Agile Development helped me make a difference

I have always believed that the importance of project management in organisations cannot be overstated. When it is done right, it helps every part of the business run more smoothly. In my experience it allows teams to focus on the work that matters, empowering them to deliver results that impact the bottom line. Free from the distractions caused by tasks going off track or budgets spinning out of control, project management enables employees to see how their work contributes directly to strategic goals.

When I started to work with our IT team here at SalesSense we were working on an application to help our HR team improve team efficiency and enhance end user experience, moving beyond several different applications to one single source. We looked at the market and after consideration we decided to build the solution from scratch. We felt that none of the solutions out there would 100% fit our needs. Having inhouse Devs gave us a great chance to build something meaningful and scalable as our future needs change.

According to teamwork.com, 77% of high-performing projects are built with project management software. But in this case, working across several different departments in the business, it was more a case of choosing the right project management methodology. As a team we agreed to implement an Agile Development workflow.

Having a background in Software Development I have worked with Agile methodologies before. I find that it is a very adaptable way of keeping in control, the keywords being fast, open to changes, and collaborative. Despite being relatively new in SalesSense I suggested some improvements to our approach to the HR project based on my experience and the answer was “yes” – a nice feeling when you are new in a role.

Many people are familiar with Scrum, where you take tasks from a backlog and divide them into Sprints that each last 1-2 weeks when the Scrum Master will go through a sprint retrospective and address changes that need to be made before the next cycle begins. Kanban is a visual representation board representing each stage of the project. This framework is great because it gives everyone a visual idea of how the project is moving along, allowing the team to see bottlenecks or poor time estimation. Given the specific requirements of this task we decided to go with “Scrumban” which is a mix of these two frameworks, and the workflow goes like this:

• At “stand-up meetings” tasks are moved around.
• We quickly discuss difficulties so everyone knows who is doing what.
• A team member takes ownership of one task in the “TO DO” column.
• This task is moved to the “DOING” column.
• The next day if the task is completed, it is moved to the “DONE” column.
• Repeat the cycle.

Simple, fun, controlled, and organized!

I can’t stress how valuable this system is for us in the IT department. We can locate where we are having problems and address the issues, it’s easy to share our work with project owners, and fosters regular engagement with our business stakeholders. Everyone knows how the project is moving and when the requested features are coming. Agile Development helped our new HR application get built from scratch to deployment quickly and effortlessly and now is ready to scale!