For 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:

1.  Timesheet programs

You can use timesheet programs. You can either get each individual to maintain their own log (either at the end of each day, or as they go — which is the best approach or they’ll forget what they did and make it up, or worse still, not do it at all), or use a shared resource like Google docs or Wiki-based.

2. Notepad

You can use something like Evernote or Notepad and at the end of the day or week (best doing it every day) spend 15 minutes entering your time into something useful, collaborative, etc. BaseCamp has this facility. Lots of PM software packages do.

3. Opensource software

You can use some opensource software to help your software apartment to handle the projects: OpenKM – Document managment system and eTraxis – Bug tracking system.

4. Other programs

You can use the programs like:

• JIRA is user-friendly and web-based. You can have a look at it here

• VersionOne.  Read our review of VersionOne

• Toggl. It is especially user-friendly when used with Toggl Desktop. There are free and paid versions.

• Redmine. It has a lot of the same capabilites as JIRA

5. Restrict Internet access 

One way of improving the productivity is to ban internet for the project. You can only allow access of work related sites in the office.

6. More tips

In case you are not familiar with what to do with the timesheet data to scientifically calculate how you are doing on the project, please see this:

Earned value management

Learn about top Time Tracking Software:

Top 10 Best Time Tracking Software

To sum it up, my advice will be to pay attention on time left to finish the user story and to trust the team to commit to the work.

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Image by Grant Cochrane 

 Image: anankkml / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Here are some of the points to implement that can improve the communication process:

1. The key point: people should co-invest time in building a successful cooperation and work on effective means of communication. It is not ‘throw your projects over the wall’ but ‘make a strategic decision to outsource’ and ‘invest time to build a strong partnership with your supplier’. The processes of client and supplier have to become interwoven and both sides have to work hard to create a balance in the cooperation

2. The communication should be frequent, weekly meetings are to be changed to multiple meetings a week. That results in keeping everyone’s connected and updated with the ongoing process

3. People should try to use phone or skype calls frequently to avoid communicating everything through chat or email. And there should be an online system to document everything that is communicated (also the summary of a phone call)

4. Involve engineers in the meetings along with leads and architects

5. Think through what is to be communicated, just like planning an effective meeting it requires thought and structure.

6. Don’t be afraid of communicating bad news – but make sure you have a way of resolving any pains you may encounter. Try to present more than one option when dealing with problems. We always call them “opportunities”. It is an opportunity for change with a positive result.

And remember, all of the items on your list can be organized and planned; it’s the people part that needs to be taken care of too. First, a little chit chat, the personal touch, can go a long way.

What tips do you use to establish effective communication in your remote team?

Alena Shechkova,                                                                                                    Business Development Consultant,                                                                                         Ainstainer Group  

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KanbanTool: Worth Or Not Your Attention?

Do you need developers? Read the resumes of available at Ainstainer Group

1. Full time position to join your office. The most widespread purpose to receive developers. Employers search for developers to augment their local software development teams.  You can find the right developers either in your location with the help of your HR department (job ads, networking, databases etc.), staffing agencies and recruitment firms or invite a person to move to your city/country. It works well if you need developers for permanent employment. Problems may occur if you don’t have tasks for your developers but still are to pay salaries and taxes monthly. When reducing staff, you are to bear all the expenses during the stated period by local labor legislation. Relocation expenses may be very significant, so they are reasonable if this developer will be a part of your team during several years or more. So, make sure, that he/she will sign a working agreement with you.

2. Part time employment. You can hire a developer for a part-time job. In this case you can encounter problems with searching the right candidates, as demand is much higher than supply. So, software geeks will choose among tens of job offers. And, it is not a secret, that in most cases people prefer full-time employment.

3. Freelancers. There are a quite a lot of advantages of cooperating with freelancers. First of all, you are to pay them only for made work and worked hours. And you can find experienced developers with huge experience in different industries. If speaking about disadvantages of cooperating with freelancers, you are to take into account that really good freelancers are busy. And sometimes you are to wait during several months before they can start working under your project.  If speaking about costs, usually freelancers charge for worked hours. Their rates are higher than if you had paid money for a full-time employee. However, if you need their help just for several months it could be a solution for you and your business. Cooperation with freelancers in long-range prospective is not so beneficial, as you can hire a developer on a full-time basis and will pay him less than freelancers. Another thing to consider is the level of your readiness to pass some part of work to the third-party, as you will have less control under software development, so the risks of failure are rising.

