Forem: Codegiant

Scrum Roles: The Robust Guide [2021]

Codegiant — Wed, 23 Dec 2020 17:03:22 +0000

It is imperative for any large scale development project that you put together a solid scrum team.

What is a scrum team though? What are the team roles, the so-called scrum roles, and what do they do?

Well..we should first look at what exactly scrum is and talk a little about scrum theory.

What is Scrum?

Scrum is the most commonly used and popular framework in agile and among agile teams.

Agile describes a specific set of foundational values for organizing and managing complex work.

Many people believe that scrum is an agile framework, but that’s not quite the case.

Scrum is a set of rigid project management principles whereas Agile is more of a way of thinking; it’s a collection of mindset values instead of precisely documented tactics and methods.

Scrum is rooted in software development, but scrum today is used in most industries to optimize the successful delivery of complex and innovative products.

If you want to find out more about agile, you can do so by reading this article.

Benefits of Using Scrum

Many companies have begun using scrum to streamline communication, collaborate more efficiently, and increase focus.

A scrum team allows full flexibility to help manage changes. Priorities are constantly changing in any business and using an agile platform like scrum increases your ability to manage those changing priorities more effectively.

Using the scrum method gives increased visibility into projects for all parties involved. This increased visibility helps everyone stay on the same page.

There is often a lack of communication between business and IT; oftentimes it’s like these two departments are speaking completely different languages. Scrum helps to bridge that gap by providing more alignment between departments and making communication much more efficient.

The fiscal benefits of scrum are substantial. You will be able to create much more complex and high-quality products while meeting deadlines and speeding up the software development process. This will make it much quicker to go-to-market and start reaping the rewards of all of your hard work.

But how do you actually measure your success in terms of Scrum? How do you know whether you’re following the scrum values and not deviating from the foundational principles?

You can use a scrum software like Codegiant to help you streamline and track your work progress better.

Scrum Theory

Scrum is based on the theory of empirical process control. Empirical process control is based on three key pillars:

Transparency: In order to make a decision, people need complete visibility into the scrum process and the current state of the product.
Inspection: To keep everyone on track and on the same page, inspections need to be done at regular intervals.
Adaptation: If someone does deviate from the original sprint plan, the product or process needs to be adjusted immediately.

Scrum is both iterative and incremental and this is key in a successful agile operation.

The cycle of operations needs to be repetitive, with the goal being to bring the desired decision or result closer to discovery with each repetition.

Scrum teams deploy working software in small increments in order to keep up with the feature demands of customers.

An increment, as described in the scrum guide, is basically the sum of all the PO (product backlog) items completed during the sprint along with the value of the increments of all the past sprints. Learn more here.

What is a sprint though?

A sprint is a time box of usually 2-4 weeks during which a completed product increment is created. It’s important to note that after you finish a sprint, the next sprint starts immediately overlapping with the one you just finished.

The Roles of a Scrum Team

According to the scrum guide, there are three key roles in a scrum team:

The Product Owner.
The Scrum Master.
The Development Team.

A scrum team will work together through scrum ceremonies to complete a project. You can read more about scrum ceremonies here.

These three roles are all equally important and form a three-way Venn diagram (the one below).

Product Owner

The Product Owner is the visionary of the scrum team.

He/she is the spearhead of the operation, they make the final decision of what the product will look like as well as what features it will have.

As seen in the scrum roles diagram, the scrum product owner manages the product backlog and optimizes the value of the product.

What is a product backlog?

The product backlog is part of the three scrum artifacts: the product backlog, sprint backlog, and potentially releasable product increment.

The product backlog contains all the items (tasks) that the team needs to complete. If you’d like to learn more, this is a good read for you.

Here are the roles and responsibilities of a scrum product owner:

Define product backlog items.
Define goals and missions for the product backlog.
Increase the value of work performed by the scrum development team.
Ensure that the product backlog is clear and that a roadmap is laid out for the rest of the scrum team.
Confirms that the development team has a clear and concise understanding of the items in the product backlog.
Also, the product owner is the only one who has the authority to cancel the sprint. A sprint is usually cancelled when the scrum goal becomes obsolete. But be careful - sprint cancellations can cost your team a lot of resources, time, and money.

What does it take to be a great Product Owner?

Product owners need to be excellent decision-makers and express authority in the decisions they make.
The Product Owner needs to have in-depth knowledge of the business and the market they are working in.
They need to be persuasive, to gain trust from their team and from stakeholders.
They need to fully understand the customers wants and needs, and transform that into language the team can understand.

The Product Owner is always going to be the final decision-maker.

They need to be able to put their foot down and say yes to the right product features and decline the rest.

Nevertheless, everyone, including the scrum master and the development team, participate in the sprint planning meeting in order to come up with proper sprint hours estimates, and commit to the scrum product backlog.

Trust between the Product Owner and the Development team is imperative.

The Product Owner needs to trust that the Development Team will do what is asked of them, and the Development Team must trust that the decisions made by the Product Owner provide the highest level of value.

The Product Owner has their hands on a lot of different elements of the project and ultimately will need to be very organized; this is a lot easier with an effective scrum project management tool like Codegiant.

Codegiant can help the Product Owner ensure that everyone is following the correct scrum process, and the right process is the key to a successful scrum team.

At the end of the sprint, the scrum team will gather into a scrum retrospective meeting to assess how the sprint went, correct mistakes, and double down on things that worked out.

To learn more about the scrum retrospective, or other scrum meetings such as scrum reviews, daily scrums, and more, check out this article.

Scrum Master

What is a scrum master?

The Scrum Master is the glue that holds everything together.

The scrum master’s roles and responsibilities revolve around protecting the team from distractions, helping the team improve, and holding the team accountable to the scrum framework.

Ensuring that scrum values are kept is a key part of being a successful Scrum Master.

Scrum defines 5 values: courage, focus, commitment, respect and openness.

The Scrum Master needs to enforce these values in order to create an environment of safety and trust.

A common myth about Scrum Masters is that they run the daily scrum, but in actual truth, they don't run any of the scrum events. They are responsible for ensuring that scrum events happen. They are the coach of the team and are in charge of keeping the rest of the team on track.

What does a scrum master do?

Ensures that all tasks are understood by the scrum team.
Finds techniques for proper backlog management.
Facilitates scrum events as needed.
Coaches the development team.
Helps the development team create top tier products.
Cleans up roadblocks that may impede the development team.
Ensures that the team stands on the pillars of scrum, and doesn’t deviate from the main set of values and principles.

These are just a few of the key responsibilities that a Scrum Master must perform.

Entire books have been written on the roles, responsibilities and attributes of a great scrum master but here are a few key things that are necessary for the role:

A Coaching Mentality: A Scrum Master needs to lead by example and coach their team to ensure that they are performing to the best of their abilities while adhering to the team values set by the entire scrum team.
Humility: The Scrum Master gives all credit to the team, and not to themselves.
Authority: The Scrum master is someone you respect and listen to, they need to be a true leader to their team. Agile Advocate: They need to reinforce the scrum principles of agile throughout the entire scrum team.

The name really sums up the responsibilities of the Scrum Master, they serve the entire organization in many different ways. They lead and coach the organization in its scrum adoption, plan scrum implementations, increase productivity and increase the application of scrum in the organization.

Development Team

The development team is the workhorse of the scrum team.

The development team takes the tasks assigned to them by the product owner, decides how to accomplish them, and then makes it happen.

The Development Team performs the following activities:

They deliver the work through one of the most important scrum ceremonies; the sprint.
They must self organize and make decisions together to ensure that all work gets done.
They perform the day-to-day activities and knock out the items listed on the backlog.
They are responsible for providing transparency to the product so all departments are aware of the progress made.

Development teams are not built in large quantities, they are usually an average of 3-9 people not including the Scrum Master or Product Owner.

It is important to stay in this size range. If the team is too small it wouldn't be able to accomplish each sprint, and if it becomes too big, communication will suffer.

There a few key traits that help to make a great dev team:

Team mentality: Members of the team must work well together and have full trust and confidence in their counterparts.
Cross Functional: The team must possess all skills necessary.
Humility: The development team does not give titles or create sub teams. All team members are treated equally and have equal responsibility.
Self-organizing: The team needs to be able to self-organize in order to work together to successfully release working software in increments. Not even the Scrum Master tells the team how to accomplish this.

While being a part of the development team can mean many different things, they lay the groundwork for the final product and are essential for creating efficiency within a scrum team.

Summary

Scrum is a great way to help your business innovate faster. This agile framework speeds up productivity and makes it much quicker to take your idea and turn it into a finished product.

The key is to put together a strong scrum team that works cohesively together to get the product to consumers in the quickest and most efficient way.

There is no hierarchy within this team. You have your product owner, scrum master and development team that will take part in scrum ceremonies and perform scrum events as a whole to get the job completed. All members are equally important and each play a critical role.

Your team must be organized, many companies will use a scrum project management software like Codegiant to ensure that the project remains organized and that all scrum values are being upheld.

If you want to put out the best quality products in the most efficient manner then putting together a strong scrum team is the best way to accomplish this.

22 Worthy Trello Alternatives in 2021 [Detailed Review]

Codegiant — Mon, 23 Nov 2020 15:55:04 +0000

From the desk of a brilliant weirdo:

Dear visitor,

This article about Trello alternatives will try to make it as easy as possible for you to pick a suitable project management tool for personal or business use.

I’ll go deep into details and help you narrow down your selection, so you don’t have to waste valuable time reviewing each app individually.

With that said, let’s first take a look at Trello and see why some users wanna avoid it:

Trello
Codegiant
Asana
Jira
ClickUp
Wrike
Airtable
Basecamp
MeisterTask
Monday
GitHub
Microsoft Project
Workzone
Process Street
ActiveCollab
Mavenlink
ProofHub
Kanbanize
ProProfs
FreedCamp
OpenProject
Taiga
Redmine

Trello

Trello is known to be one of the simplest project management tools out there. It is a good collaboration tool that allows employees to communicate, update tasks, and discuss real-time projects. If you’re looking for clarity over your projects, Trello is perfect. It works great for both personal and business purposes.

Features

Boards, lists, and cards for better project management and collaboration.
You can upload files straight from Dropbox, Box, or Google Drive.
The Trello Gantt charts are known as “TeamGantts.” They are part of Trello Power-Ups, where you can find more apps, plugins, and integrations to make your kanban workflow smoother.
Drag and drop.
Search filters.
Trello email notifications are available as well.
High-level security standards — the administrator can set access permissions and define board privacy.
Trello tutorials and demos are available. You can just google them up, and a dozen will show.
Trello markdown format.
Trello software is available on any platform: you have a web app, desktop app, and mobile app (for Mac and Android). Trello’s desktop app seems to be the best as it comes with native notifications, powerful enhancements, and other cool features.
Trello offers a seamless GitHub integration so you can integrate your commits easily.
Trello pricing has three tiers: Free, Trello Business Class, and Trello Enterprise. The Business Class offers 14-day free trials. For the Trello Enterprise plan, you need to contact sales.

And, now, here are the most common complaints people have about Trello:

First, the mobile application of Trello can be very buggy and slow. If you have stacked tons of tasks on your Trello board, then you’ll probably experience lags.

Second, the UI can get very clunky if you have hundreds of tasks on your board. This kinda builds upon the previous one.

Another disadvantage is that you can’t add multiple assignees to your tasks in Trello. This drawback mostly stands out when you’re dealing with more sophisticated tasks, and you need the help of multiple team members.

Although Trello offers many extra apps through “Power-Ups,” you still gotta do the manual labor of installing and setting up those additional Trello plugins and features to make your workflow easier. This makes it harder for bigger teams and projects to stay in the loop.

User Review

“There is something that troubles me. Sometimes when I am organizing the boards I put one in another category by mistake, because it is a too much sensitive process.”
Okay, let’s get into Trello’s alternatives.

Codegiant

Of course, we’re biased, and therefore are putting Codegiant in the first place.

Nevertheless, we believe Codegiant truly offers the features and clean UI to make your management easier.

Without further ado:

Codegiant is an agile project management software mainly geared towards developers. It provides issue tracking, git repos, CI/CD, and publishable documentation in one place. Codegiant is preferred by both small and enterprise companies because of its clean UI and the smooth user experience it provides.

Features

The intuitive issue tracker offers Kanban and Scrum boards.
Drag and drop.
Tasks and subtasks.
Comments.
Linking tasks.
Priority.
Time tracking.
Story points.
Seamless integration with Slack.
It offers a detailed documentation guide for its API.
Fully integrated workflow for software developers.
Git repositories with a web IDE.
Codegiant Flow: a built-in CI/CD.
Documentation tool that makes documentation easier. It has a super robust search engine.

Pros

Codegiant is free for teams with up to 5 members.
Affordable pricing — suitable for both startups and enterprises.
The simplicity of the interface is unmatched.
Great documentation tool where users can collaborate, write and publish their documents online.

Cons

There’s currently no mobile app available.
We don’t offer a lot of integrations as well at the moment.

User Review

“Easy to use with amazing UI! Boosts the software dev process!”

Asana

Asana is one of the best project management platforms for larger teams. It’s definitely a good Trello alternative (it’s actually one of its biggest competitors). It is a versatile tool that helps teams streamline their PM workflows to improve team efficiency.

Features

Boards and lists.
Assignees.
Deadlines.
Seamless communication.
Comments.
Project templates.
Reports.
Portfolios.
Integrations with other apps like Slack, Salesforce, and Microsoft Outlook.

Pros

Asana’s mobile app works fantastic. You can use it on the fly to capture random thoughts and ideas, get updates from coworkers, or adjust your to-do list.
Real-time updates are available. Keep your team in the loop 24/7.
When comparing Trello vs Asana, Trello is easier to grasp, but Asana offers a broader set of features.
You can invite others to your workspace.

Cons

Compared to Trello, Asana doesn’t have a desktop app for both Windows and Mac.
Tasks can only be assigned to one person. Other software solutions allow projects to have multiple assignees on a single task.
It does not have a time tracking feature. You need to install additional browser extensions.

User Review

“Fantastic for cross-team collaboration.”

Jira

Although Jira and Trello are owned by the same company (Atlassian), Jira is still an excellent project management alternative to Trello, especially for developers. Jira helps your team plan, manage, and report their work easily.

Features

Good workflow visualization through Kanban and Scrum boards.
Roadmaps are great; they provide better clarity over your projects.
Comprehensive reports on performance and progress.
To-do lists.
Custom fields.
Swimlanes.
Search.
Android and iOS apps.

Pros

With Jira, you can create customized workflows that can fit any of your projects.
The support team is very good — responsive, and puts your problems first.
Jira integrates with tons of third-party tools to make software development simpler and easier.

Cons

The mobile app of Jira feels a bit clunky compared to the web app, according to users.
No specific idea management features are available to keep track of ideas and plans.
Requires some training to get used to Jira, especially if you are a non-technical person.
When comparing Jira vs Trello, Trello is more straightforward and a better option for small teams or projects.

User Review

“Really good for automating workflow so you can assign tasks, track progress and allow follow-up. Useful reporting features can be “sliced and diced” based on views you can customize.”

ClickUp

ClickUp is a cloud-based collaboration and project management tool suitable for all types of businesses. It brings the whole team together to plan, track, and collaborate on any project — all in one place.

Features

Task assignments and statuses.
Alerts.
Task toolbar.
Users can assign comments and tasks to an individual or multiple team members.
Projects can be viewed using an Agile dashboard.
The “priorities” feature helps users focus on the most essential tasks.

Pros

ClickUp desktop app is fantastic; it runs flawlessly.
The free version is quite satisfactory as it offers a lot of features.
ClickUp pricing plans are affordable as well.
It delivers improvements, which suggests that ClickUp is constantly evolving into a better project management app.

Cons

It’s slightly complicated. You can use the ClickUp tutorials to get started.
The UI may look a bit clunky because ClickUp boasts so many features.

User Review

“Finally — We found a Task Management App that thinks like WE do.”

Wrike

Wrike is a versatile online project management and work collaboration platform. It offers many features that allow users to simplify project planning, centralize communication, and streamline workflow even remotely.

Features

Personalized and free kanban boards.
It has a built-in approval tool that allows for faster review and approval of images, videos, PDFs, and more.
Customizable dashboards and reports that allow users to monitor progress close for deeper insights.
Wrike includes custom workflows, custom fields, and custom project folder structures to make teams more efficient.
Wrike desktop app is available to both Windows and Mac users. You can find Wrike on Android and iOS as well.
Free customizable project templates are available. You’ll be able to hit the ground with new projects immediately.
Integrations with other productivity applications, such as Salesforce, Tableau, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Gmail, Google Drive, Github, Jira, Slack, and more.

Pros

Gantt charts are great for visualizing deadlines and critical paths.
If we compare Wrike vs Trello, Wrike is more suitable for enterprises, whereas Trello works better for smaller businesses.

Cons

It’s expensive for small teams, and the free plan includes very basic features.
There’s no live chat function yet.
There’s a steep learning curve.

User Review

“Good project management tool once you move past the learning curve.”

Airtable

Airtable is a simple online platform for creating spreadsheets in relational databases. The user interface is simple, colorful, and friendly. Inside Airtable, you’ll have zero issues with creating beautiful spreadsheets. If Excel and Google sheets had a child, it’d be Airtable.

Features

Store, collaborate and organize information.
Hundreds of templates.
Create custom views like Excel, Google Sheets, Calendar, Kanban, etc.
Airtable apps.
Airtable automations.
Integrates with all your favorite tools.
Desktop app.Mobile app — Android and iOS.

Pros

You can customize your workflows based on your business easily.
You can share data by providing shareable links with various viewing permissions.
Airtable brings excellent collaboration features to the table, making your team communication more efficient.

Cons

Requires training to understand all functionalities.
It’s relatively limited from an accounting perspective.

User Review

“Great Amalgamation of a Spreadsheet & Database.”

Basecamp

Basecamp is a real-time communication tool suited for small projects where collaboration is highly important. You can set up to-dos, schedules, create and upload documents and files, chat with your colleagues, and monitor the team’s progress — all in one place. It’s definitely a great Trello alternative.

Features

To-do lists.
Assignees.
Notes.
File attachments.
Comments.
Customizable message boards.
Schedules.
Share documents, files, and images.
Real-time group chat.

Pros

The learning curve is flat; you can hit the ground running in a matter of minutes.
You can send direct messages to coworkers in the form of private conversations.
Robust reports are available to provide deep insight into the team’s progress and performance.

Cons

There’s no time tracking features.
It lacks advanced features in project management like milestones and schedule charts.

User Review

“Centralized location for our to-do lists and follow ups.”

MeisterTask

MeisterTask is a work-management app that takes the shape of a kanban board to allow teams to create streamlined and automated workflows. It scales from personal project tracking to a full-blown project management tool for larger teams.

Features

Create and assign tasks to individual users with details and due dates.
Set deadlines and milestones for tasks. You can do it manually or automatically.
Task prioritization.
Projects can be mapped out with milestones, deliverables, due dates, and interdependencies.
Track issues at different “view” levels and manage resolutions.
Extensive integrations with popular tools such as Slack, Zapier, and GitHub.
You can add privacy to your tasks and projects.

Pros

Friendly user interface and flat learning curve. You’ll have a smooth user experience navigating through the UI.
Automate various functions, so you don’t have to do tedious and repetitive tasks over and over again.

Cons

No Gantt charts nor time-tracking features.No timeline view of tasks.
At times, MeisterTask may run slowly, and you won’t be able to download attached files because of its unresponsiveness.

User Review

“Simple and complete tool for managing tasks and projects.”

Monday

Monday, perhaps the biggest Trello competitor, is a Work Operating System (Work OS) that empowers teams to manage complex projects, streamline workflows, and collaborate better. It is ideal for task management, as it displays all information in one easy-to-access hub.

Features

Centralized project management.
Clients can be invited as guests to view and track the team’s progress in real-time.
Checklists.
Subtasks.
Automate various tedious tasks and streamline workflows.
Advanced search through images, updates, projects, and assignments with no date limit.
Monday apps — mobile and desktop.
Monday provides integrations with various third-party apps to streamline data flow and teamwork.

Pros

Built-in time tracking feature to analyze the team’s productivity and bill clients accurately for the work done.
You can customize your projects easily.
Gantt charts are available to make your projects more clear.
Trello and Monday have a significant degree of overlap as project management tools. Still, Monday is better than Trello due to its advanced functionality.

Cons

Tracking project goals is not easy.
Pricing can be a bit expensive compared to other tools.
The basic plan lacks many essential features that are typically included in every paid level, like private messaging, advanced search, and integrations.

User Review

“Monday can grow with your business needs from simple organization to a complete ecosystem.”

GitHub

GitHub is more of a development tool, but still works for project management great. It helps developers store and manage their code, as well as track changes to their code. It is also used for team collaboration.

Features

Create issues fast and easy.
Labels.
Milestones.
Tasks.
Assignees and mentions.
Notifications are available.
Codespaces — code, build, test, debug, and deploy with an instant cloud development environment.
Pull requests — review code and confidently merge code changes with automated status checks.
GitHub Actions — a built-in CI/CD tool.
GitHub pages let users host static websites by simply assigning HTML pages to another, separate repository.
Provides two-factor authentication for stronger security.

Pros

Project management on GitHub is actually fairly easy; it has quite a simple UI.
It offers a great documentation feature. You’ll be able to create robust documents to make development and team management easier.

Cons

It’s quite limited in features from a project management perspective.
It’s hard to push unresolved merge conflicts as a bad push is painful to reverse.
Lacks first-party support for mobile applications.

User Review

“It’s easy for multiple team members to work on the same project and merge changes (often) seamlessly.”

Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project (MSP) is a project management software developed to assist project managers with plan development, resource assignments, progress monitoring, and other project management stuff.

Features

Kanban boards for better workflow visualization.
Great task prioritization — focus on essential tasks first.
Project managers can assign activities to their team members easily.
Birds-eye view with timeline views.
Great collaboration features.
Provides resource management to manage requests easily.
Team calendar — get notifications about upcoming team meetings and events. Synchronize your work schedule with your team’s workflow.

Pros

Microsoft Project’s Gantt charts are designed very simple, so you can understand at a glance the pace your team is moving with.
The UI is quite simple.
It integrates seamlessly with other Microsoft products — it’s a great option for Microsoft users.

Cons

Not suitable for small organizations as the cost is high.
It works only on Windows devices.
It comes with a steep learning curve — it can be quite frustrating to users who have never tried Microsoft before.
Not ideal for collaboration and data sharing as it requires a significant degree of manual effort.

User Review

“It has become a standard in regards to setting up a better framework for idea manufacturing.”

Workzone

Workzone is a cloud-based project management tool. It is easy to use and, according to its advertising, it is ‘just right’ for every team and organization. It has some powerful features that make it an indispensable Trello alternative. It is much more robust than entry-level project management tools and less complicated than many high-end tools.

Features

The dashboard is super clean, granting your team a birds-eye view of your projects.
It offers project collaboration, document management, task management, customizable reports, resource, and time tracking.
Up to date project status information can be received through automated email reports.
Users can share files through the cloud.
Seamless integrations with DropBox, Teams, Google, One Drive, Slack, and HipChat.

Pros

Individual to-do lists for team members to manage their work.
The dashboard’s simplicity makes it easy to manage your entire workflow from one single place without bouncing between various 3rd party apps.
The customer support is merely excellent.

Cons

There’s no free version. Trello, on the other hand, has a free version.

