Every organization wants to be lean, to be able to do more and better things, with fewer resources. They also want to be agile - in a sense of quicker turnaround time and faster solutions, the key attribute of Agile methodology. We at Taiga, are crazy about everything Agile. We thought it is a good time to help organizations, get started with Agile, and hence this post.
Photo by David Elfanbaum
Most of the people (not aware of Agile methodology) think of it a complex system of hard to follow rules. This is not completely true - it is quite easy to get started. In this post we will see just that. Not that after following these steps you will have a complete Agile organization, but as they say - its never too late to take the first step in the right direction! You can of course then move forward towards building a completely agile organization.
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Tasks to User stories: User stories form the basis of agile methodology. They define the tasks to be done. If you want to start with agile, it is the most important thing, to be able define the tasks in form of user stories. Even the mundane tasks that are related to your core business need to be part of the user story. We recently wrote a detailed blog post on user stories. Read it to improve your understanding on user stories.
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Team definition: The second step is to define the teams. There may be several teams, doing different things, but you need to add them to the project management system. Here is how you can add users to Taiga (video tutorial of Taiga 5 version). These users are then available for you to assign tasks while planning/defining sprints.
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Sprint definition: Perhaps the most recognizable feature of Agile methodology - sprints. You need to define sprints in the PM tool, these are generally a period of 2 - 3 weeks or less. The sprints are the period when the team works without any outside disturbance/meetings/plannings. At end of the sprint the team sits together to access the progress and plan for the next sprint. Here is how to add a sprint (video tutorial of Taiga 5 version) and then assign user stories (tasks) to team for the sprint in Taiga.
Now that you have basic level of agile set up in your organization, it is far more easy to move further and smooth out the rough edges - and reap the benefits of an agile organization.