There are special websites that connect freelancers with their clients. The most popular are: ODesk, Elance, Vworker, Freelancer.com, Guru

4. Outsourcing.  If you want to save money or just are not able to find the required IT professional in your location, you may think about IT Outsourcing.  In a few words, you will come to outsourcing company and tell what job you need to be done. They will give you an approximate estimate depending on a scope of work. Every month you will receive a bill with some sum of money that will depend on time worked by your outsourcing partner’s developers. These sums may vary from month to month, so it is not so easy to plan your IT budget.  Another issue for small and medium business that they won’t receive so much attention as large clients, so you may receive answers to your questions up to 2 weeks. It may be the right decision to work with outsourcing vendor if you are not good at Project management or not IT person, as you won’t even know the developers that will fulfill your project. On the other hand, the real problems may occur because you won’t be able to control the software development.

You can find the list of IT outsourcing companies with full info in ITO list.

5.  Remote developers. Dedicated staff. It is a quite new way to fill in an open position for IT personnel. This business model combines the benefits of IT Outsourcing (cost savings) and reserving of full managerial control under your developers. Your partner will search for you the right developers and place them in its office. These remote developers will be dedicated to you and work only under your project. So, you will know your remote developers and will manage them like yours in house staff. But, this model won’t be a good for you if you are not IT person and don’t have someone in your company to manage your remote employees. Another thing to consider is that this model works only for long-term projects (from 6 months), as you will receive developers on a full-time basis that will be located in some of IT outsourcing locations.

For example, you can get your remote developers in Ukraine with Ainstainer Group.

Do you know any other ways of assuaging of software development vacancies?

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The Picture was downloaded from FreeDigitalPhotos.net . The author is renjith krishnan.

1. Outsourcing Readiness. Is your company ready to outsource? First, clients need to realize that the reference for proposal, proposal and negotiation process is very time consuming and expensive for all parties involved, including outsourcers. Second, many clients do not consider that the intelligent negotiation of an outsourcing deal requires that they gather and provide to the vendor extensive, validated internal data. Validation is important.

5 Questions Owners Of Small Business Should Ask Themselves Before Denying Outsourcing

2. Cost Saving. To choose the right company, cost saving shouldn’t be the sole priority of the firm looking to outsource part of its work. The reason is that although services would be available fairly cheaply irrespective of the domain, the quality suffers badly. Besides, you need to be wary of some hidden costs of outsourcing that are usually skipped by some negotiators. Always inquire about the legal costs of signing contracts and time to spend on contract coordinating.

3. Lack of Required Skills. With many outsourcing implementations, there is an outright lack of a defined retained/governance team or one that is too small. Even if a client puts a retained team in place to manage the outsourcing implementation and ongoing operations, the team may not have the right skills required for their new roles.

4. Responsibilities Delegated. Another problem with outsourcing of any kind today is what responsibilities are being outsourced. Many companies end up outsourcing crucial core company functions, like accounting and even secretarial services.

5. Post-Contract Processes and Decision Rights Not Understood. Clients and service providers are not operationally prepared to work together after contract signing. The results are that services simply aren’t performed, implementation activities get stalled, client stakeholders and service provider staff are both frustrated, and the entire schedule for achieving expected business benefits is delayed.

6. Inability to Meet Pent-Up Demand for Services. Prior to an outsourcing implementation, the client organization also may curtail big projects and non-essential spending. If the client has limited these activities, there is typically a substantial amount of pent-up demand and/or requirements that need to be met shortly after the implementation period begins.

7. Difference in expectation levels.  Often the expectation levels could be very different between the clients and the vendors. A client might need to have checkpoints at various stages to see if the vendor’s output is in line with the expectations and justifies the initial cost and investment.

8. Different Barriers. Such as time zone differences, language barriers, unexpected cultural differences, and the necessity for data security are all areas that could make your off shoring more of a hassle than your financial savings are worth.

9. The Vendor is Not Exclusive to The Client. It might make the client jittery if the vendor also has relationship with the competitors. This leads to lack of trust which is very much essential for a project to be successful.