User Review

“Our projects have never been more organized.”

Process Street

Process Street is a powerful and yet simple workflow management tool. It is a SaaS platform that provides an easy way to track, document, automate, and optimize your entire PM workflow.

With Process Street, you can manage your usual daily activities such as operations, hiring, maintenance, etc.

Features

Collaborative process workflows.
The software is easy to grasp even for non-technical people.
Track your progress from the main dashboard easily.
Move checklists with drag and drop.
Structured data can be captured through forms.
Activity feeds.

Pros

Create dynamic checklists through conditional logic so you can keep track of every single task in your workflow.
The support team is fast and extremely helpful. You’ll rarely experience serious issues with Process Street.
Integrations with Zapier and other 1000+ apps. Manage your entire workflow from one place.

Cons

The free version lacks essential features such as administrative controls.
It can’t move or color-code lists.
No option to print the code lists.

User Review

“Good for simple checklists; Bad for complex processes.”

ActiveCollab

ActiveCollab is a project management software that helps users become better organized. It is a worthy cloud-based Trello alternative, but you can host it on your own servers as well.

ActiveCollab has a user base of over 200,000 accounts, some of which are fortune 500 companies.

Features

Assign tasks.
Set due dates.
Track progress.
Notifications.
Comments.
Reminders.
File attachments.
Filter tasks.
Time-estimates.
Invoices.
Integrations with Slack, QuickBooks, Xero, PayPal, and Google Drive.

Pros

Users can access their tasks in different views: Kanban boards, timelines, calendars, or task board lists.
It has a great dashboard granting you a bird’s-eye view of your projects; people say it’s better than Trello in that way.
With ActiveCollab, you can set automatic payment reminders.

Cons

A lot of features means a steep learning curve.
No free version, just a trial.
Android and IOS apps are not well developed and maintained.

User Review

“Pretty robust feature set. Simple to access and easy to invite collaborators in & out of my company.”

Mavenlink

Mavenlink is a project management tool that helps teams with resource planning, automated project management, project accounting, and team collaboration. It’s an all-in-one PM platform.

It is a more feature-rich Trello alternative. Still, it’s fairly simple to get used to it.

Features

Integrations with a CRM tool of your choice.
Drag and drop.
Clone functionality to create similar tasks.
Alerts.
Permission settings.
Templates.
The free version is available with unlimited projects and users with 500MB storage.

Pros

Integration with Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce. Manage your workflow from one place.
Advanced analytic features and robust reports so you can get better insights into your team’s performance.
Bring team members on the same page quickly with tags.

Cons

The interface is a bit clunky.
The cost is pretty high compared to Trello’s pricing.

User Review

“Mavenlink is one of the best tools for team collaboration, time tracking system, team communication, file sharing, financial management and resources management etc.”

ProofHub

ProofHub is an all-in-one workflow management software.
Many of the world’s biggest companies use it — Google, NASA, TripAdvisor, and Nike. It’s definitely a worthy Trello alternative.

Features

Single platform for managers, team members, and clients.
Gantt charts.
Add tasks.
Assign tasks.
Task prioritization.
Recurring events.
Real-time collaboration.
Project reports.

Pros

Unlike the Trello app, ProofHub allows users to add custom roles and customize their teams and clients’ access levels.
The learning curve is relatively short; you can get used to it pretty quickly.
Users can set automatic reminders for important events.

Cons

No free version.
Notifications can be disturbing.
Lack of integrations.

User Review

“With Proof Hub I am able to run task and project management effectively. ProofHub creates beautiful Gantt charts for easy project tracking, and you can track time spent on projects.”

Kanbanize

Kanbanize is a great kanban software, if not one of the best, and definitely makes a good Trello alternative. It zeroes in on clarity, making it easy for you to track your progress.

Features

Customizable Kanban boards.
Timeline.
Swimlanes.
Roadmaps.
Milestones.
Integrations with Zapier, Trello, Google Drive, and Box.
Track and report billable hours.

Pros

Easy to set up and has a user-friendly UI.
All existing dependencies, processes, and interactions can be automated.
The multi-layered Kanban boards are extremely helpful when you want to keep a clear overview of your projects.

Cons

There are no Gantt or burndown charts available.
The mobile app runs badly; better use the web app.

User Review

“Kanban boards on a whole new level.”

ProProfs

ProProfs is an all-in-one project management tool. Except for project management, it offers various other solutions such as knowledge bases, training makers, survey makers, and more. It allows teams to organize projects, track progress, delegate tasks, create reports, collaborate, and much more. It’s a great project management alternative to Trello.

Features

Tasks and subtasks.Shared calendars.
Colored and labeled tasks.
Recurring tasks can be automated.
Users can assign tasks to individuals.
Client reports.

Pros

ProProfs’ Gantt charts can help you understand whether your team is moving behind or ahead of schedule.
You can discuss files, projects, and tasks in one place.
Generate invoices for clients and calculate billable hours instantly.
Automated payment reminders are available, as well.

Cons

The UI can be a bit overwhelming if you haven’t used ProProfs before.
Reports are pretty basic, without any in-depth information.
There’s a steep learning curve.

User Review

“The support has been excellent and there are constant improvements being added.”

FreedCamp

FreedCamp is a project management and collaboration tool. It helps users manage projects and almost anything like wedding plans, camping trips, events, and more. It is a pretty handy task manager alternative to Trello. It is widely used among small companies with smaller budgets and teams.

Features

Tasks and subtasks.
Kanban boards.
Set goals and deadlines.
Task grouping.
You can keep personal tasks private.
Tracks users’ time and billable hours for clients.
High-level security — password manager.
There’s a free version you can try.

Pros

Freedcamp provides you with many team collaboration features; you can bring your team on the same page easily.
Managing documents and keeping track of all your doc versions is quite simple as well.

Cons

It can be hard to grasp at first.

User Review

“We used Freedcamp for its free trial, and were left fairly satisfied with the product overall. It’s a very solid and feature-rich project management system that’ll fit most small-medium teams.”

OpenProject

OpenProject is an open-source task management software similar to Trello. It can also be presented as a Kanban-style project management tool. It’ll definitely bring clarity to your projects.

It comes with a free Community Edition, on-premise Enterprise Edition, and hosted Cloud Edition. It is among the top open-source task management solutions out there.

Features

Project objectives.
Roadmaps.
Reports.
Assignees.
Project wikis.
Budgeting.
Data security.

Pros

You’ll get access to insightful reports for your team’s performance and project progress.
Gantt charts are incredible. You’ll be able to look at your projects from a different, more clear perspective and make more accurate and better decisions.

Cons

There’s a steep learning curve.

User Review

“Fantastic GANTT implementation. Great ways to group / sort data while maintaining the GANTT view.”

Taiga

Taiga is an open-source project management tool mainly geared towards agile development teams. It has a very clean UI, and you can hit the ground running promptly; the learning curve is very short.

Features

Kanban board.
Scrum board.
Swimlanes.
Users can customize issue types, severities, and priorities.
Search filter.
If you’re switching from another PM tool, you can easily import your data to Taiga.
Team permissions and roles.
Reports.

Pros

Switching from Kanban to Scrum, and vice versa, is easy. Overall, the UI is pretty slick and pleasant to use.
It’s mainly geared towards smaller teams and individual users.
The mobile app runs smoothly as well; you’ll be able to stay in the loop regardless of your location.

Cons

Lacks features for more complex projects.
Tutorials are scarce.
The conference call feature freezes during calls.

User Review

“For startups or designers working with agile methods like scrum or kanban. Very customizable — you can adjust everything.”

Redmine

Redmine is an open-source, free, and web-based project management tool. It helps users manage and plan multiple projects from one single place.

Features

Issue tracking system.
Gantt charts.
Calendar.
Wikis.
Email notifications.
Custom fields for time entries, issues, projects, and users. Supports various SCM integrations, including (Git, CVS, SVN, Mercurial, Bazaar, and Darcs.Multi-project tracking support.

Pros

The tool is quite straightforward; you can organize and manage your projects without any hassle at all.
It’s definitely great for personal use.

Cons

There’s a steep learning curve; you’ll need to train yourself and your team first to use this tool without any friction at all.
The UI gives you an outdated look.
It’s not a good pick for non-tech people.

User Review

“Redmine was the first project manager / team planner we used and it was helpful in order to control task completions, progress and term deviations.”

Conclusion

And there you have them — the best 24 Trello alternatives to make management easier in case Trello is coming up short.

My personal recommendation would be to go with Codegiant, but, of course, I’m a bit biased.

Nevertheless, the simplicity of Codegiant’s UI will absolutely ease your entire workflow.

Other Trello alternatives I’d recommend are ClickUp, Asana, and Monday as well.

Let me know which one you like the most.

Stay unparalleled,

Team Management: How Successful Managers Manage Their Teams

Codegiant — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 15:11:06 +0000

From the desk of a brilliant weirdo #1:

If you’re having a hard time putting your team on the same page, I want to let you know that you’re not alone.

I’ve been there, and many other teams as well.

In fact, check this out:

88% of remote workers face inconsistent leadership and miscommunications with other team members.

That’s why this article will tell you how to build a strong and healthy relationship within your team so you can overcome any obstacle you stumble upon.

I’ll talk from my personal experience as well as from the management experience of other great managers.

Without further ado:

How to be a great manager?
Team management skills
Team management strategies, tips, and techniques
Team management styles
Team management tools

How to be a great team manager?

The best managers know their teammates’ strengths and weaknesses to a tee.

They know what’s unique about each person in their team, and how to properly utilize their strengths to produce positive results.

No employee is the same, and where one lacks, another excels.
Also, knowing how to use your team’s strengths and weaknesses accordingly will help you build a strong and healthy relationship within the team. You’ll create a team environment and culture where team members can support each other and truly work as a team.

“Fine shadings of personality, though they may be invisible to some and frustrating to others, are crystal clear to and highly valued by great managers.”

In order to become familiar with your teammates’ strengths and weaknesses, you gotta do more than just look at their CV and say “okay, I know them perfectly now.”

A great manager will observe the behavior of his team members inside and outside the office.

A great manager will try to understand what your interests are… do you go to any events, what music do you like to listen to, do you take notes or not, and other character-related things.

When interviewing candidates, you can ask the following question to identify their strengths:

What was the best day you’ve had in the past few months?

The things the interviewee did on that day are probably the things he enjoys doing the most.

To identify a person’s weaknesses, you just have to ask the same question but with slight tweak:

What was the worst day you’ve had at work in the past few months?

A weakness isn’t something you are bad at. We are all bad at things when we’re starting out.

A weakness is something you despise doing, something that drains the energy out of you, something that you’d avoid doing at all costs.

So, try to adjust your team members’ roles and responsibilities according to their strengths and weaknesses.

The best way to achieve a high employee retention rate is not by offering them more money. It’s proven that the most powerful trigger by far is recognition, not money.

Always give props to people who deserve it, and make it known to others.

Each individual is different though. Some people bask in public recognition while others prefer effective 1-on-1 meetings.

Team Management Skills

The number one team leader skill you need to obtain as a manager is to learn how to be a shit umbrella for your team.

You gotta protect your team members from all the nonsense that other managers, teams, and clients are throwing at them.

You’re the guy who has to say “NO” to other managers when they are trying to push more work down your team’s throat, disrupting their workflow, and totally screwing their performance.

You’re the one who has to step up when teammates get in bad arguments with each other.

As a manager, your team members look up to you. So, if you get into heated arguments with others, they’re going to do the same.

Being able to protect your team from all sort of crap is a key management skill that will help you build a great team, and foster more effective team communication. It’s definitely in the top 3 skills you need to have to be a successful manager and a team leader.

Verbal communication is another effective team leadership skill you need to master to build an effective team.

Don’t just say “you gotta do X before the end of the week.” Instead, say “guys, we gotta finish X before the end of the week otherwise Y will happen, and we don’t want that to happen, right?” You get the drill.

You don’t need to be a wordsmith, but you need to know what you gotta say and when you gotta say it to get the desired response from your teammates. A great book on the topic is “Influence” by Robert Cialdini.

Develop a thick skin

Invite feedback from your team, and don’t act like a weasel when harsh criticism punches you in the face.

In the long-term, you’ll be able to improve, and do a much better job than you’re doing right now.

Be curious and eager to learn

You can take team management courses, or any other kind of team management training you can get your hands on.

It’ll boost your confidence, and make you a much more efficient team manager… not just a manager but a leader as well.

And finally, know your teammates personality types
There’s a total of 16 personality types.

Each personality type consists of four letters. For example — INTJ.

The first letter of your personality type can either be E or I. E stands for extroverts, whereas I stands for introverts. No need to explain those, right?
Then you have, Sensitive and Intuitive (S and N) — that’s the second letter of your personality type. If you’re sensitive, then you kinda live in the moment. Intuitive people think more about the future.
The third letter of your personality type will either be (T)hinking or (F)eeling. If you are a T, then you make decisions based on facts and rational thinking. If you are an F, then you make decisions based on your emotions.
And finally, the fourth letter can either be Judging or Perceiving. If you’re a Judger, you appreciate structure and order. You prefer to plan things in advance, and hate last-minute changes. If you’re a Perceiver, you’re more of a flexible person. You like to leave things unfinished so you can adjust things on the fly.

Combined, those letters make your personality type — mine is INTJ, same as Arnold Schwarzeneger’s.

If you understand your teammates’ personality types, you can find a whole lot more about their character and behaviour by simply Googling their type. You’ll know exactly what to say and when to say it to make them do what you ask for.

It’s really that powerful.

If you want to learn more about personality types, check out C.S. Joseph on Youtube.

You can also make your teammates take the Myers-Briggs personality test.

The Myers-Briggs test, however, doesn’t tell everything, and people may not be 100% honest with themselves while taking the test. It’s a good starting point though.

Knowing your teammates’ personality types is perhaps one of the most important team leader skills you can obtain if you want to foster effective teamwork and management in order to build a better team.

Source: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/155937205824969343/

On the whole, it all comes down to having “people management” skills, showing empathy, and creating a supportive team environment.

Team Management Strategies, Tips, and Techniques

Set clear goals

Obviously, without setting clear goals, you’ll have a hard time making any progress whatsoever.

If nobody is on the same page, and people are working on tasks that make little to no difference to your project’s success, managing a team becomes more of a chore instead of a pleasure.

Know how to prioritize your tasks

I like to give as an example the “A/B items” team management technique. Scott Berkun talks about this in his books.

Imagine you’re building a car.

The A items would be the tires, the engine, the chassis, and other important stuff that the car can’t work without.

The B items are the doors, seats, radio, AC, and all the rest.

If you have your A items completed, you’ll be able to ship your product in a minimum viable state.

If you’ve been working on B items, however, and you’re running out of time, you won’t be able to ship any product at all.

Attention management

When you’re creating your daily schedule, you shouldn’t focus on how many tasks you can check off from your to-do list.

Instead, you should focus on finishing the important tasks first regardless of how much time it’s going to take.

It’s not about time, it’s about attention.

It’s an effective team management strategy for new managers. It also works great if you’re taking over a team with fresh and new team members.

How to avoid burnout

A big chunk of burnout comes from getting overwhelmed with unnecessary stuff, be it running multiple programs at the same time, having 50+ open browser tabs, using a lightning keyboard or mouse, having your desk crammed with unnecessary stuff, etc.

Clear everything, be minimal. You’ll see the difference immediately.

Also, don’t beat yourself up for missing deadlines.
Burnout doesn’t necessarily come from hard work. I’ve worked for 12+ hours a day, and still felt like I could do another 12-hour run.

The problem comes from the tasks you’re working on. If you don’t genuinely enjoy working on something 4 hours might seem like 24. And that’s how you experience burn out. If that’s the case, then you just gotta embrace it. Take more breaks, focus on the details, and you might find some joy in your assignments.

Increase productivity

There’s very interesting research about productivity done by a researcher named Homer Hibarger.

He introduced two daily five-minute breaks to his employees’ schedule. What he noticed was that productivity went up.

Then he allowed six breaks a day. Productivity went up again.

Then he allowed his employees to leave 1 hour early every day. Productivity still went up.

And finally, researcher Hibarger cut off all the breaks, and reinstated the old regime.

Surprisingly, productivity barely dipped at all.

What happened is that the employees of Homer Hibarger actually became a team and developed a strong relationship.

Homer’s employees were more engaged in their tasks, their communication was flawless, and they felt like their work meant something.

Have lunch with your team at least once a week

It strengthens your team’s relationship.

Many managers don’t do this; therefore, can’t get along with their teammates.

On the other hand, many veterans consider this a ritual, and do it every week (or every day).

Allow your teammates to book 1-on-1 meetings with you, at least once a week.

If people on your team aren’t comfortable with sharing their struggles in group meetings, 1-on-1 meetings will allow them to catch up with you and share problems that may be troubling their minds.

Doing all these things might not turn you into a great team leader instantly, but at least you won’t end up being the manager that everybody in the company shit talks about for years to come. Nevertheless, you’ll find that those skills will serve you not only in the workplace but in your personal life as well.

Now, let’s take a look at…

Team management styles

There are three main management styles you need to be aware of:

The Autocratic.
The Democratic.
The Laissez-faire.

Let’s get down to brass tacks:

The Autocratic management style

The C-level executives hold all the power.

No one is supposed to question what the executives say; employees should simply follow and execute orders.

This is the most controlling of all the management styles, and allows for little to no flexibility in proposing new ideas and suggestions. Employees aren’t allowed to share their thoughts on projects, nor are they allowed to ask questions.

In a lot of cases, employees are monitored closely and micro-managed by managers.

In many companies, employers will ask for a relentless display of loyalty by the employees.

The good thing about this type of management is that it allows for quick decision making. All goals and instructions are clearly understood by the team, and there’s no place for second guessing. Everybody knows what they should be working on.

The cons, however, can be quite troublesome. This style of management can cause an increase in employee dissatisfaction, and before you know it, all your team members will be gone. “Us vs Them” mentality starts to form between employees and managers which leads to missed deadlines, failed projects, and disputes.

The Democratic management style

Unlike the autocratic management style, companies that foster the democratic type of management encourage their employees to share input on the projects… but, in the end, it’s management that makes the final decision.

The democratic management style bonds the team, and managers are no longer viewed as slave masters. Innovation increases along with employee satisfaction.

The democratic management style fits perfectly within teams where the manager doesn’t have the required expertise to advise employees. Therefore, each team member needs to be highly skilled for this type of management to work flawlessly.

The democratic type of management can be one of the best team management styles. It zeroes in on leadership while keeping management on point.

The Laissez-faire management style

This management style can be a great success for some teams but it can be detrimental to others.

It takes a hand-off approach to leadership, and it’s definitely a more collaborative management style than the previous ones. It requires team members to be up to date 100% of the time so nothing slips through the cracks.

The employees are 100% trusted to do their work with little to no supervision. Maybe just 1 meeting is held every month to keep managers in the loop. Only results are measured. This can lead to higher employee retention and satisfaction rate.

The cons, however, of this style of management are that employees who aren’t qualified for their job position might slow down the team. And it’s hard to find employees who are both highly skilled and responsible enough to do their job properly.

Team Management Tools

In case you don’t use project management tools, here’s something that may open your eyes:

Project management software can save the average employee 498 hours per year.

Or if you’re using a project management tool, but are looking for a simpler, faster, or more feature-rich alternative, here are our best picks:

Codegiant

Codegiant comes with a simplistic and visually-appealing interface. Navigating your way through features and tasks inside Codegiant happens without any hassle whatsoever.

The interface also makes it quite comfortable for you to work on your tasks; you can access whatever you need with just 1 click.

Codegiant also brings robust reports to the table so you can see how your team performs over time, and know exactly what changes need to be made to put your team on the next level.

Features:

Kanban and Scrum boards.
Tasks and subtasks.
Sprints.
Epics.
Roadmaps.
Time tracking.
Discussions — tags, mentions, and comments.
Burndown charts.
One-click Jira importer.
You can use it for free.

Pros:

It’s as simple as it gets. You don’t need to go through endless tutorials and guides to get on board. You can hit the ground running immediately once you have your account set up.
Team members can communicate on tasks freely with tags and mentions so everyone stays in the loop.
With Codegiant, you also have access to git repositories, a built-in CI/CD, and a documentation tool. It’s the perfect pick for developers.

Cons:

More integrations needed to be added.

Customer reviews of Codegiant:

“The tool has a beautiful interface and works really fast. It is easy to setup and get started with Codegiant. Apart from the issue tracker, the tool also has some amazing features such as code repositories, documentation and CI/CS pipelines. The customer support is amazing and always ready to help you.” — Capterra.

Asana

In case you haven’t heard of Asana, the software ranks in the top 5 most popular project management tools today.

It’s founded by Dustin Moskovitz, Mark Zuckerberg’s college roommate, Dustin is also a co-founder of Facebook.

Anyways, Asana is definitely worth trying — it’s visually appealing. What’s more, flying unicorns may appear on your screen when you complete a task successfully.

Getting onboard with Asana is quite easy, no hassle or struggle needed.

With Asana timelines, you can see everything from the small stuff to the big picture, and know exactly what step to take next to move the project closer to the goal line.

Features:

List views.
Timeline.
Boards.
Customizable workflows.
Robust reporting — real-time charts and status highlights.
Reminders.
Comments.
Time tracking.
Asana offers a free plan.

Pros:

The best thing about Asana is that it makes you feel comfortable while using it. Its boards, tasks, and all the other features are designed to be visually appealing.
The UI is quite straightforward. Finding your way through Asana’s features shouldn’t be a problem at all.

Cons:

The worst thing about Asana is that it can be terribly laggy at times, especially when you’re loading an Asana task from an external link.
Email notifications can become quite annoying.
Asana is quite expensive for teams who need its premium features. The premium plan is priced at $13.49/user per month.

Customer reviews of Asana:

“I generally liked Asana and it’s a good product for staying on task and communicating with team members. It was easy to separate projects and to track progress.” — Capterra.

Trello

Trello is one of the best apps for team project management.

It looks cool. It’s easy to use. It has drag and drop functionality. You can bring your teammates on board easily. It’s just fantastic.

It has everything you need to keep everybody in the loop.

Features:

Kanban boards.
Comments.
Attachments.
Due dates.
Trello cards.
Built-in workflow automation with Butler — rule-based triggers, custom card & board buttons, calendar commands, due date commands.
Drag and drop.
Discussions.
Notifications.
Free to use.

Pros:

Trello is one of the simplest, if not the simplest, project management tools out there. You don’t need to read any docs, watch any tutorials, or go through any onboarding videos to hit the ground running.
Updating your tasks in Trello can be done without any hassle.

Cons:

Like most project management tools, it can become quite buggy if you stack your boards with hundreds of tasks.
No free trials for the Business and Enterprise plans.
The mobile app can be clunky.

Customer reviews of Trello:

“I like that Trello gives you a great visibility to share your projects and boards with other members in order to be able to track progress and accountability.” — Capterra.

Freedcamp

Freedcamp is a simple open-source project management tool.

There are no learning curves to overcome. You can just create an account, log in, and create your first project in that instant.

Features:

Task lists.
Personal and public tasks.
Kanban board.
Drag and drop.
Gantt charts.
Calendar.
Discussions.
Milestones.
Wiki.
3rd party integrations.
Freedcamp has a free plan. Then, it starts at $1.49/user/month.

