The reality is that if you’re running a small to medium business—even if you’re an independent freelancer—and you’re profitable, then you can almost certainly benefit from delegating tasks to a virtual assistant.

It’s easy to view hiring a VA as an unnecessary expense; in reality, the right VA will enable you to increase profits. Rather than committing hours and days to non-profit-making activities (like admin and bookkeeping) you can focus entirely on marketing, sales, product development, or customer service—whatever you do that keeps the money coming in.

Perhaps the most crucial benefit for delegating to a VA is lowering stress. On top of everything else, utilizing a VA allows you to alleviate the burden of stress. You’ll find it easier to maintain a positive mindset, sustain deep focus, and drive your business forward when you’re not being dragged down by these low-value tasks.

When you consider that the side benefits include increased productivity, a healthier business and a happier personal life, then the decision to hire a virtual assistant starts to look like a no-brainer.

December 24, 2021January 7, 2022

The Future of IT Outsourcing: Can the Boom Continue?

IT outsourcing was booming before the Covid-19 pandemic came along. What started in the early late 1980s as a way to drastically slash costs has, over time, become a powerful means of accessing the exceptional talent of remote marketplaces—and the pandemic has simply accelerated this expansion.

The difference is that 20-30 years ago, the pursuit of low costs also meant hemorrhaging quality. When western companies set up IT operations overseas, those teams were not nearly as qualified as the expensive western engineers. These profit-chasing ventures caused endless headaches for firms and their customers, and many ended in disaster.

In the last few years—and especially since the pandemic has normalized remote working—the tables have turned. The education and training infrastructure in places like Bangalore has improved exponentially and IT expertise there is comparable (and often superior to) the west.

IT outsourcing is still cost-effective for western businesses, but the real prize is the ability to hire virtually any skill set and scale extremely quickly—without compromising on quality. That’s where IT outsourcing sits today—but where is it heading?

Outsourcing will continue providing in-demand skills

One thing that isn’t likely to change anytime soon is the fact that outsourcing is becoming necessary in order to access niche and bleeding-edge skill sets.

The concern has been raised that the recent global acceptance of remote work might actually hurt IT outsourcing, since companies can recruit from much larger domestic pools. The unfortunate reality is that even the biggest western economies (like the USA, UK and Germany) are absolutely starved of engineering talent—and they have been for years.

As the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, put it, “all businesses are software businesses.” With virtually every company in every industry looking to create responsive websites, build digital products or collaborate remotely, IT skills have become the most desired in the world.

With Western schools and universities not producing enough IT graduates, companies have no choice but to go where supplies are more bountiful. Today that usually means going to India, but more and more countries are looking to capitalize on this talent shortage and become outsourcing destinations.

More countries will become outsourcing “hubs”

India is currently the #1 IT outsourcing destination in the world. Of the world’s 500 biggest companies, roughly 80% have dedicated IT teams based in India. As well as access to talent, there are many other attractions: low operational costs, flexibility, attractive IT policies, incredible infrastructure for future talent and great access to cutting-edge technology.

But while India (and Bangalore in particular) is the golden boy of IT outsourcing, other countries are catching up. Across Eastern Europe, Asia and South America, outsourcing and offshoring companies are taking root.

What we can’t predict is which of these emerging locations will rise fastest. For Western European companies, having a base of operations in Romania or Poland is significantly more convenient than India—the time difference and cultural similarities make working together easier. However, the costs and current infrastructure aren’t comparable to India—yet.

We expect many rivals to crop up in the coming years. This could be great news for companies since healthy competition is always good for controlling prices.

Increased emphasis on data security

Outsourcing your software development used to mean hiring some gung-ho contractor in India or the Philippines, giving them a decent idea of what you wanted, and leaving them to run with it. The questions about data and information security have always been there, but yesterday’s companies were able to more-or-less sweep them under the rug.

Tomorrow’s companies will not have that luxury.

Some companies are in desperate need of tech talent but are afraid of opening themselves up to data hacks, exposing their IP and the security of their customers and partners. As we move forward, we can expect outsourcing partners to have robust cybersecurity rules and frameworks in place.