10. Using Your Legal Counsel Effectively. Remember that experienced outsourcing legal counsel have seen over the years what works and what doesn’t work in the structuring, selection and negotiation phases of outsourcing. Your lawyer will be most effective when viewed as part of the overall outsourcing team and involved in discussions and decisions in each phase.

11. Loss of Key Talent and/or Poor Knowledge Transfer. Outsourcing creates uncertainty for existing employees and contractors who provide services to the client organization. The uncertainty can cause this staff to look elsewhere for employment and leave either before or during the outsourcing implementation.

12. End-User Resistance to Adopting New Methods. The provider is not in complete control of the end-to-end result. The users on the receiving end of new methods can inhibit the achievement of business objectives through lack of compliance, strategy disagreements or delays in executing their required responsibilities.

13. Changes Don’t Last. Old habits die hard. Even for organizations that initially change behaviors and processes to achieve success with outsourcing, there can be a significant tendency to revert to old ways of doing things.

And what problems did you encountered while outsourcing IT and how did you solve them?

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Do you need developers? Read the resumes of available at Ainstainer Group

• Find the right outsourcing partner. Check that it has capabilities to find good developers within the time limit.

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

• Provide your partner’s recruiters with a short description of your project. If your project is interesting, it will be easier to “hook” the right candidates.

• Investigate the average salary in the market and offer more. In any way, you will pay significantly less than your in house developers, but higher salary may become the best retention program.  Think about time losses if your developer decides to leave you.

•  Another “bait” for developer may be your invitation him/her/them to your country.  You will kill two birds with one stone. First of all, your offer to travel to your country will be one more incentive to choose your company. Moreover, your face to face contact with the developers will definitely simplify the process of building trustworthy and reaching mutual understanding.

• Check that newly hired developers sign a working agreement with your outsourcing vendor. In order to minimize risks of unexpected resigning of your developers it may be a good idea to agree beforehand the period of a notice and make it longer than 2 weeks.

Do you have experience of cooperation with Ukrainian software developers? What do you think about them and their mentality?

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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”

Ukrainian developers both can be good team players or work independently.

Thanks to European mentality, they won’t agree on everything you tell them to do. If you give them unrealistic task or set incorrect goals, be sure your team will explain why you are wrong.

So if you prefer relations “senior-subordinate” and don’t like when your employees say you “no, it is impossible to do that for one month because…” or advise some possible ways of solving problems, you may think about Asian countries where due to their mentality subordinates must agree with all the tasks of their bosses.

Today, 99% of Ukrainian developers are employed and have already worked under their projects. 

Why is it so?

Ukraine as an IT Outsourcing destination is increasingly becoming more and more popular. In fact, the demand of software developers is much higher than supply. According to official statistics, today there are more than 50 000 of open positions for developers.

Image: Michal Marcol / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Thanks to educational system of USSR, Ukraine still has one of the best universities that train prominent mathematicians, physicists, engineers and software developers.

So the real truth is that to hire Ukrainian software developers in most of cases you are to gain them over from another company.

What does it may mean for you?

• You are to offer bigger salary than developer has already received. Sometimes it is worth offering your developer the highest salary in the market. It will prevent you from the risk of losing a valuable worker.

The good news is that the average salary in Ukraine is still significantly lower than in Western Europe, Scandinavian countries and the USA. For example, a salary of a middle .net developer (with experience from 2 to 5 years) may vary from $800 to $1 800.

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net  

One more good thing for Scandinavian countries with the highest rates on social liabilities, in Ukraine you will definitely safe money as today there are many ways of tax minimizing.

• You are to wait. According to Ukrainian labor legislation, employees have to give a two week’s notice about their quitting. In fact, some Ukrainian IT companies sign a work contract with developers where the longer period (1 – 2 month) is stipulated.
•  You are to sell your project. Another key factor that influences the decision of developer whether to change employer or not is the project per se. So, if you have a really interesting project, be sure that the recruiter of your outsourcing partner has a short description of it. It may foster the recruiting process.

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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.

jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There are several definitions of the term “IT outsourcing” :

1 IT Outsourcing is…seeking resources outside

the practice of seeking resources — or subcontracting — outside of an organizational structure for all or part of an IT function [Webopedia].