Pros:

Freedcamp is easy-to-use team management software that has tons of features. It can handle both your personal and business projects from A to Z.
You can use it even if you aren’t a tech guy. Simple actions such as creating tasks, spreading assignments among your team members, and keeping track of your progress can be done frictionlessly.

Cons:

The mobile application can be a bit clunky; it lacks web functionality.
Freedcamp can become quite buggy at times, especially if you’ve crammed your board with a multitude of tasks.

Customer reviews of Freedcamp:

Conclusion

If you take nothing else from this guide, take this: learn your teammates’ strengths and weaknesses, and use them to propel your team forward.

Learning the 16 personality types can help you tremendously as well. You’ll know your teammates better than they know themselves… which is how you build trust.

Stay unparalleled,

8 Powerful Team Collaboration Strategies: The Ultimate Guide

Codegiant — Sat, 24 Oct 2020 12:53:51 +0000

From the desk of a brilliant weirdo #1:

If you struggle with team collaboration, then this article will show you how to use 8 powerful team collaboration strategies to put your team on the same page.

Let’s get down to brass tacks.

Here’s why team collaboration is important

Out of 1400 people (executives, employees, and educators) surveyed, 86% said that failures in the workplace were due to poor team collaboration.

So if you want to improve your team collaboration, check out Codegiant - a simple team communication and project collaboration tool.

Here more statistics and benefits of collaboration in the workplace:

Source: https://goremotely.net/blog/workplace-collaboration/

83% of employees collaborate better with the help of technology. Team collaboration software can help integrate your team better.
75% of employees think good teamwork and leadership skills are crucial to the success of their projects. 39% of the surveyed workers believe that their companies and teams can collaborate better.
Project management and collaboration apps can increase productivity by up to 30%. You’ll be able to reach successful collaboration in the workplace by only using one free team collaboration app like Codegiant.
Using project management tools allows for remote work. And remote work can save employers up to $11,000 per year. Transforming your on-site teamwork into a digital collaboration can actually turn out to be a very successful collaboration technique.
Studies show that 3.7 million employees in the US work remotely at least half the time.
Connected supportive teams that work collaboratively can be up to 21% more profitable - Gallup.
61% of employees experience burnout, and 31% of those suffer from extreme work stress - CareerBuilder.
80% of all employees across the US feel quite some stress due to the lack of effective communication. - Dynamic Signal.
63% of all American employees want to quit their job because poor communication prevents them from doing their job properly.
97% of employees and high-level executives believe that the lack of good team collaboration impacts the project's outcome negatively - Mckinsey.
According to The Economist, 33% of all employees say better team collaboration makes them more loyal.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at some...

Team Collaboration Strategies and Best Practices

Here are some solid communication strategies to help you develop effective teamwork.

Set the team’s goals

You need to make sure that every person in your team knows the teamwork goals they’re after.

Communicate your team’s goals daily to ensure no misunderstandings occur along the way. It’ll help your teammates stay focused and productive while removing any silos in the team.

Having great leadership and set clear goals will help you build a successful team with the proper collaboration management style of meeting all your deadlines.

You can use daily scrums to sum up your goals.

The icebreaker

Start meetings with ice-breaker questions such as “What’s your favorite video game,” or “What’s your favorite place on Earth?,” or “What do you love doing on the weekends,” etc. It’ll set the tone for the meeting lifting up the collaboration spirit.

If the team is new, you can also create a book with mini-bios of each team member. Each bio can include a picture of the person, area of expertise, ways to contact them, favorite movie or hobby, etc.

You can present the book at the first team meeting where everybody can go through it, and get a better idea of their teammates. It helps build a collaborative culture.

Highlight individuals' strengths

The next strategy for improving your team’s collaboration is to highlight each team member’s strengths.

If you make your employees feel appreciated and heard, then they are more likely to appreciate their workspace, colleagues, and job.

On the other hand, if you fail to make your team members feel respected, they are more likely to resign.

66% of employees would resign their position if they felt unappreciated. And the number is even higher among millennials - 76%.

Knowing your team members’ strengths will help you organize your project easily without second guessing whether the task you have assigned to person X is more suitable for person Y.

Attention management

Today, in order to inspire your team and propel them forward you might want to start talking more about productivity as everybody seems to be obsessed with it.

Everyone is in constant pursuit of the 4-hour workweek. And most people think that productivity is all about time management, but in fact, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Many people set daily goals, organize their tasks in bulleted lists, and continue to come up short on meeting their goals.

Still, others manage to pull through quite successfully. We all have the same hours a day.

So what’s the secret?

Some people know how to manage their ATTENTION better and focus on essential tasks that actually impact the outcome.

Attention management has a lot to do with motivation.

If you get your motivation straight, you can complete tasks much faster than if you were to set deadlines and stick to a fixed schedule.

You need to know how to prioritize your tasks better.

For every project, you have A (important) items and B (not as important) items - credits to Scott Berkun.

For example, let’s take a look at the construction of a car.

Your A items will be the tires, the engine, the chassis, etc. If you pull these together, you’ll come up with a car that actually works, even though it’ll be extremely uncomfortable to drive it.

The B items can be the windows, chairs, mirrors, etc. The car can still work without them.

You need to work on your A items first so you can ship your product even in a minimal state if you’re running out of time.

Encourage honest feedback

You need to create a collaborative environment where people can feel comfortable to collaborate with others sharing ideas and suggestions. Make sure you avoid criticism, and instead focus on giving constructive feedback.

Utilizing a collaborative leadership style will definitely help you with building out a team that fosters a team-oriented environment. Building a solid communication and collaboration with your team is all that matters.

If you notice introverted people on the call for whom it is harder to get into the conversation, then invite them by asking welcoming questions such as “[Name], what do you think about that?”

When onboarding new team members, make sure you also include them in the loop as it will make the onboarding process faster and smoother.

Be aware of common sense

If you’re doing video meetings, don’t breathe in the microphone, don’t eat on unmute, don’t play with your squeaky chair, and make sure everyone can hear you clearly when you’re speaking.

Get out of the cubicle

One of the most important strategies of all is to get your team out of the office. Don’t just take them to lunch… organize team-building activities and other teamwork stuff that everybody can enjoy.

Studies show collaborative tools like project management software can tremendously improve team performance. 49% of all the millennials surveyed espouse “social” tools for business collaboration, along with 31% of boomers and 40% of Generation X agreeing.

If you also want to increase your productivity significantly, then check out Codegiant. It’s one of the best team collaboration tools. It can keep you focused on your tasks without overwhelming you with a variety of unnecessary features.

Use cross team collaboration

Cross team collaboration is when employees from different departments collaborate together to achieve a common goal. It’s a great approach to collaboration in general.

The idea of cross team collaboration is that each employee, stemming from a different background, can come up with unique ways for solving issues that other team members won’t be familiar with. Seeing a particular collaboration problem through a different lens can help you see a much better solution for that problem.

Being part of a cross-functional team can make you feel alive again as you’ll approach your meetings with a different, sort of curious, kind of attitude than your everyday meetings with your regular team members… same office, same people, same shit.

What effective team collaboration skills do you need to have?

Here are 3 of the most essential cooperation skills for developing a collaborative system within your team that puts everybody on the same page:

You gotta be open minded if you want to develop a healthy relationship and establish good communication habits with your teammates.

You should also think long term. Here’s a great quote that emphasizes the importance of long-term thinking - “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

And finally, the collaborative skill of debating is a must. If you learn how to debate, your ideas can always come on top, only if they are good enough (you can’t debate bad ideas cuz your arguments will never beat the arguments of other people’s good ideas.)

Here are 8 tips to win debates by Ben Shapiro:

You gotta decide whether the debate is worth it in the first place - is it worth your time? The worst debate is when you know the opponent has made his mind and can’t be convinced regardless of the facts you throw at him.
Know your opponents. Do an awful lot of research. What are their arguments? How do they argue? What are their tactics?
Disarm your opponent’s most unfair tactics. - people like to use 1 or 2 unfair tactics in general. For example, if you disagree with somebody, he calls you a racist, homophobic, etc. (going at your character). The real reason why a person may be using such an unfair tactic is to avoid the real facts and arguments. How to handle it? - “Hey, we can attack each other’s characters all day long, but let’s focus on discussing the facts.”
Frame the terms of the debate. What questions do you ask? Negative or positive?
Know what you know and know what you don’t know. You might be handed facts that you aren’t familiar with. Your response should be “I didn’t know about these. I’ll check them out and get back to you. But now, let’s discuss what we both know so things can be fair.”
Defend ideas, not individuals.
Demand clarification of terms.
Argue from fundamental principles. The arguments that make the most difference aren’t the ones stemming from facts & statistics, it’s the ones that come from fundamental principles.

How to inspire your team?

What’s the best way to inspire your teammates and improve their performance? - Double their failure rate (this can be your team motto as well).

Encourage them to try new stuff and not to be afraid of failure.

Fear of failure keeps us from unveiling our full potential. Here’s a great quote by Neale Donald Walsch about getting out of your comfort zone - “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”

Create an enjoyable atmosphere where everybody isn’t just working but having fun as well.

“It’s not what happens to you in life; it’s how you react to it.” - Charles R. Swindoll

Here is Apple’s welcome inspiration quote for inspiring new team members:

Source: https://www.cultofmac.com/165341/read-the-inspirational-note-given-to-every-apple-employee-on-their-first-day/

You can think of something similar if you want to inspire new team members.

And here are some famous teamwork quotes to keep you and your team motivated along the way:

"It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed." – Napoleon Hill

"If everyone is moving forward together, then success takes care of itself." – Henry Ford

"Many ideas grow better when transplanted into another mind than the one where they sprang up." – Oliver Wendell Holmes

"Politeness is the poison of collaboration." – Edwin Land

"Great teamwork comes from men who are working independently toward one goal in unison." – James Cash Penney

"Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment." – Mahatma Gandhi.

And, finally, let’s not forget the effectiveness of team collaboration software.

One such team collaboration tool for business is Codegiant.

It has a neat UI that’s gonna make creating and organizing the team projects feel like a breeze.

Codegiant can enhance your project planning and help you collaborate your projects more clearly.

Some of the features Codegiant boasts include:

Kanban and Scrum dashboards.
Roadmaps.
Sprints.
Epics.
Performance tracker.
Subtasks.
Tags, mentions, and comments.
Time tracking.
Time estimates.
One-click Jira importer.
Codegiant has a free plan for up to 5 users, then starts at $3/user a month.

It also brings git repositories, built-in CI/CD, and a documentation tool to the table.

Also, getting onboard is frictionless; there’s no learning curve.

Codegiant definitely makes the collaboration process much easier.

Conclusion

There you have it - 8 effective team collaboration strategies to foster healthy and collaborative relationships with your teammates and work better as a team.

Attention management seems to be my favorite so far since you don’t have to worry so much about deadlines.

But cross team collaboration is fantastic as well.

Let me know which one you like, and if you have any other team collaboration ideas or suggestions.

Stay unparalleled,

The Best 32 Project Management Tools 2020 [Unbiased]

Codegiant — Sat, 17 Oct 2020 06:53:09 +0000

From the desk of a brilliant weirdo #1:

Greetings! Thank you for checking out this article. It means a lot!

In this robust piece of content, I’ll talk to you about the top project management tools today. We’ll take a look at the best 32 PM apps:

The most popular project management tools.
Brand new project management tools.
Construction project management tools.
Open source project management tools.
And other great project management apps as well.

We’ll break down each tool in detail so you can have a solid understanding of which software is the best for you and your team.

Without further ado:

Table of contents

Basecamp
Codegiant
ClickUp
Jira
Asana
Notion
Trello
Monday
Paymo
Microsoft Project
Outlook
Google Sheets
Toggl Plan
Mavenlink
Zoho Projects
Hive
Workzone
Smartsheet
Filestage
Proofhub
Wrike
Evernote
Spike
Ganttic
GanttPRO
BuilderTrend
BuildTools
TaskJuggler
Freedcamp
OpenProject
Redmine
Taiga

Basecamp

Basecamp is a thrilling project management app, and it’s definitely in the top 3 most popular project management software.

If you are working remotely, Basecamp is tailor made for you.
The great thing about Basecamp is its price. There’s a flat monthly fee that doesn’t take your team size into account. You would pay the same whether you have a team of 500 or 5000 people.

Features:

To-do lists.
Basecamp Hill Charts.
Message boards.
Events.
Notifications.
Drag and drop.
Color-code files.
Due dates.
Share documents, files, and images.
Real-time group chat.
Pings.
Mentions.
Reports.
A 30-day free trial is available. Then it starts at $99/month flat.

Pros:

Keeping track of your team’s progress with Basecamp is super easy due to its manageable interface and robust reports.
Some people say Basecamp is everything you need. And that can be true; Basecamp equips you with a variety of powerful features.
It can be deemed as one of the best project management tools for to-do lists.

Cons:

There’s a learning curve.
Integrations are quite limited as well.
And there’s also a lack of a wiki system.

Codegiant

The unique thing about Codegiant is that it is PURPLE… just like Thanos.

But it’s also quite a simple project management tool with a clear UI and neat features.

Creating and spreading tasks among team members, and keeping track of your project happens without any hassle.

Features:

Kanban and Scrum dashboards.
Roadmaps.
Sprints.
Epics.
Performance tracker.
Subtasks.
Tags, mentions, and comments.
Time tracking.
Time estimates.
One-click Jira importer.
Codegiant has a free plan for up to 5 users, then starts at $3/user a month.

Pros:

Codegiant is, without doubt, in the top 3 most easy-to-use project management tools on this list of PM software. Neither it’s clunky nor challenging to comprehend.
You can get on board in a matter of minutes. Try it for free without risking a penny.
On top of that, Codegiant also offers git repositories, built-in CI/CD, and a publishable documentation tool. It’s the perfect pick for developers.

Cons:

As far as integrations go, we still have some work to do.
And as much as we’d want to avoid saying that, our customer support isn’t the best in the world. We, however, learn from our mistakes. That’s why we’ll be increasing the number of our customer support team members in the next few months.

ClickUp

“One app to replace them all.”

The main thing with ClickUp is that it has everything you need to handle your projects from end to end.

It is a project management tool that brings heaps of features to the table such as slash commands, real-time chat, task tray, comment assignments, and more.

ClickUp raised $35 million in Series A a couple of months ago which means that the ClickUp team has the budget to keep their app in top performance.

On top of that, ClickUp is one of the best free project management tools for collaboration.

Features:

Boards, Lists, Gantt, and Calendar views.
To-do lists.
Docs & notes.
Events.
Reminders.
Goal tracking.
Time tracking.
Screenshots & recording.
Resource management.
Performance tracker.
Templates and custom statuses for process management. 1,000+ integrations with other tools.
Free plan. If you want to get the premium features, it’s $9 per month.

Pros:

The uniqueness of ClickUp stems from its well-made collaboration features that make the communication process a breeze.
The support team of ClickUp is great; you’ll rarely find yourself struggling to navigate your way through the interface.
Regular Friday feature releases; if you crave a specific feature, let the team know, and if you’re lucky, you might see it taking place the next Friday.

Cons:

There’s a steep learning curve.
You can’t export your ClickUp projects.

Jira

Jira definitely ranks in the top 3 for the most popular project management software.

It dates back to 2002, and it was initially designed as an issue tracking system. But with time, it evolved into more of a project management tool.

Today, it’s trusted by more than 65,000 teams.
Jira is perhaps the most robust and feature-rich tool on the market.

Features:

Roadmaps.
Customizable Jira boards.
Kanban, Scrum and Scrumban boards.
Asana to-do lists.
Custom fields.
Swimlanes.
Search.
Filtering.
Resource planning.
Advanced reporting.
Advanced security and administration.
Android and iOS app.
Jira also has Windows, Linux, and Mac desktop project management applications.
Free for open-source projects and for teams with up to 10 users. Then starts at $7/user/month.

Pros:

Jira can integrate with a variety of other apps, bringing your entire project management workflow into one place.
Jira’s support team is simply phenomenal. Fast, reliable, and always with a positive attitude.
Although it’s one of the best task management software for developers, Jira also works great for general project managers.

Cons:

It isn’t suitable for non-technical people. Jira’s initial issue tracking design has influenced the software’s evolution over time, and has made the UI hard to grasp, especially if you aren’t a developer.

Asana

Founded by Dustin Moskovitz, Co-Founder of Facebook, Asana stands up there with the most popular project management tools.

Asana’s interface is super interactive, and keeps you engaged during the whole time you’re using the app. What’s more, rainbow unicorns appear on the screen when you complete a task successfully.

Asana offers more than 100 app integrations. It can bring everything you need in one place — emails, tickets, files, and more.

Features:

Simple interface.
Document management.
Asana timelines — Gantt charts.
Reports.
Notifications.
Reminders.
Comments.
Add assignees, attachments, and hearts to tasks.
Time tracking.
It comes with a free plan for up to 15 users. It then starts at €13.49 billed monthly.

Pros:

Navigating through Asana is easy. Creating an account and logging in is fast and easy.
Creating and spreading tasks across the team is frictionless.
Asana equips you with a bird’s eye view of your progress so you can see who is doing well and who is falling behind.
Asana seems to be one of the best task management software for a lot of managers because of its intuitiveness and robustness.

Cons:

Asana can get very laggy at times, especially when you’re opening an Asana task from an external link.
Email notifications can be hard to disable.
The pricing isn’t cheap. Compared with other project management systems, Asana can dive deep into your pockets. The premium plan is priced at $13.49/user per month.

Notion

If you were to ask Steve Jobs what is his favorite project management app, he would probably point out Notion because of its neat and simple design.

Notion is extremely easy to use. Navigating your way through the app feels like a breeze.

There aren’t many features all over the place to make you feel like you’re working in a dumpster fire. Everything is neat and clear.

As an individual user, you can use Notion for free. It’s simply the perfect project management tool for personal use.

Features:

Kanban boards.
To-do lists.
Notes & docs.
Wikis.
iOS and Android apps.
Markdown.
Slash commands.
Drag and drop.
Comments, mentions and assigns.
Real-time editor.
Notion has a free plan for personal use. The “Personal Pro” plan that starts at $4.

Pros:

Notion works great for both personal and business needs. The Notion dashboard is clean and distraction-free, allowing you to fully focus on the task you’re working on.
Sharing info with clients and other members of the team is effortless.
The mobile version of the app is shockingly simple to use. People believe Notion should be charging more for the value it offers.
It’s perhaps the #1 task management software for to-do lists.

Cons:

There’s no integration with Google Calendar for tracking due dates.
No offline mode for the desktop app.
Some people say it can be buggy at times.

Trello

If you have a hard time tracking your team’s progress, then you need Trello. It’s one of the top time tracking software.

With Trello’s intuitive interface, you can simply glance at your dashboard, and see the progress being made, who is working on schedule, and who is falling behind.

Trello also brings powerful features to the table such as boards, cards, and lists, allowing you to organize your projects without any hassle.

Trello is suitable for both business and personal projects.

Features:

File attachments.
Checklists.
Labels.
Search.
Filters.
Due dates.
Drag and drop.
Discussions.
Notifications.
Emojis.
Android and iOS apps are available.
Trello pricing plans at $12.50 per user per month.

Pros:

-Trello is a lighting-fast project management tool. The interface is so simply designed that you don’t need to go through any product tours to get the hang of it.
-You can update or add info to your cards effortlessly.
-Tracking your project’s progress is super easy because of Trello’s clear dashboard views — definitely one of the best task tracking tools.

Cons:

-Your dashboard can turn into a clusterfuck, if you create hundreds of tasks. It becomes quite hard to keep track of everything. Trello is better suitable for smaller teams.
-The Business and Enterprise plans don’t offer free trials, so you can’t really try Trello’s premium features unless you buy it.
-The mobile app is a bit messy; you can lose track of your messages and info updates.

Monday

Monday can be easily named as the project management tool of the year.

It’s simple, it’s straightforward, and it’s pleasant to the eye.

With Monday, you won’t be spinning your wheels as you’d be with other clunky PM tools.

Features:

Automated notifications.
Task dependencies.
Kanban boards.
Time tracking.
Integrations.
Timeline views.
Gantt charts.
Project management collaboration tools.
Email updates.
Customizable templates.
Milestone tracking.
Monday comes with a Mac project management software. It offers a free trial. After the trial ends, the price starts at $39.00 per month for 5 users.

What we like:

The drag and drop features make everything so much easier. Keeping your teammates up to date with Monday.com is very, very easy.
Monday’s collaboration features are simply great — you can put your team on the same page easily.
Integrates with a variety of other apps.
Monday is simply an amazing team management software that fits every project manager’s needs perfectly.

What we don’t like:

It can be a bit expensive compared to other PM programs.
It can be laggy at times when navigating through the UI, especially when you’re using the Mac app. Many people believe that Monday doesn’t have the servers to sustain its large customer base.

Paymo

Paymo does a really great job at combining essential project management elements in one place — simplicity, features, and visibility.

Paymo is a tailor-made project management software for remote and small teams.

With Paymo, you can accurately assess your team’s performance because of the robust reports you’ll have access to.

Features:

Kanban boards.
Gantt charts.
Time tracking.
Budget management.
Customizable templates
Milestones.
Reminders.
Paymo comes with a 15-day free trial. The “Small Office“ plan starts at $11.95/user per month.

Pros:

You don’t need to use 3rd party tools; Paymo takes care of your project management process from end to end.
Freelancers like Paymo a lot because it allows them to collaborate with clients and send invoices easily.

Cons:

-There’s quite a learning curve you’ll need to overcome.
-The interface gets clunky when you create tons of tasks; it’s hard to sift through.

Microsoft Project

Microsoft Project is one of the simplest project scheduling software tools on this list.

It comes with powerful features to help you plan, manage, and deliver work without missing deadlines.

It works perfectly for small and large projects.

Features:

Interactive dashboards to view the overall status of your projects.
Automated project management workflows.
Gantt charts.
Task and status updates.
Integrates with MS planner.
It’s built on Azure.
Microsoft Project has cloud-based and on-site solutions. Prices start at $10/user/month.

Pros:

-One of the main perks of Microsoft Project is its simplicity. You’ll be able to plan work and organize tasks without any hassle. The platform is truly user friendly.
-What’s more, it offers many templates so you can hit the ground running almost right off the bat.

Cons:

The project progress tracking seems to be a bit complex. There’s a steep learning curve.
It’s a bit expensive compared to other tools on this list.

Outlook

If you are a fan of Outlook and would like to use it as a project management tool, that’s absolutely possible.

Outlook has a number of features that can be used for project management.

The great thing about Outlook is that it’s straightforward to use.

Features:

Tasks.
To-do lists.
Calendar view.
Alerts.
Time tracking.
Overview of your colleagues’ roles and responsibilities.
Milestones.
Resource management.
Accessible by everyone.

Pros:

Relieves you of the pain of adopting 3rd party project management systems.
Outlook boasts well-designed team communication features. You’ll be able to keep everybody on the same page.

Cons:

Well, at its core, Outlook isn’t a project management tool and lacks a lot of core features that other PM tools support. Yet, if you’re looking for something simple, you can’t go wrong with it.

Google Sheets

Google has a lot of project management tools like Google Docs, Google Slides, and others, but the one that really stands out is Google Sheets.

It is flexible and easy to use.

With Google Sheets, you can create, edit, and collaborate your assignments on the fly.

Features:

Templates.
Spreadsheets.
Notes.
Docs.
Calculator.
Collaboration tools.
Works on Mac, Windows, Web-based, cloud, SaaS, iPhone / iPad, and Android.
Google Sheets is a free project management software.