This is inevitable because as soon as some outsourcing companies become more diligent and prepared, others will be forced to follow—their clients will demand it. In order to stay competitive going forward, everyone in the IT outsourcing industry needs to become more aware of, and committed to, data security.

Increased reliance on integrated project management tools

Something that all distributed teams now appreciate is the fundamental role of project management and communication tools to make things run smoothly. However, combining multiple disparate tools can make things even more complicated than using no tools at all.

As is happening domestically, we expect to see more and more outsourcing teams adopt full-scale tools that cover all of their needs—such as Teamly. The beauty of a platform like Teamly is that it provides everything you need to successfully run projects and manage your teams from anywhere: project management, task scheduling, instant messaging, employee monitoring, screen recording and much more. In time, Teamly will even offer effortless, integrated video conferencing.

Outsourcing adds a new level of complexity to your business. Keeping everything (and everyone) aligned through a single tool makes the process of onboarding and managing IT outsourcing significantly easier.

Rising costs

It is very reasonable to expect the cost of shipping software projects overseas to increase markedly. There are various reasons why:

Quality — Engineers in Bangalore, for example, are every bit on par with their colleagues in the west. In the coming years we expect the cost of this elite labor to continue increasing.
Economic factors — As IT operations contribute more and more to local economies, the costs of living may well increase. Employee salaries would increase in tandem.
Incentives — There is a massive scarcity of IT workers in the west. When a company finds (or builds) a team overseas that works, they’ll want to hold onto them. It may be necessary to pay more-than-competitive wages or offer additional perks in order to retain their services.

But more simply, high-quality outsourcing is a growing industry and it holds the key to massive and sustainable development for tens of thousands of companies—and that will always come at a cost.

Offshoring will continue to replace outsourcing

Perhaps the biggest change in the future of IT outsourcing is the changing nature of outsourcing itself. In recent years, there has been a significant trend towards offshoring—that is, building your dedicated IT team abroad and integrating them with your domestic business. Companies like The Scalers have blazed this trail.

The primary difference is that while “outsourcing” is still largely driven by the pursuit of low costs, offshoring is about accessing the best talent in order to consistently deliver the best products and services to customers.

The other key difference is that with offshoring, it’s your employees working abroad—not freelancers or contractors for hire, who might drop your projects for another at the drop of a hat. Moving into 2022, IT offshoring will be the most reliable, cost-effective and strategically sound way to access world-class software development and IT talent—and the best way to retain it, too.

Conclusion

While nothing seems easy to predict anymore, the future of IT outsourcing seems to be quite certain. The industry is going to continue growing at an impressive rate—more companies offering services, more IT engineers, more countries becoming IT hubs.

Its reputation (and that of software “offshoring”) will continue to improve as more companies realize that we’re no longer talking about cheap, unreliable and unsecure outsourcing, but rather a new era of remote hiring.

IT outsourcing is more stable and reliable than it’s ever been. If you’re looking to grow or build your own IT team, now is the perfect time.

December 23, 2021December 23, 2021

How to Use the MoSCoW Prioritization Method in Agile Project Management

If a genie granted you one wish, what would you ask for? To retire at 40? A second home in Hawaii?

What if he granted you three wishes?

Since this is just fantasy, let’s go ahead and dream really big…..imagine you had ten!

Chances are, with ten wishes, you’d be tied up in knots, flummoxed, trying to find clarity amongst your “must haves.”

Identifying priorities in a really complicated project feels about the same.

When looking through the product backlog feels like rifling through the kitchen catch-all drawer, how do you distinguish the “must-dos” from the “must-do-right-nows”?

Even when you know the deadline, and a lot of other constraints, it’s hard to know where to actually begin.

When you’re tangled up in a must-trap, it feels like the only way out is for a genie to appear, sort through everything, and tell you: “Here. This is what you need to work on Right. Now.”

The truth is, you can get untangled yourself. The MoSCoW Method of prioritization lets you know what you need to work on now, and what tasks can be put off until tomorrow. And it’s really simple to boot!

That’s not too hard to believe, is it?!