2 IT Outsourcing is…third party manages a business process

the contracting of a third party to manage a business process more effectively and efficiently than can be done in house. “IT OUTSOURCING: MAKING IT WORK”. Rob Aalder

3 IT Outsourcing is…other firm does IT work on your’s behalf

IT outsourcing occurs when an organization contracts a service provider to perform an IT function instead of performing the function itself. The Canadian Institute of Chartered Accountants  “Information Technology Outsourcing”.

renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So, IT Outsourcing is a cost-effective way to hire software developers outside of the company.

It is dependent on the dramatic advances in telecommunications technology that have made it possible to situate back-office operations in a variety of locations and to benefit from significantly lower labor costs.

Most large companies relize that to drive even more costs out of their organisations they have to use outsourcing.

Almost any IT tasks can be outsourced:

• Software development/programming
• Software Consulting
• Website Design and Maintenance
• Email Server
• Application Hosting/Maintenance
• Network Maintenance

What is important to underline is that outsourcing is efficient not only for big companies, but for small and medium-sized business.

Why? Read the article:

5 Questions Owners Of Small Business Should Ask Themselves Before Denying Outsourcing

Non-Risky Outsourcing: Truth Or Fairy Tale For Kids?

The New Way Out For Startups – Outsourcing

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

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I know from my own experience (as our company specializes in creation and support of client’s remote teams) that the usage of such tools is rather helpful.

Some people say that all you need to manage your team is your common sense and a whiteboard.

whiteboard

Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Well, if speaking about large companies with offices in different locations, the rule: “common sense + whiteboard” may lead to the disaster.

This rule doesn’t work when speaking about outsourcing as well. I don’t speak now about traditional outsourcing when you pay money for the outsourcing vendor, not for your employees and you even don’t know who exactly works under your project or just know their names, nothing more.

I speak about dedicated teams (My Team model). It is a modified version of outsourcing that gives companies a full management control under outsourced software development, as you receive your software developers that will be placed in other country, but you will manage them like in-house employees.

Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So, when speaking about managing your remote teams, it is hardly imagine the process of managing them without some tools.

So, the main question is not whether to use software tools or not but what tools to choose.

Today, there are more than 50 Agile tools (I don’t have the accurate numbers)

Only to find some information about them and to read some reviews, comments you will need at least several hours if not days.

On the other side, it is not reasonable to choose the first tool you founded.

Why? Just because you are not sure that it is the best solution for you and your team.

We created a poll with the aim to find the answers to the question: “What is the best Agile tool for managing distributed teams?”

To see the results follow the link:

If you have already used some tool(s) and have what to say about it(them), please feel free to comment. You can add a link to the tool + your own opinion about it.

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.

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?

1.  First of all define: what goals do you want to achieve?

According to classical outsourcing theory, outsourcing is used to:

• Decrease project value
• Improve quality
• Delegate non-core activities

Be sure that you have clear vision of your goals and tasks before contacting with someone.

2.  Which risks should be taken into account?

Try not to delegate core activities to outsourcing vendors. This may cause many risks for your business. One of the main criteria for choosing outsourcing partner may be the possibility to change it quickly and without hassles.

3.  How get in contact efficiently with outsourcing vendors?

At the second stage pay attention to that fact that the main difference between outsourcing companies is in people that are working there. The company may has tremendous experience, but according to factual evidence, an average working duration of one IT specialist in Ukrainian outsourcing company is about 2-3 years. So take notice of people who will be in charge of your work, not those who offers you own services.

4.  Choice of team members

You should have opportunity of highest possible choice between IT specialists that the company offers you. Do not agree on the first employee you were offered. Look all of them and determine the choice criteria and only after that choose your team’s members. The rightly combined team is 80% of project’s success.

5.  Discussion of project’s details

When discussing project’s details it is vital that communication with team and project manager would be at a high level and you 100% understand each other. The majority outsourcing failures are because of bad understanding of the main project’s goals and unqualified team members. Thus, in company Ainstainer Group we try as much as possible implement Agile frameworks for reaching the best results and mutual understanding of common goals.

6.  Contract agreement

When signing a contract agreement pay your attention to the ways and conditions of cancelling a contract, the cost of additional work and overtimes of employees.