Pros:

Getting started with Google Sheets is frictionless; there is no steep learning curve to overcome.
Sharing files with others is extremely easy.
Some people say that Google Sheets relieves the eyes especially if you’re coming over from Microsoft products.
Google Sheets is simply an incredible project planning tool that can fully satisfy a project manager’s needs when it comes to planning and tracking projects.

Cons:

Although Google Sheets is quite simple at its core, the more advanced features (like duplicates) require more digging into the app and understand its features thoroughly.
Not as good as MS Excel in terms of robust features.

Toggl Plan

Toggl Plan is a project scheduling software that offers all the features you need to ease your end-to-end project management process. Organizing tasks, managing teams, and creating detailed reports feels like a breeze.

What’s great about Toggl Plan is that it can give you a 50,000 foot view over your tasks, allowing you to see the “What,” “When,” and “How” of your project.

Features:

Drag and drop.
Plan and collaborate in real time.
Instant updates.
Checklists.
Easy sharing.
Custom colors.
Milestones.
Zoom levels.
Upload files.
There’s a free plan for up to 5 users. Then it starts at $9/user/month.

Pros:

The cool thing about Toggl Plan is that it focuses on one specific thing — planning projects — and it doesn’t overwhelm you with a variety of features.
You can improve your team’s performance by recalling what went well and wrong with previous projects thanks to milestones.

Cons:

Some users have complained about the high-contrast design creating too much distraction.

Mavenlink

Mavenlink is another fantastic project scheduling software that combines many essential features (resource management, time management, budget management, and more) in one but powerful project management app.

With Mavenlink, you don’t need integrations with 3rd party tools turning your workspace into a clusterfuck.

Features:

Task management.
Documentation.
24/7 support.
Collaboration tools.
Email integration.
Gantt charts.
Time tracking.
WIP limits.
Invoicing.
SSL security.
File sharing.
You can try Mavenlink free for 10 days. Mavenlink prices, however, aren’t disclosed on their official website; you need to contact their team to get a quote.

Pros:

Mavenlink comes with great tracking features. Having the ability to accurately track your team’s performance will help you make better time and cost estimates.
Another great thing about Mavenlink is its robust reports. You’ll receive insights that will allow you to enhance your team’s performance and never miss a deadline again.

Cons:

The UI can be a bit clunky. You may need a couple of days to get the hang of it if you haven’t used Mavenlink before.

Zoho Projects

Zoho Projects is an online project management software that allows you to track your project’s progress down to the smallest detail.

Zoho comes with burndown charts, burnup charts, and cumulative flow diagrams. You’ll be able to learn from past projects quickly, and improve future ones easily.

Features:

Cloud-based project management solution.
Kanban boards.
Scrum boards.
Great visibility.
Collaboration tools.
Customizable templates.
Time tracking.
Milestone tracking.
Zoho Projects offers a free trial. And after that, it is €3/user/month.

Pros:

The support team is flawless; they act quickly and solve problems easily.
The well-designed dashboard views allow you to clearly see the right steps you need to take.
It’s one of the best project planning tools you can try for free.

Cons:

As with many PM tools, the UI can turn into a dumpster fire if you overload it with a multitude of project management tasks.

Hive

Hive is one of the best project management tools to bring your entire team on the same page. Its collaboration features are simply outstanding.

With Hive, you’ll get access to flexible project layouts, native email, group messaging, and file sharing so you can make all communication with your team members flawless.

Features:

Gantt charts.
Kanban boards.
Time tracking.
Portfolio management.
Collaboration tools.
Customizable templates.
Milestone tracking.
Hive offers a free trial. After the trial ends, it’s $16 per month per user.

Pros:

Hive’s UI is quite user friendly; you’ll have an easy time shuffling through your tasks.
The support team is simply great.

Pros:

The web-based application can be unresponsive at times. Sometimes, you might get a blank page when you try to load the Hive app.

Workzone

Workzone is a straightforward project management tool.

Unlike other feature-rich project scheduling software, Workzone focuses on providing a clear overview of your projects so you clearly see the direction your project is moving toward.

Moreover, it has great reporting features that will help you improve your team’s performance significantly.

Features:

Project Dashboard.
To-Do Lists.
Gantt Chart.
Status Alerts.
Project Templates.
Time Tracking.
Secure File Sharing.
Image Markup.
Email Alerts.
Discussions.
Mac project management app.
Custom Branding.
Unlimited Support.
API & Integrations.
Prices start at $24/user/month.

Pros:

-The Mac app runs like water.

Workzone offers great collaboration features allowing your team to stay on the same page.
Workzone’s customer support is second to none.

Cons:

Assigning tasks to external members of the project can be quite difficult.
Also, filtering your projects is hard and tiresome.
The tool can be quite expensive.

Smartsheet

Smartsheet is more of an enterprise project management software that comes with heaps of features helping you to manage your projects easily.

Nevertheless, you can still use it if you are a small company, especially if you are in dire need of free excel project management tracking templates.

Smartsheet offers all kinds of excel templates. All the templates are neatly structured so you can just fill in your data and hit the ground running.

You don’t need to be a tech guy or gal to work with Smartsheet.

Features:

Dashboards.
Data charts and key metrics.
Many integrations.
Grid, Gantt, card, and calendar views.
Attach files.
Nesting tasks.
RAG status.
Date duration.
Reminders.
Forms.
Reports.
Update requests.
Sharing.
Filters.
Android and Mac project management applications are available. Custom branding.
You need to contact their team to get a price quote.

Pros:

Smartsheet’s support team acts fast, and ensures you have a great experience with the PM platform.
What’s more, you can automate tedious tasks such as sending alerts and updates, requesting approvals, and more to ease your work process.

Cons:

When it comes to calculating, Smartsheet isn’t as good as Excel is.
The UI is quite hard to grasp.
Because you have so many features, onboarding can be a bit difficult. You may need additional training for the advanced features.

Filestage

Filestage is a creative project management software that works for teams of any department. Whether you are a marketing manager, a CTO, or an HR, Filestage has all the features your team needs to finish every project with success.

Features:

Collaborate in real time.
Comments on videos, docs, images, and audio files.
To-do lists.
Custom branding.
Annotations.
Mobile version.
256-bit SSL encryption for your data.
There’s a free trial, and then starts at $89/mo regardless of your team’s size.

Pros:

Filestage is simply great for streamlining your work process so you know what to do next without any second guessing.
It’s great for reviewing stuff and giving feedback.
You can automate tasks such as sharing content with external members of the team and feedback follow ups to smooth your work process.

Cons:

Getting used to the project dashboard might be a hassle at the beginning, but you’ll get used to it.
Setting up task automation might be difficult.

Proofhub

Proofhub is another enterprise task management software. It is, however, a much simpler version of Smartsheet.

With Proofhub, you won’t be driving yourself up the wall trying to figure out how certain features work.

Proofhub is quite straightforward; you’ll kick-start your project management in minutes of signing up without any hassle.

Features:

Kanban boards.
Gantt charts.
Tasks.
Mentions.
Email-in.
Calendar.
Files & docs.
Project templates.
Reports.
Timesheets.
Notifications.
Activity logs.
Integrations.
It offers a free trial and then starts at $89/mo.

Pros:

Proofhub gives you access to detailed reports on your team’s performance.
The great thing about Proofhub is that it charges you a flat monthly fee regardless of the size of your team. You can keep growing your team while keeping your costs low.
The UI is easy to grasp; you’ll have an easy time navigating through tasks.

Cons:

More app integrations are required.
There’s a steep learning curve.

Wrike

Wrike is another enterprise project management tool designed to help you clearly see the direction your project is moving toward.

It can be easily customized to your individual workflow with custom project management boards and various automations.

Features:

Gantt charts.
Personalize your dashboard.
Tons of integrations.
Enterprise-grade security.
Real-time collaboration tools.
Instant updates.
Made for all types of project management. Whether you are an - Agile or Waterfall fan, Wrike can be adjusted to fit your needs.
It has a free plan for up to 5 users. Then it starts at $9.80/user/month.

Pros:

Wrike has great dynamic reports and analytics that enable you to clearly monitor your project’s progress over time.
It’s quite simple compared to other enterprise project management solutions. Creating tasks, subtasks, and spreading assignments with your teammates is fast and easy.

Cons:

The file uploading process can be lengthy at times.
Not many users are happy with Wrike’s automation system. It can be improved.

Evernote

Although Evernote, at its core, is a note-taking app, it can be used as quite an effective project management tool as well.

With Evernote Business, you can keep track of your progress, organize your tasks clearly, access any essential docs easily, and communicate with team members frictionlessly. It has everything you need to hit the ground running.

Features:

Timelines.
Gantt charts.
Milestones.
Time tracking.
Reporting.
To-do lists.
Document scanning.
PDF & Document search.
Share files.
Mobile versions — Android and iOS.
Desktop versions — Mac and Windows.
Reminders.
Exporter.
Dark mode is available in Evernote for Mac, iOS, and Android.
Evernote tutorials.
It comes with a 30-day free trial. Then it is €13.99/user/month.

Pros:

What’s great about Evernote is that it automatically saves your data across all your devices.
It’s quite neatly designed; you don’t have to shuffle through a variety of features to figure out how to do something.

Cons:

It can be buggy, especially the iOS app. This can be quite frustrating when you’re trying to note down something on the fly, and the app isn’t responding.
Integrations can be a bit hard to set up if you are a non-tech person.

Spike

Spike brings your end-to-end project management into your inbox. From emails, chats, and calls to tasks and dashboard views, Spike puts everything in one place.

Spike works on top of your existing email and is available on iOS, Android, Mac, and Windows.

Features:

Group chat.
Bulk actions: delete, mark as read, archive, etc.
Easy files access.
Calendar.
Advanced search.
Video and audio calls.
Cloud integration.
Collaborative notes.
There’s a free for one account. For additional accounts it starts at $4/account/month.

Pros:

Spike removes the necessary evil — having to integrate with other 3rd party complex project management tools.
What’s great about Spike is that it turns your emails into simple and visually appealing conversations.
You can chat with team members through Spike even if they don’t have it.

Cons:

Keyboard shortcuts aren’t fully customizable.
The iPad version landscape needs further improvement.

Ganttic

Ganttic is a project portfolio management tool, used to plan human and non-human resources, projects, and tasks.

For the past 10 years, the tool has been ideal for those looking for a middle-ground between complicated ERP software and versatile spreadsheets.

It offers users a high-level overview of each component of the planning process, increasing resource and project efficiency, transparency, and utilization.

Features:

Cloud-based platform with real-time updates.
Drag and drop.
Plan from the POV of projects or resources.
Share files.
Gantt charts.
Kanban views.
Customizable, automated reports.
Progress tracking analytics.
Integration with Google and Outlook.
You can try Ganttic free for 14 days. Pricing packages are scalable — as they are based on the number of resources in use.

Pros:

The strength of Ganttic lies in its ease of use, flexibility, and shareability.
The cloud-based platform can be updated and accessed by an unlimited number of users.
Round the clock customer support.

Cons:

No planning templates are available.
The mobile app is lacking many capabilities; it is built to complement the web app.
Although the UI is quite straightforward, it can be seen as outdated or “boring” as it mimics spreadsheets.

GanttPRO

GanttPro is one of the most simple construction project management software out there.

The cool thing about GanttPro is that it provides you with robust project reports and analytics. You can clearly see the steps you need to take to move the project closer to the goal line.

Features:

Gantt charts.
Kanban boards.
Time tracking.
Budget management.
Collaboration tools.
Milestone tracking.
Resource management.
A 14-day free trial. The individual plan starts at $15 a month. The team plan starts at $8.90 per user per month.

Pros:

The main aspect of GanttPro that makes it a powerful construction management tool is that it makes it effortless for teams to track their progress. -Many college graduates prefer GanttPro as their starting tool — it’s quite simple, and has everything you need to hit the ground running. It’s definitely a great work organization tool for beginners.

Cons:

There’s a sort of a learning curve.
Chart updates can be slow at times. Even if you refresh your browser, the data will still stay out of date.
There isn’t an “Undo” button. If you accidentally click and move something to a different place, you’re screwed.

BuilderTrend

BuilderTrend is another fantastic construction management software that makes your entire work process easier.

From planning to execution, BuilderTrend has all the necessary features you need to complete your project without much hassle.

“The only thing it can’t do is manage your fantasy football team.”

Features:

Daily logs.
To-dos.
Scheduling.
Document storage.
Messaging.
Warranty.
Plan Markup.
Invoicing.
Budget.
Purchase orders.
Time clock.
A flat price of $99/mo regardless of the size of your team. On top of that, BuilderTrend offers a 30-day money back guarantee.

Pros:

BuilderTrend’s UI is easy to grasp; you can start creating and spreading tasks across your team in a matter of minutes.
The biggest thing about BuilderTrend is its ability to display the total project costs. It also allows you to make online payments. BuilderTrend can save you a lot of time.
The pricing model is just a no-brainer for bigger companies. You can have a 1,000-person team and still pay only $99/mo. Compared with other tools, it’s freaking cheap.

Cons:

The CRM component still needs more improvement according to users.
The support team responds slowly.
Although the UI is easy to comprehend, features such as Gantt charts might be hard to grasp if you haven’t used them before.

BuildTools

And finally, we have BuildTools, another construction project management software which is a web-based platform.

The great thing about BuildTools is that it zeroes in on your team communication. With BuildTools, you can keep internal and external project members in the loop without any hassle.

BuildTools is used by all kinds of businesses including home builders, remodelers, specialty contractors, and more. You can rest assured it’ll suit your business well if you are in the construction niche.

Features:

Quickbooks and Xero integration.
Proposal tracking.
Emails.
Messages.
Notifications.
Invoice management.
Scheduling.
Tasks.
Photos.
Daily logs.
It starts at $199/mo for 3 users.

Pros:

BuildTools is great for tracking your bottom line accurately. It’ll definitely help you make the right decisions for your company.
With BuildTools, you can easily keep clients in the loop to ensure everyone is on the same page, and no misunderstandings occur.

Cons:

The UI may feel a bit clunky until you get used to it.
Occasionally, you might experience minor glitches or lags. Not a big deal though, just refresh your browser, and things will be back to normal.

TaskJuggler

TaskJuggler is an open source project organization software that comes as a replacement for a lot of sophisticated PM tools out there.

On top of that TaskJuggler is a free project management software.

TaskJuggler will make your entire process from planning to execution much easier to manage. It brings great communication features to the table which will help you keep everyone in the loop.

Features:

Gantt charts.
Task management.
To-do lists.
Detailed reference manual.
Simple installation.
Budget management.
Runs on all Linux, Unix, Windows, macOS and several other operating systems.
Advanced reports.
Free to use.

Pros:

TaskJuggler is suitable for all kinds of projects — from building a small cottage to planning the construction of a skyscraper.
It’s suitable for many types of project management, especially Extreme Programming and Agile. Cons:
It might not be the most good looking project management tool out there. If your work environment’s appearance influences your performance, you might find it hard working with this project management tool.

Freedcamp

Freedcamp is another open source alternative that boasts quite a simple and user-friendly interface.

Freedcamp literally works for anything. Whether you’re making software plans as a business project manager, scheduling your wedding, or mapping out your next week’s trip to Arizona, Freedcamp has all the features necessary to make the whole process easy to manage.

Features:

Task lists.
Kanban board.
Subtasks.
Gantt charts.
Calendar.
Issue management software.
Discussions.
Milestones.
Wiki.
3rd party integrations.
Freedcamp has a free plan. Then, it starts at $1.49/user/month. It’s definitely one of the best free project management software.

Pros:

Freedcamp is quite a solid and feature-rich project management platform that’s perfect for SMBs.
Unlike other sophisticated tools, Freedcamp has made their app easy to grasp by even the most non-tech folks. Creating tasks, sharing files, keeping your team members up to date can be all done without any hassle.
Freedcamp is perhaps the cheapest task management software on this list.

Cons:

The mobile app lacks full web functionality.
Sometimes, especially when you have hundreds of tasks running, it can be difficult to navigate through the app.

OpenProject

OpenProject is another fantastic open source work management software.

Here’s more about its open-source community:

142 releases.
153 contributors.
8425 pull requests.
56417 commits.

It’s growing steadily.

The main thing about OpenProject is that it zeroes in on team communication; you’ll have an easy time keeping your team on the same page. It’s a great team management application.

Features:

Roadmaps.
Supports most types of project management methodologies: -
Agile, Kanban, and Scrum.
Bug tracking.
Time tracking.
Cost reporting.
Budgeting.
Data security.
Secure hosting in the EU.
It’s $6.75/user/month but the minimum subscription time is 1 year.

Pros:

The Gantt charts are simply fantastic. It allows you to sort your data in whatever way you like while maintaining the overall Gantt view.
Shared timelines help you visualize the team’s progress so you know what’s the right step to take.

Cons:

The mobile app can be hard to grasp.
Some users believe that this is quite a burdensome resource management software.
Getting on board can be quite a hassle initially.

Redmine

Redmine is an open source task management software written by using the Ruby on Rails framework.

It’s been on the market for over 10 years and has over 100K users.

Redmine’s plugins are definitely a good starting point for someone who is just entering the project management world.

Features:

Issue tracker.
Gantt charts.
Calendar.
News, documents & files management.
Feeds & email notifications.
Wikis.
Time tracking.
Custom fields for issues, time-entries, projects and users.
SCM integration.
Multiple databases support.

Pros:

Organizing your tasks with Redmine is quite easy; you will be able to track down issues without any hassle.
Redmine works fantastic for personal use but you can also use it for smaller business projects.

Cons:

The design looks outdated; some customers complain it’s quite hard to get external clients on board with this software.
The WYSIWYG editor seems clunky.

Taiga

Taiga is another open source PM tool perfectly designed for multi-functional agile teams.

Taiga’s UI is super user friendly; you’ll hardly ever find yourself struggling with creating, spreading, or organizing daily tasks.

Features:

WIP limits.
Backlog & sprint planning.
Subtasks.
Swimlanes.
Burndown charts.
Sprint views.
Customize issues.
Notifications.
Wikis.
Custom real-time reports.
There’s a free plan for up to 3 members. And then it starts at $5/user/month.

Pros:

Taiga may not boast heaps of features, but using the tool is pretty damn easy. You can hit the ground running in a matter of minutes.
Taiga’s mobile version is also pretty well designed. It’s neat and clean; no features are hiding in submenus.
Taiga’s kanban view is pretty easy to grasp, and gives you a good overview of your projects. It’s a great tool for planning your Agile project down to the slightest detail.

Cons:

Filtering your tasks in categories is darn difficult.
Even though Taiga comes with a simple interface, sometimes, it can be rather unresponsive.

Conclusion

Of course, my personal recommendation is Codegiant, but I’m biased.

So, have you tried any of these? Which one is your favorite? Which one would you recommend?

Leave a comment, please. I read all the messages.

Stay unparalleled,

Make Freelance Programming Great Again

Codegiant — Thu, 08 Oct 2020 11:11:34 +0000

From the desk of a brilliant weirdo #1:

Thanks for deciding to take a look at this article. I genuinely hope you enjoy it.

In summary, here’s what you’re going to learn in this article about freelance programming:

The only question that keeps freelancers awake at night.
The best way for getting freelance clients within a month (it doesn’t work if you don’t have balls though).
Can you find freelance work on Hacker News?
A mischievous way for raising your rates (I don’t recommend it though).
How much can you make as a freelance developer?
The best freelance websites for landing clients fast.
Why are most people wrong about UpWork?
And more…

Without further ado:

How to approach freelance programming?

As an entry-level freelance developer, you can take two general approaches to freelance.

Here’s the first one: If your savings are draining out and your back is against the ropes, you won’t be able to weed out bad clients and charge high fees. Initially, you’ll need to take on any client you stumble upon to make ends meet.

Some freelance programmers believe that taking on bad clients first is better as it allows you to differentiate great clients from terrible clients further down the line.

And here’s the second one: If you’re working in a well-paid 9-to-5, you can negotiate higher freelance rates because you won’t be too hard up; thus, you’ll avoid the stress that stems from bad clients.

With that said…

How do you find freelance clients?

It’s the only question that keeps so many freelance programmers awake at night.

Truthfully, there isn’t a magic method for finding clients. There are many, and all of them work. You just gotta find the one that works best for you.

But don’t worry, I won’t leave you empty-handed.

Let’s take at some of the most effective methods for finding clients:

As a freelancer, you can get overwhelmed by work by…

Signing a contract with an agency.

Even though agencies keep a percentage of your earnings, they’ll keep you busy with tons of work, so you don’t have to stress about finding clients yourself. Agencies can be great for improving your skills.

How do you find an agency?

Google it up. See if they’re hiring any freelance programmers, and apply. You can also directly reach out to them via cold email (more of that below).

Networking

Another effective method of growing your freelance programming career and finding clients is, of course, word-of-mouth.
It’s considered the best way for landing great clients by many freelancers. They have a point.

Regardless of how great your website looks, or how much experience you have, nothing builds more authority than other people recommending your services.

In order to grow your network and get word-of-mouth business, you need to join communities where your potential clients hang out.

Such communities may be local meetings, online conferences, Facebook groups, Slack communities, forums, subreddits. Think where your potential customers may be and go there.

Build relationships with other freelance coders. If someone has tons of work, maybe he can hand some work over to you in exchange for a small % of what you make.

But at the end of the day, your results speak for themselves.
Something important to remember: never be anonymous.

When you are marketing yourself through guest blog posts, make sure people know who you are and how they can get in touch with you. It’s a huge deal breaker.

The next method for finding clients is…

Google + LinkedIn

You can Google up web agencies in your city and reach out to them.

Another great way for connecting with tech managers, VPs of Engineering, CTOs, etc. is LinkedIn.

LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator, in my opinion, is the perfect prospecting tool. It costs around $70/mo, but it’s worth it. You can narrow down your search, and pick only quality leads that would potentially want to do business with you.

Once they accept your friend request, you gotta reach out… and this is where it gets interesting…

Growing your freelance programming career with cold email

Most freelancers talk about building a strong network of other freelancers and clients, and thus getting lots of word-of-mouth business. While this can be very effective in the long-term, most freelancers want to land clients ASAP.

And what do you do if you have no one in your bubble to bootstrap your freelance programming career?

Well, you start reaching out to businesses. Tedious, but if done right, very effective. And you can get results in less than a month.

Now, there are a lot of mediums you can use to reach out to businesses. LinkedIn is booming right now.

The other one is cold email, and I’ll be focusing on that one specifically (though both outreach methods, LinkedIn and cold email, can be quite similar).

A lot of people think cold email doesn’t work. I call that BS. They are simply doing it wrong. Before becoming a Marketing Manager at Codegiant, I got some of my biggest and most pleasurable-to-work-with freelance clients by sending unsolicited messages via email.

Someone has to take the first step, and guess what, it won’t be your client; it has to be you.

So far, if you’ve been reading only goofy articles on Google about cold email… well, I’m sorry to burst your bubble, but you’ve been wasting your time.

But hey, I don’t blame you. That’s fine. Everyone starts from somewhere. I used to do that too.

With time though, I became more experienced, and met some great marketers who taught me the secrets of cold email. (Shout out to Jon Buchan.)

Now, with cold emails, there are a couple of key points to remember.

First, you always gotta stand out from the crowd. Your cold emails should look completely different to what other people are sending.