The Moscow Method Defined

When you hear about the MoSCoW Method for the first time, it probably conjures up images of St. Basil’s Cathedral, the Kremlin, and Red Square.

The truth is, however, that the MoSCoW Method has nothing to do with Russia at all!

It was developed in 1994 by Dai Clegg, a software developer working at Oracle. MoSCoW really represents the acronym, MSCW. The vowel sounds are added to make it easier to pronounce (and it makes it sound pretty cool, too!).

Each letter in MoSCoW represents a separate layer for task prioritization: Must, Should, Could, and Won’t. By organizing tasks into these categories, a team finds clarity around what it needs to work on right now, and in the near future.

Here’s a breakdown of the kind of tasks that go in each category.

Must
A must is any task that’s essential to a project. It’s part and parcel to the overall objective, and not doing it would create a bottleneck.
Musts include any feature requirement from a client. These are the things to put into a sprint backlog for the upcoming iteration.
Should
Shoulds are things that need to be completed, but aren’t on the front burner. These can stay in the product backlog for a later i
Could
Coulds are ancillary tasks; things that would be nice to do, given that resources are available. They don’t need to happen in this iteration or the next. Coulds go into the product backlog.
Won’t
Won’ts are any tasks that just can’t happen within the constraints of the project, and aren’t required to meet basic requirements. Won’ts are removed from the product backlog.
Won’ts are also sometimes referred to as “would haves” or “wish to haves,” because they can be things that would improve a deliverable, but are just outside of the scope or budget.

An Example Using MoSCoW

It’s all pretty simple, huh? The MoSCoW Method is helpful in the initial stages of project planning, as it’s about clarifying and crystallizing what the project really is all about. It helps to manage expectations for all stakeholders.

Let’s look at an example of using the MoSCoW Method at the beginning of a project. Let’s say you’re planning the remodel of a kitchen.

The musts include the primary reasons for the remodel, such as moving the dishwasher next to the sink, improving the lighting, and increasing the size of the sink.

The shoulds are things that need to be taken into account, secondarily. This may include things like putting outlets in the right places.

Coulds are special things to add, such as custom cabinets or a tile backsplash, so long as they work into the time frame and budget.

Won’ts are things that just won’t happen, given the overall constraints. These might include things like adding a Viking stove, because it’s too expensive, or a marble countertop, as it wouldn’t handle moisture.

Strengths of the MoSCoW Method

MoSCoW makes it easy to chart a course at the beginning of a project. Let’s look at a few reasons the MoSCoW Method assists in successful project implementation.

A Simple Conceit

The MoSCoW Method, as you’ve just witnessed, is pretty easy to explain and understand.

Unlike scrum or many of the principles in agile, anyone can figure out MoSCoW in just a few minutes.

This simplicity allows the business, customer, developers, and any other stakeholders in a project all to participate and make meaningful contributions toward determining the musts, shoulds, coulds, and won’ts of a project.

Broad Buy-in

When all stakeholders are able to participate in discussing projects, and all of the tasks are ordered and prioritized, it makes the entire project transparent.

It’s much easier to get stakeholders on board when they see all the cards laid out, and can offer their own perspective.

And as any project manager will tell you, having every stakeholder understand the goal and constraints of a project from the beginning is critical to its success.

Crystal Clear Objectives

When a project has too many North Stars, or there’s some sort of a “let’s do this” mentality without much of a plan, the team flails and it creates a lot of dissension later on.

The MoSCoW Method creates clarity around what a project sets out to do (and what it won’t do) from the very beginning. This is perhaps its greatest strength.

When all the stakeholders understand a project’s final objective, it really helps to manage expectations down the road, and decreases the likelihood of having to change course late into the project.

As you can see, Clegg was really onto something when he developed the MoSCoW Method. It didn’t catch on just because of the great name.

Nor is it sheer perfection, however.

Weaknesses of the MoSCoW Method

Although an effective project management tool, The MoSCoW Prioritization Method isn’t fool-proof. Let’s look at a few of its flaws.

It’s Too Simple

But wait! Isn’t simplicity one of MoSCoW’s strengths?

Well, as with so many things in life, one of the strengths of the MoSCoW Method is also one of its biggest weaknesses.

