6 Tips of Tracking Time Spent by the Employee on an Agile Project

Posted on by
Reply

time tracking of Scrum team members, it outsourcingFor each Scrum master and for the whole agile team the most important is the done selected backlogs for the sprint, but not time spent on coffee breaks or browsing the internet. And it’s the known fact, that in agile development the most essential issue is how much time is left to finish the user story, but not how much time was spent by each of the developer.

You should ask yourself whether you need the metrics of time at all. Why are you tracking time? One reasonable answer that comes to my mind can be to bill a Client: to know how much time was spent, to pay overtimes. If you can suggest more, I’ll appreciate your feedback.

Nevertheless there are some tips of tracking time:

Continue reading →

How to build the communication between customer and vendor for successful outsourcing?

Posted on by
Reply

Even if there is enough budget, resources and time to fulfill the project, still one problem can arise between customer and vendor when outsourcing – it is the process of communication. Especially the complexity of Agile Development process (constant changes in requirements) in contrast to building a product from a set of requirements (Waterfall). The communication in this scenario adds more issues and one can’t ignore but have to give highest priority to the process of communication between parties.

How to communicate effectively with your remote team?

Continue reading →

Hire Developers Easily: 5 Ways How to Fill an Open IT Position

Posted on by
Reply

Are you in search for IT professionals (software, database, web, game developers etc.)? Read the article to make sure that you know about all mentioned ways of filling your open IT positions. You will find pros and cons of the each way and some useful links that may probably help you to find the required developers faster.

Continue reading →

13 IT Outsourcing Problems that May Lead You to Bankruptcy

Posted on by
1

While outsourcing IT functions seems attractive in terms of cost savings and other efficiencies, it is not easy to take the right decisions leading to fruitful results. It is absolutely essential for a company to look at all the variables of outsourcing before making the decision to use it as a tool for growth. Here are a number of possible outsourcing problems that you may come:

IT OUTSOURCING PROBLEMS

Continue reading →

Ukraine: the Dirty Truth of IT Labor Market

Posted on by
3

If you are thinking about outsourcing software developers for long-term period (more than 6 months) it may be a solution for you to choose a dedicated team business model which suppose that you will hire developers outside your country and will manage them as your local team. So, the key to success in this case is the rightly chosen developers.

This article describes the real situation in Ukrainian labor market and advises possible ways to succeed while hiring the right developers.

Ukrainian mentality: they are ready to say you “no”

Continue reading →

What is IT Outsourcing

Posted on by
1

Information technology outsourcing (IT Outsourcing) or ITO has become an integral part of the modern business. It isn’t just a means of hiring professionals and reducing costs. IT Outsourcing allows companies to focus on those areas of business which need their efforts the most. This can easily become your competitive advantage in this case.

If you don’t want to use your own software developers to work under the project, can’t find the right people or just want to spend less, IT outsourcing may be a solution for you. Continue reading →

A Software Tool or a Whiteboard to Manage Distributed IT Teams?

Posted on by
Reply

The problem of choosing the right tool for managing your time, work, your team is very vital, as the rightly chosen tool may help you to:

1) safe your time;
2) safe time of your team or your boss (Product Owner if we speak about Scrum);
3) add visibility of your work or the team’s performance;
4) stay updated on the current project’s status and so on.

Some tool-makers state that their tools help to speed up time to market and a lot of other important things that can be measured in cash equivalent.

How to speed up time to market

How to speed up time to market

Continue reading →

8 Steps to Successful IT Outsourcing to Ukraine

Posted on by
Reply

Artem Semenov, CEO of Ainstainer Group (an Ukrainian IT Outsourcing vendor), in his article in Ukraine business insights (page № 29) advises how to prevent your company from losses and minimize risks when outsourcing to Ukraine.

Ukraine is one of the most attractive destinations for outsourcing IT nowadays, as it combines such benefits as big pool of IT talents, convenient geographical location, relatively low rates and cultural proximity to European countries.

According to the “Central and Eastern Europe IT Outsourcing Review 2010”report 2010, IT outsourcing Ukrainian market value in 2010 made $697 mln, i.e. + 31,5% of growth in comparison to 2009 $530 mln.

IT Outsourcing to Ukraine

So one of the most vital questions all businessmen definitely ask themselves is how start outsourcing IT in the right way in Ukraine and what partner to choose between 940+ outsourcing companies in order to bear fruits and minimize their risks? Continue reading →

What is the Best Agile Tool for Managing Distributed Teams? (The Poll’s Results)

Posted on by
1

We created a poll to find the answer to the question:

“What Agile Tool to Choose When Your Have a Remote Team?”.

To see the results, click the link below (it is a pdf-document):

What_is_the_best_Agile_tool_poll’s results (2011)

You are free to post this pdf-document whenever you want but don’t forget to add  the link to our blog.

We also added the results of the poll below for those who prefers reading without any clicks:

Terminology

(In order to be sure that we think about the same things)

Remote team vs distributed team

Continue reading →