The typical cold email goes along the lines of…

Hey [Name].
I saw you’re searching for [job position].
I’m [your name] and specialize in X,Y, and Z.
I’m looking for a job and would love the opportunity to work for you.
When do I get started?

WHAT?

This email is… boring, templated,maybe even automated, and intrusive.

Your job here isn’t to sell them that they need to hire you right now.

No, your job is to sell them that a call or a brief chat with you isn’t a bad idea.

Let’s get down to brass tacks.

Here’s the 7-step framework for making the most out of your cold emails:

It’s the best way for getting clients fast, within a month.

Greet unusually. Don’t just say “Hey” or “Hi.” Everybody does that. You need to stand out. Try “Greetings” or “Salutations.”
Make yourself the butt of the joke. Include slight humour at the beginning of your email. You need to put a smile on the reader’s face so he doesn’t perceive your email as an unsolicited, intrusive, and sales-y message. Making readers smile or laugh will increase your chances of getting a reply. For example, you can try, “I wanted to introduce myself as someone who seems interesting, clever, and witty, alas, I wrote this message instead.”
The next step is simple. Tell who you are and what you do. Be as specific as possible but don’t get too sophisticated. Remember, brevity is a by-product of vigor. “I’ve been a React developer for 5 years and have worked with X,Y, and Z companies. Here are some of the projects I’ve done…”
Say that you’d love to have a call (or a meeting) with them. The trick here is that you need to move their attention away from the call being “sales-y.” To do that, we use humour. You can say “If you are interested in what I have to offer, I’d love to chat with you. If you agree, I promise to buy you a coffee, lunch, or tequila shots. If you’re lucky, I might even tell you the lamest joke I know.”
Conclude your thoughts with a formal, but unusual, phrase. Instead of just saying “I await your response,” you can say “I await your profanity filled response.”
Sing off creatively. Don’t just say “Cheers” or “Have a great day.” Say something more colorful and full of vigor; “Have an absolutely splendid day.”
Include a P.S. Tell something completely absurd and unrelated to the topic. It relieves all the tension from your reader. For example, you can put a picture of your dog and say “Below, you’ll find a picture of my dog. His name is Jonny and he says “Hi.” I hope it puts a smile on your face.”

If you follow these 7 steps, I guarantee you that you’ll have much more success with cold email than you have ever had before.

And before commenting that this framework doesn’t work on managers, CTOs, CEOs, and other C level figures without sending out even one email, ask yourself the following question…

Do people lose their humanity and sense of humour when they become CEOs?

No, they don’t.

So, with that in mind, don’t be afraid to send cold emails.
I love getting cold emails that are worth reading. What I hate is getting templated emails that everyone is using.

And remember, cold emailing is a numbers game.

Hacker News

You can also find freelance programming jobs on Hacker News.
In a lot of Hacker News’ freelance-related threads, you’ll find managers posting jobs, searching for freelancers.

Here’s what the typical what “hiring” comment looks like:

Searching for a full-stack developer.
We’re an X startup based in Y.
We’re looking for a freelance programmer with Z years of experience. Someone who can work with APIs, implement UI, set up server infrastructure and architecture design.
Ideally, this person will be familiar with HTML5, CSS3, Python, Django/Flask, Java/NodeJS, React, etc.
Candidates please email me at abc@xyz.com.

You can also find computer programming job posts on Reddit, specifically the /forhire subreddit.

And, of course, let’s not forget…

The best freelance websites

Toptal seems to be the go-to freelance website for many developers. It offers some of the best freelance, part-time coding jobs.

You can choose your own rate and go as high as you like. Keep in mind that the higher your rate is, the more difficult it’ll be for you to land a client.

The downside of Toptal, however, is that they accept only 3% of the freelancers that apply for their platform.

But, don’t let that discourage you if you’re just starting. Apply for their interview process, see how it goes, and take notes on what you need to improve.

As your freelance programming career grows, and you decide to found an agency, you can start hiring other programmers using top freelance sites such as Toptal.

Gigster is another great platform for finding freelance programming projects, be it remote or on-site coding jobs.
Another option is UpWork. It’s perhaps the most popular free freelance platform.

And as much as it is disliked, it’s still one of the best places for finding entry-level basic programming jobs online.

You can start making money on UpWork coding pretty much within a month as a beginner programmer, from the comfort of your home.

This freelance platform is indeed inhabited mainly by cheap clients, but UpWork also gives home to great clients. I’d say that 1 out of every 10 people you chat with is a good client.

If you’re sending up to 3,4 proposals every day, and have 15–20% response rate, you’ll be getting a response from a good client every other day or two.

So don’t completely cross-check UpWork from the list; it’s a great freelance platform for finding beginner computer programming jobs. Even as a student without a degree, you can land some freelance programming gigs on UpWork while working on side projects; thus, grow your programming skills and get more experience.

As far as security is concerned, UpWork is considered safe as long as you abide by the contract rules.

Here are more freelance online job boards:

Angel
Fiverr
Guru
We Work Remotely
Speedlancer
Remoteok
Folyo
Authentic Jobs
Working Nomads
Freelancer
Nubelo
Workana
Moonlight
LocalSolo
YunoJuno

All in all, freelance websites are great if you’re a beginner, and want fast and quick projects to build out your freelance programming resume. Follow the 7-step framework described above, you’ll get programming jobs much faster than you’ve expected.

Know your standards

As an experienced developer, search for clients who can afford you; don’t waste your team on cheap clients. They’re toxic, unreasonable, and stressful to deal with.

Here are some tips to go by when searching for clients:

Rarely pick fresh startups with less than 10 people unless you are passionate about the project. That’s because they might not have the funds to afford you, if your rates are high.
Pick someone who is already making money via their website.
Don’t pick too large organizations so you can have direct contact with the owner or a C-level executive; a 50-person company seems to be the sweet spot.
Pick someone who has some understanding of programming and values your skills.

If possible, find out if clients have worked with other freelance software developers previously, and ask how it went.

If they say money isn’t a problem, that’s a red flag. Not always, but quite often.

Okay, let’s talk about your rates now.

Freelance Programming Rates

There’s a rule of thumb that as a consultant or a freelancer, you should always charge more per hour than you’d be getting if you had a 9-to-5 coding job.

The reason for that is simple.

In a normal job, you work 8 hours a day and are paid, for example, $30/hr.

Not all of these 8 hours are spent on work though. You take breaks, go to lunch, chat with colleagues, drink coffee, etc. Realistically, you’re working about 5–6 hours a day. But, you get paid for the total amount of 8 hours.

Freelancers get paid only when they are doing ACTUAL work.

That’s why you need to charge more.

Also, if someone is hiring you quick projects, you may raise your fees even more.

If someone is looking for a long-term relationship, however, you should be willing to make discounts as this client will keep you busy with work for months; thus, you won’t have to worry about finding new clients. A sign of goodwill.

As a freelancer, you’re also doing a lot of stuff you aren’t getting paid for. Things like searching for clients, marketing yourself through blog posts, networking, etc. You need to keep this stuff in mind when negotiating your rates.

If you aren’t happy with your current rates, you can do a couple of things:

Double your rates right off the bat.
If you aren’t confident in doubling your rates, do it anyway.
If you feel you would be ripping off clients by doubling your rates, and think you don’t have the necessary skills to back up your high fees, then work on honing your skills.

There’s really no magic trick to raising your rates; you either do it, or you don’t.

Higher rates, however, imply that the work you do is of high-quality which can, quite often, imbue your image with authority; hence, attract clients who are willing to pay a lot in order to get a quality service.

You can also use a different…

Wicked method for increasing your rates significantly

A mischievous method that can cause harm to your reputation in the long run though. It works best when you’re just starting out, but use it at your own risk.

To put this evil method into practice, you’ll need to use UpWork or, I guess, any other freelance platform.

The reason why Upwork works great for increasing your rates, especially when you are a beginner, is because the vast majority of UpWork clients don’t care about building a relationship with you (at least that was my experience), which allows you to be sort of arrogant and greedy.

Hark unto me.

The key is that you should never stop searching for clients on UpWork; send proposals every day. Once you find clients that are willing to pay a lot, simply put them in the place of your current clients. And thus, you’ve wickedly but successfully increased your rates.

Keep in mind that I don’t recommend this method. Even though you might make more money in the short term, your reputation will be damaged in the long run as you’re basically cutting out clients that rely on you to get their job done.

Speaking of making more money…

How much can you make as a freelance developer?

Many web developers start at $30 — $40/hr and can go as high as $200/hr and even more. It really depends on your skills, confidence, and more importantly, the clients you’re negotiating with.

For example, experienced AI and ML engineers can take up to $250/hr for relatively short and simple programming projects. For longer projects, you can still charge 3 figures easily when you have the skills and experience.

According to Bonsai — freelance rate explorer — the majority of full-stack freelance software developers with 5–10 years of experience from the US makes from $140 to $160/hr.

We can pretty much say the same for front-end freelance developers and back-end developers.

The majority of freelance DevOps engineers with 5–10 years of experience, however, makes from $120 to $140/hr.

Entry-level iOS freelance engineers can make somewhere from $60 to $100/hr, whereas experienced developers make between $120 and $160/hr.

And finally, the majority of Android freelance developers with 5–10 years of experience makes from $80 to $140/hr.

As you can see, if you live in the US, a web developer’s salary can easily jump over to 6 figures a year. In Canada, for example, the freelance software developer salary is pretty much the same but the currency is CAD.

Charging per the hour isn’t the only solution though. Sometimes, fixed-price contracts can be more profitable.

Hourly or fixed-price contracts?

Many freelance programmers prefer hourly contracts over fixed-price contracts. I think there are pros and cons in both cases.

Hourly contracts are a safer choice. They are perfect for vague projects where you don’t know how long it will take you to complete them.

Fixed-price contracts, however, can be extremely profitable if you know what you’re doing and have done similar projects before.

The price you set up for a client’s project can convey into $1000/hr activity.

As a beginner, I’d recommend starting with hourly contracts.
Also, bill your clients regularly; don’t wait until the end of the project. Bill them every week or month.

So, if they aren’t consistent with your compensation, you can stop working on the project while your losses aren’t as high as they’d be if you had done the entire project.

What if you are new to freelance and programming?

Well, here are some of the most sought-after programming languages that will help you to land well-paid coding jobs.

JavaScript

JavaScript was originally developed to create interactive web experiences. With time, it rapidly rose to the status of the standard in web development, and has contributed to many other areas of programming as well. JavaScript has one of the biggest programming communities in the world.

All modern-day websites integrate with JavaScript in one way or another.

As a beginner, becoming a freelance javascript developer is one of the best decisions you can make.

On top of that, it’s not a hard language to learn, and it’ll give you a solid foundation if you’d like to specialize in other programming fields.

Many JavaScript web developers are considered full-stack developers as they can build an entire application solely (from the front end to the back end), and many clients are searching for that exact type of freelance full-stack developer.

Java

Java was created in 1995. Back then, Java was nothing more than a simpler solution compared to the other existing languages.

Initially, it was made to be a general type of language, portable to any environment.

Today, Java has inhabited many companies in various industries.

With Java, however, you’ll have to write more lines than, for example, Python or JavaScript. This makes the language more complex. You need to clearly declare everything as it is to prevent the occurrences of any errors.

Java freelance developers are well paid, and can find java-related freelance jobs easily.

Python

Python, on the other hand, is the fastest-growing programming language. On top of that, it’s easy to learn.

Python is mainly used in Data Science, along with Machine Learning and AI. With Python you can deploy small apps using Flask or Django.

Entry-level python developers can easily land a couple of starter projects on freelance sites like UpWork.

Conclusion

I hope you found some useful information on becoming a freelance software engineer, landing freelance clients, and growing your freelance programming career.

Remember, cold email works. It’s a numbers game. Use the 7-step framework I’ve described above, and you’ll see results, guaranteed!

Also, use the wicked method for raising your fees at your own risk. Personally, I don’t recommend it.

That said, I wish you nothing but success and happiness.

Stay unparalleled,

P.S. I decided to save the short Codegiant commercial for the last. The reason is simple.

I also hate it when I get irrelevant app commercials constantly throughout the article. I didn’t want to put you through such a terrible experience.

With that said, here goes…

If you are searching for a GitHub/GitLab alternative that offers a simply-designed issue tracker, git repositories, built-in CI/CD, and documentation tool, then feel free to check out Codegiant. That’s it. Enjoy!

Scrum Ceremonies: The Unusual But Surprisingly Robust Guide

Codegiant — Wed, 30 Sep 2020 17:21:17 +0000

From the desk of a brilliant weirdo #1:

Thanks for checking out this article, mate! It really means a lot.

Let’s get down to brass tacks.

This is an article about scrum ceremonies.

I’ll cover the 5 types of scrum meetings.

Each scrum ceremony -- be it the daily scrum, the scrum retro, the sprint planning, the sprint review, or the backlog refinement -- is timeboxed. Some span from 1 to 2 hours, while others may go up to 8 hours.

I’ll also slightly talk about the scrum model, scrum process flow, scrum values, and anything else that falls in between, and how to make it better.

Without further ado:

Daily Scrum

The attendees of the daily scrum include the scrum team, the scrum master, and the product owner.

Many teams don’t realize that the daily scrum is made for the team as a whole, not for a single person (the Scrum Master or the Product Owner). As a result, many teams cancel their daily scrum when the scrum master or the product owner can’t attend the meeting.

Some developers believe that daily scrums are made to benefit only the managers by keeping them in the loop. But that just shows how impartial they are.

If you think about it, developers are communicating with each other 24/7; hence know what’s going on.

For the scrum master to be kept in the loop, he must participate in the team’s daily collaboration. He shouldn’t drain out the team’s energy by turning the daily scrum into a reporting session to get a bare insight into the team’s progress. There are burndown and burnup charts for that purpose.

Daily Scrums are held for team members to share what blocks they’re facing so other members of the team can provide help.

Parroting your sprint schedule during the daily scrum is simply a waste of time. Everybody can see what you’re up to by checking your sprint calendar. Instead, daily scrums should be focused on solving problems.

Sometimes, however, it’s hard to make developers admit what obstacles they’re facing. That’s because the impostor syndrome quietly arises in their minds, telling them they might look stupid in front of their peers that they want so desperately to impress.

Yet…

...there are still developers out there who advocate the daily standup

And would rather attend a 15-minute meeting each morning than have somebody hover over their work desk every half an hour just for “quick sync up.”

If the team isn’t doing any standups at all, it’s easy for developers to get “isolated” and blocked out. Occasional daily scrum meetings can bring them back in the loop.

Standups can also be useful when you’re onboarding new team members.

Some teams have found great success doing their daily scrums over Slack via chat.

Still, you gotta...

approach daily scrums differently if you want to make them more productive

In the very beginning of the meeting, you can make every team member share if they are facing any obstacles keeping them from making progress.

Then, only developers who want to elaborate on their problems or provide solutions can stay; others can hop off the meeting and get to work.

Daily scrums can rarely bond your team though.

The best thing you can do to build a strong relationship with your teammates is to take them out on a Friday night, drink a bevvy, have fun, and then switch over to tequila shots.

Here are the main killers of your daily scrums:

Team members showing up late.
People aren’t saying too much.
Others don’t know when to shut up.
People complaining about how bad the daily scrum is.
If the SM (scrum master) can’t attend, the daily scrum gets canceled.

As an aside: 90% of developers hate to track their sprint hours of operation using time tracking software.

Focus on results not on sprint working hours, and you’ll have more success with your projects and your team in general.

Yet, sometimes, the problem isn’t with the daily scrum but with the company’s culture.

Scrum Retrospective

The sprint retrospective is considered to be the most important scrum ceremony of them all.

It allows us to improve our working flows and thus deliver awesome results at the end of every sprint.

Usually sprint retrospectives are held right after the sprint review at the end of the sprint.

For a month-long scrum sprint lifecycle, a scrum retrospective’s timeline can span from 3 to 4 hours.

Scrum retrospectives can be great for clearing up bottled up feelings and emotions. Don’t let your team burnout; instead do a retro, and clear things out.

Taking notes during the retro can be considered as a “scrum best practice.” Note down what went great and poor. And then create a list of action items for improvement.

Make your retros enjoyable

Most times, retros will turn into boring blabbering that nobody wants to attend.

Encourage not-work-related talks where teammates can share cool stuff with each other and strengthen their relationships; thus build a better sprint team.

Bringing snacks and other yummy-yummy stuff to the sprint retrospective can boost the team’s spirit and create a supportive atmosphere.

Don’t allow a “bully” attitude though. Retros should feel like a safe place where everybody can share their concerns.

Treat each other with respect and focus on fixing problems instead of blaming others.

Don’t create a “YES” culture

If you’re only talking about the positive stuff and neglecting real problems, you’ll end up running in circles and making no real progress.

Address all the negative shit but keep the positive attitude on point - “everything is figureoutable.“

Don’t let only one or two team members dictate the pace and direction of the meeting. Every single member of the team should be active during the retro; that way, it feels more energetic; it bonds the team.

You can suggest that team members jot down their thoughts on notes before the scrum event if that would make it easier to participate in the conversation.

The 4 scrum stages of the sprint retrospective

1. Set the stage

Setting the stage is a scrum activity that’s vital to the success of the retro.

You can elevate the team’s mood by starting the scrum ceremony with a round of admiration. Basically, tell your colleagues what you must admire about them.

Also, before the retro, you can spend some time going through email threads, chat logs, tickets, and other communication channels, and gather all kinds of quotes.

Write them down along with the owner of each quote, and make the team guess who said them. Quite often, the team will guess right and even recall the situation in which the quotes were mentioned.

And, of course, one of the most thoughtful questions you can ask is, “Why are we doing this?” The answers might surprise you.

2. Gather information

You can use the mad, sad, and glad technique here.

Draw 3 columns and place the words mad, sad, and glad on top of each one.

Make the team write down events, on sticky notes, during which they felt mad, sad, or glad. And then you can ask the following questions:

What was difficult about this user story?
What was the fun part of it?
Did you see any repeating patterns?
Do you have any suggestions on how to handle similar situations in the future?

You can try the “speedboat” method. Draw a speedboat. Attach a strong motor to it and a heavy anchor.

Then each member of the team should write down, on sticky notes, what propelled them to move forward and what held them back. Just one idea per note. Attach the sticky notes to the motor and the anchor respectively.

Read them out loud and discuss ways to increase the motor’s horse powers while cutting down the anchor weight.

3. Collect insights

If you are facing difficult problems throughout the sprint, you can think about what would be different if all of those problems didn’t exist; share your insights with the team. It’s actually great practice for the entire scrum team. It generates a healthy discussion about removing roadblocks.

Asking some of the following questions can be quite helpful as well:

What went well this sprint?
What did we learn?
What should we do differently next time?
What still confuses us?

4. Make a decision

The final scrum activity. Near the end of the retro, you can hand out a pencil and paper to each member, and tell them to write down two action items for the next iteration.

After that, every member of the sprint team should pair up with the one sitting to their left; thus forming a group of two. You now have 4 action items in a group. Then each group should narrow down their action items to only two again. Repeat the same with groups of 4 and 8 until there are only two action items left for the entire team. Then you either implement both actions items or vote for one.

Sprint Review

According to the Scrum guide, the sprint review session is held at the end of each sprint.

This is not a formal meeting, nor it is a status meeting. It’s held to encourage collaboration and make the team operate as a whole so it can grow.

It also allows developers to showcase their work to upper management and other stakeholders; thus receive feedback and improve the way they approach work in future sprints.

The main participants in this scrum event are the developers, the scrum master, and the product owner. Other teams and stakeholders can take part as well.

During this scrum ceremony, the dev team reviews what went well, wrong, and how team members handled difficulties throughout the sprint.

As opposed to the scrum retrospective where “the how” is discussed...

…the sprint review is a discussion about the “what”

What’s been done during the sprint?

This scrum session, unlike the retro, can last as long as it needs.

The sprint review shouldn’t be led by anyone as this poses the risk of “crowding out” team members that would have otherwise made great contributions to the meeting. The Scrum Master’s role and responsibility are to facilitate the sprint review, and the demo work is presented to stakeholders by the PO.

Neither the PO nor the SM should take credit for the dev team’s work though.

The demo presented during the sprint review is not a demo from the local environment, it’s a demo from the actual production stage.

During the demo work showcase, you may want to answer the following questions to find out whether the sprint release was successful or not:

What did the customers like about it?
What did they dislike?
What’s hard to understand from a customer POV?
What changes do they want?
What new features do they want to be added?
Has the market changed? Do they have different problems?

The nasty mindset

Some developers bear the mindset that any time spent on anything other than coding is wasted time.

This, although the right way to think at first glance, can be detrimental to the team’s success.

Heading over to the code editor without doing any initial planning in advance will take you nowhere near to your desired destination.

During the sprint review, the team should talk about how the market reacted to the new release, and then offer suggestions to improve the product.

The result of a completed sprint review meeting is a revised product backlog that lists all the potential PBI items for the next sprint.

This doesn’t mean that the product backlog items are set in stone though; the product backlog can be frequently adjusted, especially during the sprint planning session for the next sprint.

Sprint Planning

For a 2-week scrum sprint cycle, the timeline of a sprint planning meeting may last between 1 and 2 hours, and can go up to 8 hours for longer sprint cycles.

As the name suggests, sprint planning is about coming up with the complete sprint plan for your next iteration.

According to the Scrum guide, There are 2 main questions that the sprint planning ceremony:

What can be delivered in the Increment resulting from the upcoming Sprint?
How will the work needed to deliver the Increment be achieved?

The team spends a serious time of selecting the right PBIs (product backlog items) and then ordering them by priority in the sprint backlog.

It’s important to note that the items in the sprint backlog aren’t commitments; they are merely forecasts.

If the team is to commit to the sprint backlog, it’ll burn out, and provide a poor-quality product.

Most teams break their PBIs in smaller tasks that would take them no more than 2 days to complete each. This makes it easy for the team to track its progress; it also keeps them motivated.

Here’s an example:

You’re building a car, and one of the PBIs is the driver’s door. Smaller tasks would be to paint the door, put a handle on it, fix it to the car, etc.

The sprint goal

The sprint goal is discussed during the sprint planning meeting. It’s a goal, set by the team at the beginning of the meeting, that guides the team throughout the sprint.

Keep in mind that a mature scrum team is supposed to deliver between 85 and 115% of the planned work every sprint.

With time, you can see whether you overdeliver or underdeliver. If it’s the latter, then you’re biting off more than you can chew. If the previous, add more work to the backlog.

It’s a rule of thumb that a new team with a new backlog should allot 10% of its capacity to build out the product/sprint backlog before the start of the sprint. Experienced teams spend less than 10%.

A well-designed sprint backlog is mainly based on data and previous performances, not on whimsical thinking.

Also, at the start of the sprint planning session, the team should review the scrum artifacts from the previous sprint and decide whether to include them in this new sprint or not.

Keep in mind that items from previous sprints aren’t considered to be the main work of the new sprint. No points should be credited to completing work from previous sprints.

Try to observe the product from the eyes of the customer. What are the customer’s problems and desires? What do you need to develop to solve their problems?

The main purpose of the sprint backlog is to guide the development team along the way, it’s not to make the team over-commit and then burn out.

Backlog Refinement

Backlog refinement meetings are unofficial sprint events that are held a couple of times throughout the sprint.

The main purpose of this scrum ceremony is to detail, improve, estimate, and prioritize the PBIs in the sprint backlog as changes occur.

The typical duration of a backlog refinement meeting can span from 1 to 2 hours.