Although MoSCoW is a great way to plot out a project at the beginning, this isn’t a stopping point.

Simply putting tasks into four categories doesn’t provide enough clarity to move forward. When you have six to eight things in the “must” category, it’s necessary to dig and refine a bit further to determine where to actually begin.

Additionally, if these “must” tasks are really huge, they need to be broken down and simplified into stories that can be completed in a sprint.

For larger complex projects, it’s also helpful to organize stories into epics, themes, and features in order to find clarity around priorities and determine what to put into a sprint.

Bogus “Musts”

A project with a lot of stakeholders generally means a variety of interests and motivations.

An agile team plans each iteration with the end user in mind. However, managers higher up in the chain of command may well work toward different incentives, and create “musts” that don’t really benefit the project, but that are motivated by politics or pay.

With a variety of conflicting “musts”, the agile approach of working toward the end user gets sidelined, and a team may end up having to complete a “must” that doesn’t really improve the deliverable at all.

Fixation on Musts

The MoSCoW Method is a bit like waterfall in that it creates a set of priorities at the onset.

The team can easily become cemented into these objectives, even when the client’s needs change, or the market changes in the duration of the project.

As it wouldn’t allow for fluidity and change, depending entirely on MoSCoW Method may lead to a dissatisfied client.

As you can see, although MoSCoW has a lot of strengths, it’s not something that a team should lean on entirely. It’s important to be aware of this method’s shortcomings as well, and to use it judiciously.

MoSCoW With Agile Teams

Using the MoSCoW Method really helps agile teams prioritize the product backlog for the upcoming iterations. Plus, it keeps the team from wasting time on pointless tasks.

However, when using the MoSCoW Method, it’s necessary to keep the principles of the Agile Manifesto front-of-mind as well.

Here are a few pointers.

Gather Input from All Stakeholders

Although a scrum team in isolation can easily come up with its own musts, shoulds, coulds, and won’ts, this list would look pretty different than someone else who has a stake in the project.

The Agile Manifesto says to value “individuals and interaction over processes and tools” and that “our highest priority is to satisfy the customer.”

In creating the product backlog, a team needs to gather input from all stakeholders.

An integrated list of priorities that considers all perspectives makes a project better poised to chart a path that satisfies the end user.

Use Mental Agility

Although it’s helpful to us MoSCoW to identify a project’s “musts” and “shoulds,” an Agile team also needs to be cognizant of the principle from the Agile Manifesto that states: “welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer’s competitive advantage.”

Mental agility refers to a team’s ability to adapt and course correct.

When a team identifies that the client’s needs have changed over the course of a project, it uses this mental agility to scrap some of its plans, and readjust.

Clarifying “musts” and “shoulds” provides much-needed guidance. But it’s just as necessary to allow for course correction.

Stay in the Weeds

The MoSCoW Method can look a bit like a gantt chart: it plots out an entire project at the very beginning.

This big-picture approach goes against the agile process of creating increment during each sprint, reflecting then pivoting.

In order to be agile, teams need to keep the big-picture approach, but to focus on each sprint as well. The increment, feedback and reflection may alter the course.

In sum, the MoSCoW Method is a helpful tool for an agile team. But it shouldn’t be used like a compass. Some of the rigidity implicit in the MoSCoW Method really brushes against the agile methodology and could chart the team off course.

Conclusion

Have you ever seen that hilarious motto people have on t-shirts and mugs that says, “I can only please one person per day. Today isn’t your day. Tomorrow isn’t looking good either.”?

Ha ha, at least it’s honest. Determining our musts, shoulds, coulds, and won’ts is a skill we use in all the areas of our lives.

The MoSCoW Method provides a simple approach to prioritization for projects.

This simplicity allows a team and all the stakeholders to work collaboratively and chart a clear course at the beginning of a project.

But it’s not entirely perfect. When using MoSCoW, an agile team first and foremost needs to bear agile principles in mind.

If you’re working with a remote team, consider stopping by Teamly to check out our all-in-one project management software. We make it easy for stakeholders to track a project and to stay connected, all the way through to its successful completion.