7.  Work

The most crucial moment is working according to plans. At this stage you should be as much as possible be confident in professional competency of people that are involved in your project. The second important criterion is managerial structure that outsourcing company offers you. Have a look at Agile frameworks. With their help is much easier reach tasks’ transparency and control the project’s progress.

8.  Completion

Determine the criteria of fulfillment the whole project. Which materials and resources do you need to get from outsourcing partner after the project’s completion.

So, IT outsourcing today is a powerful tool for reaching company’s goals in short and long-range perspective.

Follow the link to read the article.

Do you have any idea how to prevent your company from the losses and minimize risks when outsourcing?

]]> http://blog.ainstainer.com/8-steps-to-successful-it-outsourcing-to-ukraine/feed/ 0 http://blog.ainstainer.com/what-is-the-best-agile-tool-for-managing-distributed-teams-the-polls-results/ http://blog.ainstainer.com/what-is-the-best-agile-tool-for-managing-distributed-teams-the-polls-results/#comments Thu, 21 Apr 2011 09:10:05 +0000 Valeria http://blog.ainstainer.com/?p=742 Continue reading →]]> 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)

The main difference between these two teams is that distributed team is multidirectional (at least 2 or more locations),  while the members of a remote team are usually placed in one office with the Product Owner in another area (country).

The remote model is usually used when companies outsource IT software development,  but want to:

• safe managerial control;
• receive software developers that will work only with them like their onsite employees;
• control their budget.

This business model is known as Dedicated team (My Team).

Agile Team is a team of software developers that follow Agile.

Agile software development

is a conceptual framework for software engineering that promotes development iterations throughout the life-cycle of the project. [www.jetbrains.com]

Today more and more companies prefer to outsource Agile (Scrum)teams

To find out why they choose this model, read the article:

Cost-Efficient Scrum: New Business Model for Those Who Don’t Agree Overpaying 30-70% via www.ainstainer.blog.com

The Poll’s results (key findings)

Who participated: 68 people from  17 countries

How they participated: Completed a form with 3 questions:

1.What is the best Agile Tool for managing distributed teams?

2.What is your experience in using the chosen Agile Tool?

3.What country do you represent?

More than a half of the surveyed respondents  (58%) stated that they were from Canada.

What Agile Tool is the best for managing Distributed Teams?

28%  voted for Urban Turtle (it is a Canadian Tool), 12% chose JIRA with Greenhopper (Australia), 9%  chose  Rally  (The USA)

The Own Variants of Responders:

Thank you for sharing your opinion with us!

In order to analyze the Poll’s results deeply, we decided to see what countries voted for the most popular in our poll tools.

Urban Turtle: The Origin of those who Voted for it

What is interesting, that for Urban Turtle (a Canadian Tool) voted only Canadians…

Website:

http://urbanturtle.com

JIRA with Greenhopper: The Origin of those who voted for it

Respondents from 6 countries chose Jira with Greenhopper (an Australian tool).

Website:

http://www.atlassian.com/software/greenhopper/

Rally: The Origin of those who voted for it

In our poll, Rally prefer  the American (67%) and British (33%) people

Website:

http://www.rallydev.com/

Pivotal Tracker and Target Process shared the forth place in our Poll:

Pivotal Tracker: The Origin of those Who Voted for it

Website:

http://www.pivotaltracker.com/

Target Process: The Origin of those who Voted for it

Website: http://www.targetprocess.com/

What is your experience in using the chosen Agile tool?

Most of responders stated that they have experience with the chosen tool more than 6 months.  Those, who haven’t already had any experience, voted for Jira with Greenhopper and Scrum Works Pro.

To Believe the results of the poll or not?

We are not going to give you the answer to this question, as we are not a jury.

We just wanted to:

Don’t agree with the Poll’s results?

Haven’t already voted for the best Agile tool?

Follow the link to participate in our Poll via Facebook

If you want to share your opinion with the world and with us feel free to do it in our blog – it is free

www.ainstainer.blog.com

We are in search of new:

Please, connect with us if you have what to say:

E-mail:  info@ainstainer.com

Twitter:  @ainstainer

By the way, you are free to post this document whenever you want provided you are not to add any changes in it.\

Click th link to download the results (a pdf-document):  What_is_the_best_Agile_tool_poll’s results (2011)