The PO and at least one member of the team are the required attendees for this meeting to happen.

This doesn’t mean other people can’t attend though. The rest of the scrum team along with key stakeholders can also be present at the meeting.

Each item in the backlog is thoroughly discussed, and if it makes sense, its description, order, or values are changed.

To make the meeting as productive and time-efficient as possible, the Scrum Master might want to keep track of the time spent on discussing backlog items.

You can set a time limit, of 10 minutes for example, per each backlog item.

If you find yourselves talking about an item for too long, you can delay the discussion for another time when you have more time and are better prepared to make suggestions.

Don’t waste time on tiny details

Things will change, and you’ll need to do another meeting.

Scrum is an empirical process and stands for frequent iterations. Don’t plan too far in the future; half of your plans will turn out inaccurate as time goes on.

NOTE: some say Scrum is part of Agile, while others disagree. After all, scrum focuses on specific methods while Agile proposes a mindset. Nevertheless, both Agile and Scrum stand for adapting to changes over time.

When assessing the difficulty of each task, one developer might score 1 while another 5 on a scale of 1 to 5 (where 1 is easy and 5 extremely difficult).

This, however, doesn’t mean that the developer who scored 1 is more experienced than the one who scored 5.

The guy who picked 1 might be aware of an approach that’s going to get the task done faster and easier.

The developer who picked 5, however, may be aware of a particular challenge that’s not easy to surpass.

Take the time to talk about each task’s difficulty for a couple of minutes; it can save you hours further down the line.

Conclusion

You gotta bear the following in mind: the goal of each scrum ceremony is to improve the development and sprint process.

The scrum team should reflect back on previous scrum artifacts, take notes, learn, and improve so it can produce better results next time it gets down to work.

The best thing you can always do is tailor your scrum process to the situation. Some things might work perfectly for others and bad for you.

Whatever scrum ceremony you’re attending, you always gotta ask the question “is this meeting worth it?”

Stay unparalleled,

P.S. It’d be sinful not to make a short blurb about Codegiant in a Codegiant article. I decided to save it for the last because I also hate it when I’m reading other articles peppered with a myriad of ads about their tools throughout.

So, if you are searching for a GitHub/GitLab alternative that offers a simply-designed issue tracker, git repositories, built-in CI/CD, and documentation tool, then feel free to check out Codegiant. That’s it. Enjoy!

Productive Rant About Time Management Strategies

Codegiant — Sun, 20 Sep 2020 18:18:57 +0000

From the desk of a brilliant weirdo #1:

Whether you are about to skim through this post or read it from top to bottom, I wanted to take a moment to say THANK YOU for checking out this article. I appreciate every reader who comes to my articles. I really do hope you find a useful nugget of information about time management strategies that you can use either in your personal life or at the workplace.

Now that I was able to cajole you into reading further (hopefully), let’s get down to it.

What’s the deal with time management strategies?

Why is time management important? Common sense is that time management methods bring a lot of benefits to the table:

With effective time management strategies and techniques, you feel more in control of your day. You won’t be stressed as much, neither you’ll feel burned out.
With the proper time management methods, you can become more productive and build a more sustainable work-life balance (though, I personally think that work-life balance is BS. There are work/life decisions you make, and they have consequences.)
Using efficient time management techniques will allow you to make the most out of your day by helping you to stay focused on the essential tasks you need to complete.

But...

It’s really about procrastination, not time management.

And when it comes to procrastination, we’re talking emotions.

The tasks we avoid doing make us feel bad; maybe the task is boring, tedious, or simply difficult. Therefore, we do something else (binge-watch Netflix or play computer games) to make us feel better.
But what happens is quite the opposite.

Indulging ourselves into short-term pleasure instead of work gives birth to guilt. It’s an endless and dreary cycle of misery.

A 2000s investigation about the relation of procrastination to emotion was led by experts at Case Western University in Ohio. The researches made people read drama or sad stories. As a result, their mood was darkened and sulked. This led to higher levels of procrastination. Instead of preparing for their exam, they would delay studying as long as they could.

Later, it was deduced by the same team of researches that procrastination increases when enjoyable activities are available as a distraction, and if people believe they can change their moods.

Another study by the same team proved that people stop procrastinating when they aren’t in a bad mood; ”mood-freezing” candles were used to trick the same volunteers into thinking that their mood was “frozen.” They stopped procrastinating afterward.

Conclusion: You gotta eliminate all pleasurable distractions surrounding you. Otherwise, you’ll resort back to watching videos or playing games, even if you don’t particularly like them, when there’s a difficult task at hand.

The solution to the problem of procrastination is a cliche…

Just get started

Focus on one thing at a time. Be present at the moment. Don’t think about all the tasks you need to complete. Instead, focus on the job you have to handle right now.

It’s proven that when you focus on one small thing, you take your mind off your feelings and direct it to action.

For example, as I’m writing this article, I won’t focus on how much I’ve left as I’m just in the beginning and will probably stress out when I find out that I’ve shit tons of more to write. Instead, I’ll focus on the sentence I’m writing right now (sometimes, I’ll focus on each word).

“Move your eyes away from the email you are writing, the paper you are reading, or the excel sheet your team has prepared for Q3, then after counting to 20, resume back and continue with the project you are working on. If your brain is completely focused, you will get the job done in less time with higher efficiency.” - Dr. Pooneh Ramezani, CEO at Dr. Brite.

You can also come up with other creative ways to handle your work; pleasure in a different form. When I write articles like this, I put on my AirPods and blast World of Warcraft ambiance music at low volumes. Ah, I love it.

It doesn’t work with any type of music though. You should avoid listening to lyrics because it’s the equivalent to multitasking. Multitasking is the biggest killer to productivity and getting shit done; it can drop your productivity down to 40%. (barring you are Elon Musk).

“The painful truth is that a scant 2% of the population can effectively multitask, the rest are failing to one extent or another.” - Ken Eulo, Founding Partner at Smith & Eulo Law firm.

When fighting with procrastination, there are certain things you can use to put the odds in your favor:

Take care of yourself

If you feel bad, hungry, or even depressed, you’ll have a hard time getting yourself down to work. Take care of yourself - eat well, sleep well, and, of course, make time for pleasure, be it playing video games or binge-watching Netflix.

Rewards

Perhaps the oldest trick in the book; reward yourself after doing hard work. I used to do grunt work for 2-3 hours straight in the morning, but then I’d indulge myself in 30 minutes of watching UFC videos. It helps, no doubt about it.

Regulate emotion

As we’ve already clarified that procrastination is due to emotion, you can regulate your mood with motivational talks, autobiographies, or music.

For me, the Imperial March from Star Wars works great.

You can also picture what would happen if you don’t do the work. There’s a reason why parents make their kids do stuff by telling them what would happen to them if they don’t comply - “brush your teeth or they’ll fall out.”

Also, when you tell yourself “just one more word,” “just one more sentence,” or “just one more paragraph,” you end up doing a lot more work. Try this with all of your tasks - “just one more line of code,” “just one more rep,” “just one more page of reading,” etc.

Ultimately you gotta know...

What’s your purpose in life

You have to follow the things you have passion for, do the things you love. Because, regardless of whatever time management strategies and techniques you use, you’ll never feel genuinely happy if you do stuff you don’t enjoy. You’ll go through your life by just checking boxes on your to-do list without really achieving anything.

Doing the things you love will not only bring joy and help you get through procrastination, but it will aid you in overcoming difficulties as well.

Figuring out the thing you have passion for, however, is very difficult; you shouldn’t beat yourself up for struggling to find your joy for something.

The process of finding your real purpose in life can be messy, chaotic, and unpredictable. (Damn, I’ve tried a couple of things so far thinking that I had found my real passion at last, but after a few months of doing those things, I get bored. Guess, you gotta keep searching lol).

Regardless, you always have to keep moving towards something; it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey. As long as you’re making progress, you’re doing great.

Anyway, I digress.

You need to have your long-term goals set and work every day towards achieving them.
It’s hard to keep up when your goals are 10 years ahead of you tho, and you can’t see tangible progress being made on a daily basis.

You should balance your long-term goals with short-term pleasure to blow off steam and re-energize.
Take a look at video games for example. Why are video games so addictive...

…especially World of Warcraft?

Video games set a goal in front of you, a goal that you are emotionally attached to. And then map out each step of the way helping you to achieve that goal. You level up, upgrade your skills, acquire new armor, see actual progress being made daily.

Compared to real life, you can’t map out every single step of your 10-year goal plans. Sometimes, you won’t see tangible progress for days or even months which can be discouraging. That’s why it’s hard for most people to stick to their goals for long periods. Life isn’t a straight line.

Emotions aren’t everything though

You have to regulate your energy to manage your time better. Every single thing you do either drains the energy out of you or gives you some.

Things you don’t like, obviously, drain the energy out of you; things you like, on the other hand, pack you up with energy. Yet, doing anything for excessive periods of time is bound to drain out your energy.

After working on something for 20 minutes straight, the difference is whether you are gonna look at the clock every 5 minutes or be heavily immersed in the thing you’re doing, spending hours on it without even realizing it.

If you aren’t careful with your energy, you’ll end up…

...Burned out

I believe that every person has experienced it.

You feel tired, confused, out of your mind, you know the drill.

While some people say that you can’t burn out by doing the things you love and achieving success, others think otherwise.

Well, I don’t know whether that’s true or false. I have no science to back up myself. So, I’ll propose a theory:

I think that burnout can be a protection mechanism telling us to stop a behavior that’s unhealthy and painful.

It’s like when you’re doing a deadlift and your back starts hurting. The pain in your back (the burnout) tells you that if you continue doing what you’re doing, you’re gonna break your back.

How to preserve your energy and be more productive?

The decisions you make every day play an important role in preserving your energy to avoid burnout.

Every decision you make drains some energy out of you, regardless of how small it is.

Try to automate as many decisions as you can.

For example, write your to-do list for tomorrow this evening so you don’t have to think about it tomorrow and waste energy.

Write down what clothes you like to wear, and make a raiment schedule for the week. Thus every day, after waking up, you won’t have to spend time thinking about what to wear today; you can simply look at your list and get dressed without making any unnecessary decisions.

Don’t overthink simple things like buying groceries, books, or something else. Just go and do it. Save your thoughts for the actual work.

“At the end of each day I simply pick the most egregious item that needs to be covered off, and I make sure it's done and dusted first thing the next day without fail. This is a simple way of maximizing the time spent - and energy expended - on every other task that I perform that day. My time goes further when the biggest problem is no longer hanging over my head.” - John Bedford, founder and editor of Viva Flavor.

No Breakfast

Stop eating breakfast.

Personally, when I wake up, I won't eat until lunch.

Having your stomach full in the morning will make you feel tired; you won't even have the slightest motivation to handle work. The stomach drains energy out of you as it needs it to digest food.

"With a clear head and gut, I find it easy to get through my to-do lists and don't feel sluggish. I would definitely recommend implementing probiotic-rich foods into your diet for increased mental clarity and better time management." - Alicia Harper, blogger at ProbioticReviewGirl.

The what, when, where and how of your work.

You'll enjoy doing some things in the evening more than in the morning.

Sometimes, you'll prefer to work in a coffee shop than being welded to your work chair.

Other times, you'll be fed up with your co-workers' BS and prefer solitude.

In other cases, after being sick and staying at home for 2 weeks, you'll crave your teammates' collaboration.

It's different for every person - you gotta find the things that work for you and do them.

Don't let anybody else tell you what you should be working on, when you should be working, or how you should be working.

Time management strategies of the day

Whether you are a college student or a manager who seeks time management solutions to plan and organize your day to work efficiently, the following time management strategies, techniques, and tips are some of the best you can receive.

See where all your time goes

Here’s an exercise for you. Take a pen and paper. And for the next 7 days write down what you do every single hour of the day. The results will amaze you. After that, you’ll be able to schedule your day much more effectively.

Understand the Planning Fallacy

Planning Fallacy is the tendency to underestimate how long a task will take you to complete it.

It’s a terrible mistake when it comes to practicing efficient time management strategies. It can screw up your day to day plans heavily.

You might think that you’ll need 8 hours to finish a project. A workday consists of 8 hours, right? So you think you should wrap it up in a day.

Yet, you aren’t sitting on your desk for 8 hours straight welded to your chair.

No.

You take breaks, have lunch, talk to your colleagues, and do various other stuff. Realistically, the 8 hours of work are reduced to around 5-6 hours of work per day, I’d say.

Therefore you’ll need not one but two days to finish your project.

Research shows that the average person is productive for only 12.5 hours a week, about 2.5 hours per day. And if your “8-hour” project requires a lot of thinking, you might need more than 2 days to complete it.

Keeping the Planning Fallacy in mind will allow you to allocate more time for your tasks and thus schedule your time better. You’ll basically have the time to do it right and do it better because… the way you do anything is the way you do everything.

Set smarter goals

Setting the right goals is the bare bones of effective time management. It’s a crucial time management skill that, if neglected, results in poor time management which can lead to stress, guilt, and misery.

What you gotta do is break your daily goals into smaller 30-minute tasks so you don’t have to look at the clock every 2 minutes gasping and wondering how much time there is until the break.

You can find the Pomodoro technique quite useful too - spend 50 minutes working and 10 minutes resting. Repeat.

You can also use calendar views instead of to-do lists. Some people say that they have significantly improved their time management by switching to calendar views.

Prioritization

If you don’t know how to prioritize your goals, you’re in big trouble. You’ll be working on tasks that average 3 on a “0-10” scale of importance. Thus you’ll never be able to ship an MVP when you’re running out of time.

Scott Berkun talks a lot about prioritization. Definitely check him out if you want to learn how to prioritize your day flawlessly.

He talks about dividing your tasks into two groups.

A-class tasks and B-class tasks.

Take, for example, the construction of a car. A-class items would be the chassis, the engine, the tires, the transmission, and a few other items I guess, I’m not a car expert. B-class items would be the doors, windows, radio, AC, etc.

Although driving a car without B-class items will result in extreme discomfort, you can still drive it. Without A-class items, you can’t drive the car.

Knowing how to prioritize your tasks is a good time management skill for getting control of your time.

Have you heard of the Pareto Principle 80/20?

Course, you have. It’s valid for everything you do.

20% of your efforts produce 80% of your results.

The numbers may vary in different situations; they aren’t set in stone, but mainly circle around 20 and 80.

Make a list of the most important tasks and then put all your efforts into these tasks so you can yield the biggest results.

The Eisenhower Matrix

Using the Eisenhower Matrix is one of the best tips you can get on managing your time at work wisely.

Important and urgent - the tasks in this quadrant need your fullest attention and have to be completed ASAP.

Important and non-urgent -Tasks you gotta do but not necessarily right now.

Not important but urgent - mostly distractions that hold you back.

Not important and non-urgent - get rid of these.

Delegate

If something can be done 80% as well by someone else, delegate it! It’s one of the most efficient time management activities to make more time for your personal or business life.

The following math is borrowed by the book Procrastinate on Purpose by Rory Vaden.

The book proposes that we spend 30x the amount of time it takes to finish a task to train somebody else to do it.

Say, a task takes you 10 minutes to complete.

30X that time is 300 minutes for training somebody else to do it. Yes, it seems like a huge waste of time at a glance but consider this: multiply the initial 10 minutes a day across the 250 annual working days and you’ll end up spending about 2500 minutes a year on that task.

300 < 2500.

By training someone else to do it for you, you can save up to 2200 minutes per year - almost 37 hours.

Learn to say NO

An invaluable tip on time management. Let’s explore a few cases:

Saying NO to a friend to hang out. There’s really no secret sauce for declining a bevvy with your friends. You’ll always feel like you’re missing out. You gotta know whether hanging out with your friends or working towards your goals is more important to you. If the latter, just say no, apologize, and say next time. It sucks but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Saying NO to your boss. This can be hard. You really can’t do anything if your boss has made his mind up. If that happens frequently tho, I recommend that you look for a new job. If not, politely explain to your boss that you have other important stuff you’re working on; tell him how bad it will be if you don’t finish your tasks on time.

Saying NO to a coworker. I guess it depends on your relationship with your coworkers. If the guy asking you for a favor is generally a dick, saying NO is gonna be easy. Yet, if it’s someone you have reverence for, be transparent with him by sharing your to-do list. Simply apologize and continue working on your stuff.

You really gotta master this one cause saying YES to everything is bad management. Sometimes, it’s better to be ruthless and disliked to a degree than to be overwhelmed with your colleague’s requests.

Always finish what you start

I guess, you’ve been told that you always gotta finish what you start. Never leave something unfinished.
I’d say that’s partly true, partly not.

You see, it’s true because sometimes the things you leave unfinished will linger in your mind, prod your nerves, and vex your thoughts until they’re finished.

On the other hand, however, leaving something unfinished on purpose can help you keep your momentum going.

At times, I find it hard to start a new task when I’ve completed my previous tasks. I’ve got that feeling of satisfaction, so I don’t really push myself.

Yet, when I leave something unfinished (for example a paragraph or a section of this article), I can continue from where I left without thinking much about it and get into flow immediately.

You gotta find what works for you.

Build a morning routine

With the right morning routine in place, you can set yourself up for a highly-productive and effective workday. Your morning routine will definitely differ from every other person’s morning routine. Still, there are a couple of common things that are useful for any person:

Don’t snooze. That really was a game-changer for me. Even if you feel groggy and dazed after opening your eyes, you shouldn’t go back to bed. Instead, stay in your bed for another 10-15 minutes sitting. This really wakes me up. Try it.

Meditate. Tried it. Didn’t really work out for me as I can’t stand myself sitting still for 30 minutes and doing nothing lol.

Start with something you love. Elon Musk (check his daily routine below) loves showers. I start with some WoW music.

Exercise. It’ll wake you and pump you up.

** What about Elon Musk’s daily routine?**

Here’s what I was able to find:

Elon sleeps on average 6 hours a night, going to bed at 01:00 am and waking up at 07:00 am.
When asked whether he eats for breakfast, Elon said he skips it.
What’s interesting is that he always makes time for showering. It impacts him more positively than any other of his daily habits.
Musk works between 85 and 100 hours each week.
On Mondays and Fridays, Elon is at SpaceX in LA. The rest of the workdays he spends at Tesla in the Bay Area. According to Quartz, about 40 hours of Elon’s time go into SpaceX and another 42 hours going into Tesla.
“When is he able to spend time with his family?” I hear you scream. He has 5 children and he takes them with him on most of his business trips.
The typical day of Elon Musk consists of 5-minute time boxes.

Work with your body, not against it

When it comes to effective time management, really, the best “productivity” tip anyone can give you is to do the things that work best for you.

A night owl? Cool.

An early riser? Cool.

Work better at night? No problem.

Work better in the morning? Go for it.

Some people have high energy in the morning while others at midnight. I for example feel quite energetic 1 hour after waking up. Others can’t gather their thoughts until 2-3 pm.

Block out as many distractions as you can

Turn your notifications off, or maybe just turn off your phone.

If you are working from home, put a “Do not disturb” sign on your door, or tell your family not to disturb you for X hours.

Keep your desk clean. Remove the needless apps from your laptop; close the 20+ tabs you have open in Chrome.

Minimizing distractions as much as possible will definitely help you to be laser-focused.

Don’t forget Mother Nature

Our bodies crave sunlight and fresh air so we can function better. In fact, studies show that children in schools with bigger windows score higher than kids in schools where sunlight is limited.

Work within ultradian rhythms

Know your body rhythms, also known as ultradian rhythms.

These are 120-minute biological intervals that our bodies usually go through.

We are most productive the first 90 minutes of doing something; our energy slopes down in the next 30 minutes tho.

Knowing your body rhythms will allow you to plan your day to your advantage; hence work only when you’re most productive. When your energy dips, you can start working on repetitive or irrelevant tasks.

Change your work location

Whether you are at the office or home, changing your work location throughout the day can be a handy tip for keeping your productivity up and burnout away.

I’ve found it especially useful when writing.

I’ll write 1500 words on my desk, then I’ll switch over to my bed and write another batch, after that I’ll go into the living room, surrounded by kinds of books, and wrap up my article.

Here are some of the best time management books that will equip you with tons of time management tips & tricks:

Eat That Frog!: 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change.
The 4-Hour Workweek.
First Things First.
168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think.
18 Minutes: Find Your Focus, Master Distraction, and Get the Right Things Done.
Ready for Anything: 52 Productivity Principles for Getting Things Done.
The Happiness Trap and the Feeling Good.
Behavioural Activation.

Best time management tools

Of course, it’d be sinful not to make a short blurb about Codegiant in an article written by a Codegiant employee. Nevertheless, I didn’t want to piss you off by cramming Codegiant blurbs throughout the article, so I decided to save it for the last.

Without further ado:

Codegiant

Codegiant is our simply-designed development tool that comes with a straightforward issue tracker, git repositories, built-in CI/CD, and a documentation tool.

With Codegiant, you can log in your work hours and track effortlessly where your time goes.
You also get detailed reports on your team’s performance so you know what to do in order to improve its productivity.

Codegiant is free and one of the best time management software available.

Asana

Asana comes with a time management platform called TrackingTime. As with any other time tracking tool, it tracks work hours, and it also offers in-depth spreadsheets for project budgeting, client billing, invoicing, payroll and much more. It gives you very robust time management stats on your performance.

Once you install the TrackingTime chrome extension, head over to your Asana board, and click on the tracking button displayed next to the task’s due date to start/stop timer to launch it.

Trello

Trello is a super straightforward project management tool.

Trello features “Power-ups” that allow you to easily log in your work hours and track everything to the tiniest detail. Everything you need is located inside your Trello board.

With Power-ups, you also get access to viewing reports.

It’s best for accounting, resource planning, invoicing clients, and more. You can export your time tracking sheets in XLSX and CSV formats.

ClickUp

ClickUp provides numerous ways to track your work time and thus enhance your productivity. You can also integrate it with other time tracking tools like Toggl and Harvest in case you aren’t keen on ClickUp’s native time tracking and reporting tool.

ClickUp comes with a global timer, time entry details, time reporting, time tracking sorting and filtering, and edit time logged.

On the whole, ClickUp is a great time management tool that is free to use.

EmailAnalytics

EmailAnalytics is a time management software tool that connects to your Gmail or G Suite account and visualizes your email activity - or that of your employees. This enables sales teams, customer service teams, and small business owners to measure essential productivity metrics such as average email response time, email traffic by hour of the day, email traffic volume by day of the week, and more.

You also get daily or weekly email reports so you can see how your performance is trending over time.

HiveDesk

Small businesses use HiveDesk to manage their employees' time.

You can automatically track how much time you spend on different assignments; it helps you to clearly see where you should put your time into so you can yield the biggest outcomes.

You also get access to time management statistics to regulate your time better.

Conclusion

That’s it.

If you liked it, leave a comment. If you didn’t, leave a comment as well and tell me what I did wrong.

If you feel like I’m missing something, let me know in the comments. I’m keen on “productivity hacks” so I’ll gladly talk more about time management and stuff with you.

Stay unparalleled,

22 YouTube Channels To Level Up Your Programming Skills

Codegiant — Sun, 13 Sep 2020 13:11:22 +0000

From the desk of a brilliant weirdo #1:

Thank you for taking the time to check out this article. It doesn’t matter where you’re coming from (Codegiant, Hacker News, Reddit, or some other place), I always appreciate every reader who lands on my articles.

Now that I’ve coaxed you into reading this article, let’s get down to brass tacks.

Whenever you’re just starting out with software development or simply want to uplevel your programming skills, you’ll need the right info resources to achieve your goals.

In this article, I’ve listed 22 of the best YouTube channels for improving your programming skills. Some are geared towards beginners while others focus on advanced topics.

So, if you consider yourself an experienced programmer, you can jump over to the last section where you’ll find all the 22 YouTube channels.

If you are a beginner developer, however, I recommend that you go through each section of this article as we’ll talk about coding in general, programming skills, your computer programming resume, job opportunities, and some of the most in-demand programming languages.

Without further ado:

What Is Coding And How Does It Work?

Coding is the end result of a specific set of actions triggered to create a tangible result, whether it is a web page, an app, a video, or just an image on your screen.

The great thing about computer coding (or programming) is that you can have a big idea and actually code it out into reality. And it doesn’t cost much, barring some time and effort on your side.

Many non-tech people consider the definition of a computer programmer to be someone who just makes programs. Although that’s partly true, partly not, it’s a mistake. Managers believe that the more lines of code a programmer can produce a month, the more creative he will be—another mistake. You can’t put a developer into a cubicle, set a deadline, ask him to work for 8-9 hours straight, and expect a top-notch quality software at the end.

Instead of thinking about the programs a developer composes, one should consider the possible computations evoked by the developed program. “Designing a set of computations” is a more accurate description of what programmers actually do.

One can also imagine programmers as writers that have to think and write carefully, because the readers (the computers) take what the programmers write literally.

What Are The Most Valuable Computer Programmer Skills?

Many non-tech folks believe that programming is all about acquiring technical skills. I believe that being a developer requires more than just knowing how to code. To make it in the software development world, you’ll need to dig up some creativity and inject it into your coding skills. The ability to think analytically is highly valued among developers as well.

One of the most essential skills a developer can have isn’t actually technical, it’s social, and that is empathy. Lack of empathy inevitably leads to poor communication (barring you are a narcissist, sociopath, or psychopath and therefore can be charming as hell). On the other hand, being able to put empathy into practice will, without doubt, boost your career opportunities.

When it comes to planning software, developers should know how to use models and flowcharts to convey instructions clearly.

Designing and creating applications. Depending on the project, this can take from a couple of weeks to months and sometimes even years to complete.

Writing programs. As simple as that.

Update and expand existing programs. Most times, you’ll need to modify and update existing programs with extra features.

Debugging code. Yup.

Simplify programming. Developers may also use software tools to automate a part of their development process in order to simplify and speed up the workflow.

How To Become a Computer Programmer?

Showing up and practicing your programming skills seem to be the main ingredients to getting better at programming and coding. You gotta be programming in your spare time; you gotta be obsessed with it. Load yourself with patience because becoming a skilled coder takes years. And anyone who is telling you that you can learn and become good at coding in a month is probably trying to sell you something.

Senior developers have all adopted common traits and basic coding skills that have helped them to rise in the hierarchy during their programming careers. Here are some valuable skills needed for you to be a senior developer:

One, being able to easily explain tech stuff to non-technical people.

Two, being able to come up with accurate estimates.

Three, willingness to roll up their sleeves and do some grunt work.

Four, knowing when to raise an issue to upper management.

Five, the ability to mentor junior developers.

Six, vast knowledge of the technicalities for their domain.

Understand how the language works
Focus on one language while learning. Having your focus split between two or three languages will discombobulate you.

It becomes obvious when a programmer doesn’t have a good understanding of the programming language he’s using. He’ll try to solve problems by following the logic of other languages and thus litter the code with unnecessary statements that can otherwise be reduced to fewer lines.

Also, you must know how to organize code into a system that makes sense. Creating rigid classes, schemas, and hierarchies require you to first think them through. Design can be a broad topic so I won’t cover much, but if you wish to read more, head over here.

Poorly designed software lacks well-defined concepts, and its responsibilities are vague. Good software, on the other hand, comes with clear concepts and responsibilities. Take a look at mathematicians and physicists. They spend a huge amount of time trying to develop a clear definition of something because that will allow them to understand the truth about it. Developers should take a similar approach and spend a considerable amount of time brainstorming before writing code. Yes, this might be controversial to Agile but you gotta do what you gotta do.

It’s better to sit down with the dev team initially and outline all the required tasks than to go through 10 rounds of code reviews later.

Perhaps the best way to learn about design is to write and study many programs written by experienced programmers. As you gain more coding experience, you’ll, without doubt, enhance your design skills and expand your knowledge.

Good programmers ask questions like:

What’s the goal of this function?

How can I explain this data structure to my teammates?

Can this function represent two standalone tasks?

What’s the responsibility of this snippet of code?

What should I include in the public interface?

Your Computer Programming Resume (+ Job Opportunities)

Most people think that you need a diploma from Harvard or universities alike to be considered for a job in big tech companies. Although that may be partially true (not always though, it seems Apple and Google no longer require you to have a college degree), some companies prefer the opposite, or at least don’t want you to be coming for Harvard, Oxford, Stanford, etc.

There are CEOs out there looking for developers that are qualified but not overly qualified... hard workers, being on time, but also leaving at the stroke of 5. Such CEOs consider Ivy League schools to be a red flag. Big resumes are also a red flag. That’s because developers coming from such schools can’t get off their high horse, question whether every decision is optimal, and are always hungry for praise, recognition, and “interesting work.”

Instead, these CEOs are looking for loyal people who know how to take orders without questioning, and are ready to do the work, day in and day out, because they need the paycheck at the end of the month.

At a glance, this might seem quite controversial. Yet, there are developers out there who don’t want to become millionaire CTOs at the age of 30. Instead, they are satisfied with what they have on their plate: a steady job, fair pay, and that’s about it. Some companies with that kind of culture say that they have produced a 100% employee retention rate which means developers are happy with their work environment.

Let’s talk about your resume now.

So, what should you list on your resume?

Proficiency in programming languages is, ostensibly, a vital thing to include. Always remember that companies are getting tens, hundreds, even thousands of applications a month. All of which say “I can do X.” The thing is skill level varies between each applicant. You should describe your coding experience and give examples of successful projects you’ve completed.

When listing your most valuable programming skills, there are a couple of things you need to know in order to have a fully optimized programming resume.

Before sending your resume, always go through the job description a couple of times and try to understand what is relevant to the job you are applying for. Then make yourself relevant to the job.

Always be honest with yourself. Don’t list programming languages you don’t know because they are mentioned in the job description. Don’t tell them you have 5 years of experience when you only have 4 years and 1 month.

Place your programming skills (languages) right at the top, below the header.

List your most advanced coding skills first, then in the middle list the ones you are least experienced with, and at the end, list the programming skills you have a decent experience with.

Create horizontal categories instead of vertical ones. This eliminates the blank space on your resume while remaining aesthetically pleasing.

In your resume, except for talking about what you bring to the table, you can also mention what you’re looking for in an employer. You’ll thus earn the respect you are looking for if you get the job.

Also, avoid using phrases that everybody else is using. Don’t be afraid to infuse your CV with some personality. You’ll thus stand out. Not everybody will like your personality, but those that do will adore you. Try to be specific in your writing. Instead of “extensive experience,” say “5 years and 6 months of experience.” Instead of saying “Y number of successful projects,” say “Y amount of successful projects that helped us achieve A, B, and C.” You get the drill.

Quite often, though, a seasoned developer will have so much experience and projects under his belt that his resume would spread 10 pages long if he were to list everything. Try to identify what’s most relevant to the job you’re applying for and list those skills and projects that will make you most relevant.

It’s a good idea, although laborious and tiresome, to rewrite your resume for each job you are applying for. Thus you’ll be able to fine-tune some details to look like a great fit in the eyes of the people hiring you. Never send a generic CV; you won’t stand out; you’ll look like “just the next boring applicant in the list,” and your chances of getting hired will be significantly reduced.

You can also try a different approach when applying for online coding jobs. Some developers send in their “normal” CV (listing computer programming skills, education, experience, etc.) along with another one, a “personal” CV, that explains their previous works on keynote slides with pictures of algorithms and tech stuff. This also wakes up the reader if your CV comes after a batch of 500 boring resumes.

Remember, you have to capture your reader’s attention almost immediately. The attention span of the average person these days is about 8 seconds. Given that your resume will be read by people reading CVs all day long, they’ll probably have a shorter attention span, around 5 seconds, I’d say.

Here some websites that feature different types of online coding jobs:

Indeed
Krop
Mashable
Authentic Jobs
The Muse
Stack Overflow
AngelList
Product Hunt
StartUpHire
Y Combinator
FlexJobs
We Work Remotely
UpWork

Most In Demand Languages

Having a solid foundation in at least two languages will increase your job opportunities by 2X. Most developers select a programming field they are genuinely interested in and then focus on learning the languages that shepherd that area.

According to Indeed.com’s job postings from 2014 to 2019, the most in-demand programming languages are SQL (appearing in 22% of all tech job postings) and Java (21%). Yet, SQL’s dominance is fading in recent years.

If you are into mobile development, especially Android, you should learn Java over any other language. There are more than 2.3 billion mobile devices powered by Android. Since its foundation in the mid-90s, Java has always been topping the rankings.

Python (18%) takes the third place and is considered to continue its growth, mainly occupying data science jobs.

It’s amazing how big Python has grown over the course of 5 years (2014 - 2019), from the 15th to the 3rd place. Python, along with C#, is considered to be one of the most profitable programming languages. If you are interested in AI, Machine Learning, or Data science, Python is the language you should learn.

With Python, you’ll be able to find a wide variety of programming jobs. Also, according to StackOverflow, Python has become the most wanted and useful programming language. And JavaScript takes second place as the most useful programming language. There are speculations that Python might become the most sought after programming language at some juncture.

The fourth and fifth places are taken by Linux and JavaScript, respectively.

If you’re unsure about where to start with coding, learn JavaScript as it is the standard computer programming language of the web. Some people consider it to be “the best programming language to learn” as it helps you to get into computer programming rapidly. It’s used in a multitude of cases.

JavaScript makes websites interactive and compelling by adding dynamic styling, playful buttons, animations, and other interactive stuff.

Today, the web offers more than 1.5 billion websites and JavaScript is used in about 95% of them which makes the scope of it huge; you don’t have to worry about job opportunities when you know JavaScript.

You can also use C# for building desktop applications and games. The language is suitable for web and mobile applications as well.

34% of the most popular and free mobile games are made by developers coding on C#. The language was used to bring to life some of the most prominent mobile games of this century: Temple Run Trilogy and Assassin’s Creed Identity.

C# is also quite user friendly. Errors can be identified easily because the code is checked by the framework before it’s deployed. C#, however, requires more time and practice to learn than, for example, Python.

As an aside: You don’t necessarily need to have a computer science degree, a software developer certificate, or any other computer programming qualifications to get into programming. What you need is patience and hustle. You can be a self-taught programmer and still make it into FAANG (Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Google), and command a high salary. Learning how to code is one of the best skills you can learn today. It’s worth it.

Coding is a good career regardless of the programming language you select (except if you decide to learn Brainfuck - the hardest programming language to learn).

Coders can make somewhere from $80,000/yr to $500,000/yr and even more depending on their job title and the company they work for.

Programming is hard and that’s why you need to be curiously fascinated by it so you don’t perceive it as work but as pleasure. If you don’t plan on spending four years to get a CS degree, you can sign up for online computer programmer courses or take bootcamps.

YouTube Channels To Enhance Your Programming Skills

YouTube is great for the what and the why, but text is the best for the how. Keep that in mind.

Some of the YouTube channels might be a bit obsolete. Nonetheless, the advice you’ll find will help you get into coding, land your first beginner programming job if you're just starting out, or up your game significantly if you are a seasoned pro. All the listed channels below will help you advance your computer programming education.

So, in no particular order and without further ado:

Traversy Media

The number of tutorials this channel offers is enormous (it’s like a programming guide from A to Z). Many YouTubers who run similar programming channels say that the guy who owns Traversy Media influenced them in a way to start their own channel (one of those YouTubers is DevEd). On Traversy Media, you'll find valuable sources on topics such as Angular, React, and Python. The quality of the content is impeccable. It’ll undoubtedly help you broaden your programming knowledge and enhance your computer programming skills.

3Blue1Brown

If you are a math person, 3Blue1Brown is the channel for you. It covers topics such as linear algebra, neural networks, calculus, topology, and more. Grant Sanderson, the channel owner, graduated from Stanford University in 2015 with a bachelor's in math. When the lockdown happened because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he released a playlist of math tutorials named "Lockdown Math" to help students with studying from home. Grant has 3,07 million subscribers at the date of writing this article (10 September 2020). "The goal is for explanations to be driven by animations and for difficult problems to be made simple with changes in perspective."

ThePrimeagen

ThePrimeagen is great for Vim. It teaches mostly surface-level stuff. If you're starting with Vim as your editor, this will be a great place to learn more. Here's what other people say about the ThePrimeagen channel: "Youtube's algorithm never failed me, I now shall worship it as a God, this channel changed my life."

Gaurav Sen

Gaurav Sen focuses on digestible chunks of system design components. The guy teaches system design basics such as vertical and horizontal scaling and other system-related topics. Here's what his subscribers have to say about him "OMG, you are just the system design guru I am looking for."

Jon Gjengset

When it comes to Rust, Jon Gjengset is the guy for you. He's an open-source contributor to a variety of Rust projects. He's also recording tons of Rust live coding streams, contributing to open source, and explaining his own projects all while teaching you Rust.

Two Minute Papers

Two Minute Papers is a good channel for AI open projects. As the name suggests, you'll also find 2-min videos of scientific papers. Many of the scientific papers revolve around graphics and neural networks. Go check it out if you are into machine learning, 3D printing, and AI.

Raymond Hettinger

{He doesn’t have a YouTube channel, but it’s enough to just type his name in the search bar to access his talks}

When it comes to the strength of Python, Raymond is one of the best guys to explain it to you. Here's what some people say about him, "I am a simple man. I see Raymond Hettinger, I click like, play and save." He teaches stuff like chunking and aliasing, building classes independently, graph traversal, libraries, and other stuff.

Simple Programmer

This channel is mainly geared towards junior programmers. Here, you'll find general computer programming concepts so you can start coding almost right off the bat. John Sonmez, the owner of Simple Programmer, isn't there to just teach you the coding basics; he also talks about life and gives excellent advice.

The Coding Train

The channel is focused on coding for beginners. You'll understand how to create simple games like Snake. Other videos include machine learning, simulation, JavaScript and more. His style of teaching is quite unique though, but not everybody may find it appealing. If you enjoy watching experienced developers making mistakes along the way and solving problems on the fly, then you will probably find this channel enjoyable.

Academind

It's great for JavaScript frameworks, CSS, and web development. It has tons of tutorials to help you get your foot in the door. The channel also offers in-depth 30-hours courses on topics such as JavaScript, Angular, Vue, Node.js and others.

Derek Banas

This guy covers anything related to computer programming. You'll find hundreds of tutorials to help you out in your journey. Derek also created the widely-popular "Learn JavaScript in 30 Minutes" playlist. It consists of short videos packed with as much information as possible so you can hit the ground running rapidly.

Mark Lewis

Mark, a doctor and professor of Computer Science at Trinity University, offers a variety of videos focusing on the Scala framework (Scala is considered one of the best paying programming languages to learn). The channel also has tons of videos on general computer science for beginners and intermediates, functional programming, and more. With Mark, you’ll be able to expand your programming knowledge and improve your coding skills big time.

Dev Ed

"I was watching this video on a 55" TV and my father entered exactly at 3:35. I'm still explaining to him that Ed is a programmer and this is a normal YouTube channel." This guy has a unique personality that will keep you compelled while watching his videos. He discusses web dev, web design, 3d modeling, tools like Figma, and other exciting stuff. His content is mostly focused on coding for beginners.

The Net Ninja

Net Ninja's videos are some of the best videos on programming out there. You’ll find videos on topics such as JavaScript (beginner to advanced coding), Node.js, React, Vue.js, Firebase, MongoDB, HTML, and CSS. The guy who runs the channels is a skillful developer and all of his content is free. You can pay for Udemy courses, watch them, and still won't find as much value as you'd by watching Net Ninja's free videos. As a matter of fact, some of the Udemy courses borrow materials from Net Ninja and teach his stuff in their paid courses. This channel is like a mini computer programming education school that can significantly improve your coding skills.

Fun Fun Function

Unfortunately, Mattias, the channel owner, stopped shooting videos 2 months ago but didn't completely close the doors to his channel. He didn't tell, however, for how long he'll be taking a break, so years might pass until we hear from him again. Nevertheless, his videos offer great programming tips. His quirkiness will always keep you entertained. It's one of the best channels for mastering JavaScript. Mattias brings a variety of videos to the table discussing functional programming, object creation, iterators and generators, and other JS features.

Computerphile

Computerphile is a great channel, but it's mainly targeted towards junior developers or soon-to-be developers. The owner of the channel is Brady Haran who simultaneously runs other channels such as Numberphile (focused on mathematics), Sixty Symbols (based around physics), Periodic Videos (chemistry), and Deep Sky Videos (centered around astronomy). His passion for computers is definitely infectious; you'll find yourself compelled by his videos as soon as you hit the "Play" button. His videos cover topics such as blockchain, bitcoin, game computer coding, automatic, code testing and more.

Bisqwit

I find this one compelling because of the guy's quirky accent (mean it in a good way). By following this channel you'll learn about C++, emulators, and other cool programming stuff. You should check it out if you love the art of programming.

ThinMatrix

If you are interested in creating your own 3D game engine using OpenGL, the ThinMatrix channel offers more than 50 tutorial videos to help you out with that. Karl, the guy who runs the channel, is an indie game developer who has been developing games full-time for more than 5 years. What's cool about his channel is that he documents his progress as an indie developer and shares great programming tips & tricks. In 2018, Karl released his own game called "Equilinox."

Gary of Destroy All of Software

Although this is not a YouTube channel and requires a monthly subscription of $29/mo, Gary offers both beginners and advanced developers videos. The content is mainly focused on helping you to learn computer science.

PatrickJMT

If you are trying to get into the nitty-gritty of math, the PatrickJMT channel can definitely help you out in your journey. The channel is considered to be an invaluable resource of math-related topics. Whether you are a beginner coder or an advanced one, Patrick will help you grasp basic math concepts and up your math game. You'll learn more about trigonometry, derivatives, antiderivatives, integrals, linear algebra, and more. Another option is Khan Academy.

Ben Awad

Ben Awad's channel on YouTube offers great general programming content. He posts videos like "programming memes," "Programming Best practices,'" "Coding interviews are broken" so you can unwind after learning a new sophisticated concept.

Google Chrome Developers

With Google Chrome Developers, you can learn about fundamental issues such as browser APIs and web components. It covers topics suitable for both beginners and advanced. You’ll learn the fundamentals of coding in no time.

Conclusion

So there you have them. The best YouTube chance to improve your programming skills and coding career.

Of course, there’s an infinite number of other amazing channels out there. Let me know in the comments which one is your favorite and I’ll make sure to include it whenever I update this article.

Stay unparalleled,

P.S. It’d be sinful not to make a short blurb about Codegiant in a 4,000-word article. I decided to save it for the last because I also hate it when I’m reading other articles peppered with a myriad of ads about their tools throughout.

Burndown Charts: Types, Examples, Benefits, Limitations [2020]

Codegiant — Thu, 03 Sep 2020 17:00:25 +0000

From the desk of a brilliant weirdo #1:

Burndown charts. We’ve all heard of them.

They are easy to understand. And make your team effective.

But what are their flaws?

What happens with a burndown chart when scope creep occurs?

What about burnup charts?

Find the answers to these questions and alike below.

Without further ado:

What is a burndown chart?

A burndown chart is a measurement tool that displays the amount of work remaining alongside the time you have to wrap it up.

The name "burndown" originates from decreasing the number of remaining tasks as you make progress.

The "burndown" creates a downward line, a slope, that shows how many tasks are left before the final deadline hits. In an ideal world, the line would be straight; no impediments would have arisen during development. That's, however, rarely the case.

A burndown chart consists of a vertical Y-axis and a horizontal X one. The latter displays the timeline whereas the previous shows the amount of work. Typically, the slope starts at the top of the chart glued to the Y-axis and "burns down" until it hits the ground, and all tasks are finished.

Two types of burndown charts are available: a sprint burndown chart, focused on the iteration, and a product burndown one, showing the remaining work for the entire project.

During a sprint planning session, all tasks are defined and put onto the sprint burndown chart's vertical axis. Instead of tasks, you can inject story points or work hours as well.

On the other hand, if you use a product burndown chart, you'll have product backlog items displayed on the Y-axis and the number of sprints on the X-axis.

A key reason for using burndown charts among agile teams is that it clearly illustrates work velocity.

Velocity means the team's work efforts associated with the user stories or assigned tasks completed during the iteration.

To calculate the team's work velocity, simply divide the amount of work completed by the number of days. To improve your work velocity, encourage the team to attend every scrum meeting; it brings team members on the same page.

How to read a burndown chart?

Step 1: Look at the X-axis
Identify whether you have days, weeks, or months shown on the X-axis.

Step 2: Now, consider the Y-axis
Does it show tasks? Story points? Or work hours?

Step 3: Identify the ideal line
The ideal line is a projected slope that depicts how the team progress would look like in a perfect world. It acts as a guideline.

Step 4: Follow the actual effort line
Based on the ideal line, you can tell whether you are moving behind or ahead of schedule by comparing it to the actual effort line.

Here are some sprint burndown chart examples:

Ideal scenario

Such a scenario illustrates a perfectly-organized team. The team isn’t behind schedule nor ahead of it. It wraps up the final task just in time. No adjustments are needed in this case.

Still, a good scenario

This is quite a common scenario with experienced agile teams. It shows that the team started slowly but eventually caught up. During the scrum retrospective, the team should come up with a solution to the late start so the burndown chart can look more like in the first scenario.

Decent scenario

This one indicates that the team started slowly and was moving behind schedule. Yet, it managed to finish the sprint in time. During the scrum retrospective, adjustments should be made... be it moving low-priority tasks to future sprints or back to the product backlog.

Sh*t. Missed it again.

The team has missed the deadline. In this case, the next sprint's capacity should be "burned down" or decreased, so the team can have time to complete tasks or story points from the previous sprint.

There’s something wrong...

In this scenario, the team might have overestimated the project’s timeline. The scrum master should help the team fix the estimations.

That’s odd...

This can be quite a tricky scenario. The team’s commitment has either decreased or the PO (product owner) has provided fewer stories than usual. The scrum master plays a vital role here and continually monitors the team’s dedication to the project and asks the PO to add more tasks to the sprint backlog if signs of slacking off appear.

Ops, forgot about it.

The team is working hard towards meeting the deadline but isn’t updating the burndown chart throughout the process, only at the end. Or perhaps the PO has added an amount of work equal to the completed; therefore the line has stayed flat.

What is the average burndown rate?

The average burndown rate, also known as the ideal line, guides the team throughout project development. It starts at the top of the Y-axis and ends at the right-most point of the X-axis.

It’s worth mentioning that not all tasks might be known at the start of the sprint. The backlog schedule may change, which will reflect the burndown chart as well. Nevertheless, the team should focus on how much they deliver rather than how much work they’ve done. Scenarios exist where teams are only spinning their wheels; try to avoid such.

Benefits of burndown charts

Burndown charts are easy to understand. You can track your team’s progress only with a glance; no need to delve into complex math-driven scrum diagrams.

The burndown chart is updated daily which means the SM (Scrum Master) can identify bottlenecks before they occur and prevent them from happening altogether. Product issues can also be addressed during scrum meetings so they don’t transform into bigger problems.

“Being a problem solver, for me a burndown chart's main benefit is that it quickly alerts our teams about any potential bottleneck situations and problems.” - Rorie Devine, Founder and CEO at GRO.TEAM.

Burndown charts can keep the team motivated as well. Seeing progress on a daily basis will keep the team dedicated to the project’s success.

You can keep clients in the loop without having to chat over novel-long performance reports.

Limitations of burndown charts

Burndown charts rely heavily on accurate sprint planning. If estimates aren’t accurate, then the progress you make will be nothing short of spurious measurement. That is, if you’ve underestimated time requirements, you’ll constantly be behind schedule. On the other hand, if you’ve overestimated, the team will feel like they are ahead of schedule, even if that’s not the case.

“The disadvantage of a burndown chart is that it often distracts teams from understanding what is going on under the surface as they focus on improving the chart itself. It leads to wrongly-prioritized backlog, unclear requirements, unrealistic expectations, and deadlines.” - Thierry Tremblay, CEO & Founder at Kohezion.

A burndown chart can use any Y-axis units like work hours, story points, and tasks. It was initially designed with work hours. A tracking system of work hours can be useful but not much. It mostly measures activity rather than accomplishment.

Team members don’t like recording their hours of remaining work. It feels like someone is always watching over their shoulder, which adds extra pressure to the already existing.

Sometimes, putting stories on the Y-axis instead of tasks can turn out to be quite an ineffective practice. The reason is simple. Each story is different from the others; it requires different amounts of effort to be completed. Therefore, one story can take as twice the time as another story, but the burndown chart won’t indicate it; it’ll leave management confused as to why the team isn’t making any visible progress.

Stories are typically larger than tasks and take longer to complete. Try to break your stories into smaller tasks and put those on the burndown chart. Big stories lead to a stair-shaped line that is inaccurate and ugly.

“if a developer has a 10-hour task, and has burned 8 hours they might only be 20% complete but the burndown chart will show 80% complete. It gives the project manager an inaccurate view of progress." - Logan Speights, CTO at Proxxy.

We know that backlogs change, work gets added, plans rarely go as planned, and teams get discombobulated.

As a result, burndown charts fluctuate. They might trend upwards when extra tasks or story points are added, or stay flat. The downside is that management may construe it as slacking off.

To avoid such situations, the scrum master needs to bring everybody on the same page by clearly communicating requirements and progress beforehand.

Or you can use a burnup chart...

What is a burnup chart?

A burnup chart scales upward, and it's useful because it shows when more items are added to the sprint backlog whereas a burndown chart doesn't.

A burnup chart illustrates the team's completed work compared to the total scope. It also tells whether you are behind or ahead of schedule, or whether any potential impediments are likely to cross your path.

The burnup chart's vertical axis shows the amount of work, be it story points or work hours. And the horizontal axis represents the timeline in days, weeks, or months.

Besides the ideal and the actual effort line, there's a third one, the scope line, which is flat except when more work is added to the backlog; then it trends upward.

The difference between burndown and burnup charts

The main difference between a burnup and a burndown chart is that the latter shows you how much work is remaining. In contrast, the previous tells how much work you've completed so far.

When, in a burndown chart, scope creep occurs, the actual effort line may stay flat; thus, the client may question whether the team is actually working or idling. A burnup chart won't make clients doubt your team.

Yet, if there are no changes in the scope, the simplicity of burndown charts is preferable.

Burndown charts are better suited for sprint level projects, whereas burnup charts make more sense for long-term objectives, showing all the work completed so far.

Burndown chart software

Codegiant

Codegiant is a simply-designed project management software, mainly advertised to developers due to its extra features such as git repositories, built-in CI/CD, and robust documentation.

Codegiant’s issue tracker offers both Kanban and Scrum boards.

What’s more, it has a free plan for up to 5 team members.

Here are some of the features you can explore with Codegiant:

Burndown charts + templates.
Task status chart breakdown (complete, waiting for review, in progress, open).
Task type chart breakdown (feature, hot fix, bug, improvement, blocker)
Roadmaps.
Sprints.
Epics.
Analyze your tasks’ performance.
Tasks and subtasks.
Tags, mentions, and comments.
Time estimates.
Import projects from Jira with our one-click Jira importer.

ClickUp

ClickUp is another great project management tool that boasts a myriad of features. It recently raised $35 million in Series A which means it’ll be adding more features and refining existing ones.

ClickUp lets you create powerful burndown charts to track and communicate project progress clearly.

ClickUp’s burndown charts illustrate a third line, a project progress line highlighting how your progress would look like if you were to continue at the same working pace.

Some other features that ClickUp includes are:

Burndown chart examples and templates.
Sprints.
Docs.
Tables.
Conversations.
And more!

Hygger

Hygger deserves a place on this list due to its simplicity and a vast amount of features.

Hygger’s kanban boards come with time tracking, swimlanes, work in progress limits, burndown reports & charts.

More importantly, Hygger is designed with burndown charts and velocity reports. With them, you can keep your team on the same page so it can work unwaveringly and unflinchingly towards completion of the project.

And here are other features Hygger brings to the table:

Burndown templates and metrics.
Timeline.
Task lists.
Kanban boards.
Sprint boards.
Swimlanes.
WIP limits.

Jira

And, of course, Jira. Dating back to circa 2002, Jira is one of the most recognized project management tools among developers. Due to its initial bug-tracking design, however, it isn’t quite suitable for non-tech folk.

Jira comes with robust reports and burndown charts.

It’s trusted by more than 65,000 teams across the world. Here are some other features that you may find useful:

Risk and release burndown charts.
Dashboards.
Roadmaps.
Customizable workflows.
Kanban and scrum boards.
3 Jira versions - Jira Align, suited for enterprises, along with Jira Core and Jira Software, mainly suited for smaller businesses.
Mobile version is available as well.

Craft

If Jira seems a bit heavy for you, a great simplistic alternative to fill you with joy would be Craft.

Craft can put your team on the same page as it helps you visualize clearly milestones ahead of you so no second guessing happens in your head.

You can create new stories, add story points, custom fields, and effort to plan and prioritize.

Other features that Craft offers:

Burndown charts.
Velocity charts.
Learn tabs for user feedback.
Roadmaps.
User story templates.
Product roadmap examples.

“With Craft, everyone stays on the same page with clear milestones and sprint backlogs.” - Sam Cohen, CEO at Gold Tree Way.

Yet, if you are the kind of person to relish his creations, you can create an Excel burndown chart yourself.

Here you can find burndown chart templates for Excel and steps to follow to create one yourself.

Conclusion

Burndown charts are one of the best ways to track your team progress and make workflow adjustments when needed.

You can also use burnup charts if scope creep happens frequently - burnup charts will keep your clients in the loop.

Now that you know some cool software tools designed with burndown charts, go sign up for free and tell me what you think.

Stay unparalleled

Software Developer vs Software Engineer Differences: Bogus or Real

Codegiant — Thu, 27 Aug 2020 16:51:55 +0000

From the desk of a brilliant weirdo #1:

“The difference between a software developer and a software engineer is the same as the difference between a cock and penis.” - Unknown.

What you’re about to read mostly revolves around my personal thoughts, deductions, and offbeat imagination.

If you have different sentiments, add them in the comment section and let’s dispute!

So, today’s topic...

Software Developers vs Software Engineers

Personally, it pisses me off. Every time I see an article on this topic, my emotional bank account gets robbed. They are all about SEO. Inappropriate keywords squeezed into tiny sentences just to get better rankings. No intent to entertain or enlighten the reader whatsoever. Sometimes, such articles can even be outright wrong.

And even though the purpose of this blog post can be to generate traffic, I tried to make it more of a meaningful rant than a lifeless academic essay.

So, let’s see how you feel by the time you are done reading this paper.

Without further ado:

Since there are no proper interpretations of both terms, a lot of people use them interchangeably.

However, some companies consider these terms as job titles.

The general “programmer-developer-engineer” trend goes along the lines of:

A programmer is someone who knows how to code, understands algorithms and can follow instructions. Yet, it doesn’t go further in regards to responsibilities.
A developer is someone superior to the programmer. Except for coding, they also do design, architecture, and technical documentation of the software component they are building. They might be referred to as leaders, but not necessarily.
Finally, an engineer implies that you are the real deal. You’ve graduated with a degree, have some tech knowledge, and preferably experience… and you are capable of designing a software system (a combination of software components your peons, the programmers, have built). You’re like an overseer. You can see the bigger picture. And it’s your responsibility to clearly explain that “picture” to your team.

“Typically, software engineers will play the role of team leaders, being at the front in dealing with clients and taking on different projects for the team working at the back.” - Talha Waseem, Tech Content Editor at InvoZone.

By the way, it can also depend on the country you are based in. For example, in France, you can call yourself an engineer only if you have graduated from an engineering school that’s been recognized by the Commission des Titres d'Ingénieur.

“In Canada, the term “Engineer” is restricted to those who are certified by a provincial association. So, not everyone can call themselves an “engineer” in Canada.” - Briana Brownell, Founder and CEO at PureStrategy.

Others speculate that these might just be terms made with the purpose of marketing. Perhaps companies want their employment lists and job descriptions to look cool and attract more applicants. Brillante!

Alright, let’s dive deep.

Here are some…

Key differences between a software engineer and developer

According to Felim O’Donnell, director of operations at Liberty IT, developers work specifically on delivering software within tight parameters. They don’t need to see the whole picture. Developers only need to focus on the task that’s been assigned to them by the software engineers.

On the other hand, O'Donnell says, a software engineer is someone who takes a 50,000-foot view over the developed software. They communicate with other stakeholders to clarify the project requirements and are constantly looking for ways to optimize the work process. They often ask themselves - “Is there a better way to do this?”

So basically what makes all the difference between a developer and an engineer is the mindset with which they approach their job and their appetite to learn.

“Unless you’re working at a place like Google and chasing that prestigious promotion from ‘Software Engineer Level 4’ to ‘Software Engineer Level 5’, which version of software engineering title someone uses mostly just indicates how they think about the role themselves.“ - Justin Pincar Founder & CTO of Achievable.

Honestly, being called a software engineer or a developer is fine. What’s not fine is being called a programmer. The folks that call us programmers are typically small-minded Luddite people devoid of any IT knowledge. Disgusting. How dare they…

I mean, you spend all those years getting your CS degree, working as an elite software engineer (or developer), only to end up being called a simple “programmer.”

C’mon, programming was something I did in my room at 03:00 am at the age of 15.

“Software engineering” is my career, chap. Kinda like calling an accountant a tax preparer or your dad by his first name.

Oh, and by the way, you are not a real software developer if you don't work on Linux and have a rainbow light mechanical keyboard from Razer.

“Why do I need that?” - I hear you scream.

Well, the look of your work setup defines the quality of your work. If you don’t know, now you know.

“Sir, this is Wendy's.”

I know, I know.

I digress.

Let’s look at the facts...

What the heck is a software engineer?

By definition, an engineer is a person who designs, builds, or maintains engines, machines, or structures.

Wikipedia describes the term “software engineer” as someone who applies the principles of software engineering, to the design, development, maintenance, testing, and evaluation of computer software.

Jack of all trades.

“I prefer to call myself a software engineer because it sounds more solid and professional.” - Gene Mal, CTO at Static Jobs

Alright, so what is a software developer then?

By definition, a software developer is someone that develops something - fair enough.

What does “develop” mean then?

Develop, by definition, means to grow or cause to grow and become more mature, advanced, or elaborate.

Alright.

Let’s see what Wikipedia thinks of software developers:

A software developer is a person that creates software. The phrase 'software development' often means more than just designing or writing the software, it usually means someone who manages the project, or does only the main things. Most software developers are still led by a lead software engineer that guides the project.

Damn, even Wikipedia is biased.

Alright, let’s discuss programmers a bit now.

My two cents:

If someone calls me a programmer I associate myself with... a peon… a lazy peon… a lazy peon in the World of Warcraft.

I think programmers can as well be called junior developers. Their job is to follow the plan that’s been developed by senior developers or the tech lead.

An interesting fact: Programmers typically spend 90% of their time either in their favorite code editor or on Stack Overflow searching for fixes. The other 10% of their time goes into playing Fortnite.

What does a software engineer do

As someone considered to have a degree in engineering and experience, software engineers can embody the role of a senior software developer (or a tech team lead), meaning, they carry higher responsibilities than the average programmer.

Some undergrads consider engineering to be more of an architecture job - planning out a software solution. Software development, on the other hand, is more about tinkering with stuff and trying out new things.

“In our apprenticeship programs, we use Software Engineer to describe apprentices that will be working on more challenging algorithmic problems and business solutions that are more enterprise-oriented. Our Software Developers work on a smaller line of business applications, mobile apps, and websites that require UX with a higher degree of polish.” - Mike Roberts, CEO at San Diego Code School

What does a software developer do

According to Wikipedia’s definition, it looks like software developers have pretty similar responsibilities to software engineers. Still, the engineer title ranks above the software developer’s.

Here’s what seems fair to me:

A software developer is someone who is given specific instructions to follow, but they have the freedom and creativity to play with to take the approach they find most suitable.

They aren’t “monkey see, monkey do” type of programmers by any means but still… they follow a set of clear instructions. Sometimes, software developers can also be deemed as full-stack developers/engineers.

Software engineer/developer salaries

As said earlier, the software engineer and developer terms can be used interchangeably.

Only to some companies or individuals they mean different things.

So, when we are looking at salaries, we can consider one as a junior developer and another as a senior developer or a tech team lead.

Let’s say, just for example, that programmers tend to be considered as entry-level developers. Therefore, we can call them junior developers.

As software developers rank above programmers, we can call them senior developers.

And because software engineers have the role of an overseer (according to Wikipedia), doing more managing stuff than coding, we can call them tech leads.

Based on Glassdoor, the average salary of a junior developer sums up circa $63,502/yr.

The median salary for a senior developer is about $82,518/yr.

And the average salary of a tech team lead according to Payscale is around $101,381/yr.

Truly, one of the main benefits of being a software engineer is having a salary that puts you in the top 1% of the world population in regards to financial security.

Software engineer vs software developer - skills, roles and responsibilities...

I think soft skills are equally important as your technical skills. Being a good communicator as a software developer can make you an invaluable contributor to the team.

At some juncture in your career, you’ll face tasks that you’d have a hard time completing on your own. Being able to listen to other team members carefully instead of interrupting, and do pair programming - that’s what will help you establish a position as a good software developer/engineer.

Here are three good rules of thumb that I believe will help you become a better software developer and rise you up the rankings.

Ask questions.
Never multitask.
If you want the result to be 10, then test for 9 and 11. Wrong results can create a solid solution.

Basically, someone who wants to be considered a software engineer (senior developer or a tech lead) should be able to get the hard stuff that everybody else runs from done.

Education as a software engineer/developer

Тhe best thing to do is obviously to get a Bachelor’s degree.

That’s what most people think at least. If you have the time, money, and patience you might as well grind some extra to get a master’s degree. Here, you can find some of the best software engineering schools.

A large chunk of professional developers, surveyed by StackOverflow, said that their studies focused on computer science and software engineering.

A smaller percentage of the surveyed respondents said that they majored in related software engineering fields such as computer programming, computer engineering, or IT.

When it comes to the importance of having a formal education as a software developer, most developers say it’s not necessary to have one. What they think is much more important is the ability to learn on your own and grow your knowledge outside school hours… being self-taught.

A lot of developers recommend taking online courses or coding camps. These can definitely help you land your first job.

Learning through books and doing online exams can also be considered as a highly effective practice for improving your coding skills.

Contributing to open source is highly valued among developers as well. You can head over to GitHub and build out your software developer portfolio while contributing to other projects and broadening your knowledge scope.

You can also try searching for a mentor.

LinkedIn, I believe, is the perfect place for finding a mentor in 2020.

You just gotta stand out from the typical guy searching for a mentor.

If you land in your future mentor’s inbox with a message that goes along the lines of “Hey dear Mike, I’ve been following you for a while, I love your stuff. I’m looking for a mentor. Are you available?”… chances are you won’t get a lot of responses.

Instead, be witty. After all, you’re a software engineer.

Remember this - “if you can make someone smile or laugh, you’ll have a much higher chance of starting a meaningful conversation.”

I’ve found quite some success in the following lines:

“Hey Mike. I wanted to introduce myself in a way that showed I was interesting, clever and witty - Alas, I wrote this message instead.”

And then move forward to explaining why you are sending them a message.

Of course, it might not work from the first time. In fact, if it works the first time, then I call that a f*cking MIRACLE.

Grit your teeth and keep on sending messages. You’ll eventually find a suitable mentor. And when you find it, make sure you overdeliver. Be willing to work for free to absorb as much knowledge and skills as possible (personal thoughts).

However, your mentor should be someone who you want to be 10 years from now (otherwise, what’s the point of getting a mentor?).

LinkedIn though, might not always work for your situation. In this case, Google up local developer meetups in your town.

Or go to seminars and don’t be shy to engage with the speakers.

Or maybe go to universities and find like-minded people there. (That can be a bit difficult due to the current COVID situation but you get the point.)

Another option is to apply for jobs where you’ll be surrounded by senior developers and able to absorb knowledge daily.

Enough of that.

The life of a software developer vs software engineer

All types of developers are likely to start their day with a cup of coffee in hand while checking their emails.

Once their scrum meetings have concluded, they move forward with their usual tasks.

Programmers (or junior developers) will most likely focus on coding.

Software developers (senior developers) might check on the team to see whether someone has difficulties with completing a particular task.

The software engineer (tech team lead) may have other meetings to attend to make sure the project’s goals and requirements are conveyed clearly to the development team.

After work, they either hang out with friends or sit on their computers, doing some freelance work, watching YouTube videos, listening to music, or playing Fortnite trying to finally secure that 1st place victory after their 47th attempt.

Their bedtime routine consists of binge-watching anime videos (not everyone I guess lol), reading motivational books Oprah recommended, or scrolling through Hacker News before their eyes give out.

How did it go? Did you like it? Are you furious? Spill out your thoughts in the comments below.

A quick blurb: And, of course, if you are searching for a cool source code repository with a simplistic issue tracker and a built-in CI/CD, go check out Codegiant. It’s free for smaller teams.

Stay unparalleled,

Agile vs Scrum: Differences & Similarities - The Complete Review [2020]

Codegiant — Fri, 14 Aug 2020 14:03:26 +0000

From the desk of a brilliant weirdo #1:

If you are using Scrum it’s safe to say that you are also using Agile.

On the other hand, if you are using an Agile framework, that may not necessarily be Scrum.

This article is dedicated to the notorious topic “Agile vs Scrum” and I’ll break it down for you so you can actually get to know the differences and similarities between Agile and Scrum.

Without further ado:

What Is Agile (Overview)?

Contrary to Waterfall, the Agile methodology is focused on releasing increments of software constantly.

Agile pretty much means “we embrace change and release working software frequently.” Agile fosters the “just do it” approach and welcomes change along the way. In contrast, Waterfall, the opposite of Agile, requires in-depth planning for you to hit the ground running.

Agile is also successful when continuous feedback is received from the end users. This helps the PM along with the dev team develop a product that suits the needs of the market to a tee.

The uniqueness of the Agile methodology stems from the human-to-human relationship it encourages. Here are the 4 principles of Agile, according to the Agile Manifesto:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.
Working software over comprehensive documentation.
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation.
Responding to change over following a plan.

In other words, an Agile team should be aware of the changing environment, able to identify any uncertainty, and then brainstorming a plan for adapting to it.

We can also say that Agile is a combination of frameworks that are based on the values set in the Agile Manifesto.

When it comes to Agile project management, managers here don’t tell the team what they should be working on.

Instead, they take a step back and make sure that the team has the right skills and distraction-free environment to be able to tackle the tasks on their plates.

The Agile lifecycle is made up of 6 Agile methodology phases:

Concept - the end goal of the project is defined and tasks are made & prioritised.
Plan - requirements are introduced and the team discusses the approach it’s going to take to handle the tasks.
Development - the actual coding happens during this step. Documentation evolves along with the project.
Testing - In Agile, during the testing stage, the code is tested to ensure that it’s bug-free and ready for deployment.
Deployment - in this Agile phase, the code is deployed and working software is delivered to the customers.
Maintenance - during this stage, the work that has been performed in the previous steps is reviewed and the market’s reactions are observed. After that, improvements are made for future projects.

When to Use Agile

First off, you need to understand the 12 principles of the Agile manifesto (check the next section).

Second, if you feel like waterfall methods keep your team’s productivity stagnant then it may be a good idea to try the Agile project management method.

Agile is best to use in the following situations:

You don’t have a clear picture of what the end product should look like.
You plan on adjusting the product requirements as you’re progressing.
Your development team can thrive in changing environments instead of withering away.

Agile Manifesto

Back in 2001 in Snowbird, Utah, 17 developers came up with the Agile Manifesto while enjoying their leisure time at the resort. The Agile Manifesto encompasses 12 principles every Agile team should adhere to:

The customer is the most important.
Embrace change.
Delight your customers with frequent and working software releases.
Daily coordination.
Developers should be motivated to face challenges.
Face-to-face communication is encouraged.
If a feature or product is working well, you can gauge your progress.
Keep the pace at which your team is releasing working software constant.
Attention to details.
Instead of doing more, you should be doing what’s required in the fastest way possible.
Cross-functional teams are the best.
Continuously receive feedback.

Agile Methodologies (Frameworks)

First, what is a methodology?

According to Alistair Cockburn, a methodology is a set of rules or conventions that a development team agrees to follow.

So regardless of the Agile framework you're using, no development team will be the same as different companies foster different values & principles.

Scrum, which will be thoroughly discussed below, is the most popular Agile framework. Scrum consists of sprints (timeboxes) during which the team creates and releases working software. In Scrum, you have three main roles - the Product Owner, Scrum Master, and Development (or Scrum) team. Everyone cooperates with each other in order to complete the assigned tasks successfully.
Kanban doesn't operate by sprints, but it allows you to make changes whenever you need it. Kanban gives you a clear view over your tasks so you can explicitly see what's the next step ahead of you. In Japanese, Kanban actually means a "visual sign."
Lean is about optimizing the time you spend working on tasks. It helps you to release working software frequently enough through constant iterations.
Extreme Programming, or also known as XP, welcomes changes and encourages adaptivity. It works great because it's based around receiving constant feedback from end users.

These are just some of the leading Agile frameworks. You can check more in this article.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Agile

Pros of Agile:
With Agile, you don’t need extensive documentation at the beginning of each project. Instead, you can jump right into it and refine your backlog along with the project’s evolution.

Agile allows you to break down your tasks into smaller iterations so you can narrow down your focus on producing better quality software.

In each iteration phase, there’s testing involved meaning you’ll be able to identify bugs early on and fix them quickly. As a result, you’ll deliver high-quality software without any concurrent issues.

With Agile, you’ll be able to bring your team on the same page as it emphasizes daily communication as well as face-to-face collaboration. Everybody will know what’s the next important step to take.

Clients can see that progress that is being made. They can thus share their feedback and have an actual impact on the end product.

Cons of Agile:
The problem with Agile is that as it grew significantly in popularity, spreading out across many organizations, some businesses abandoned the initial agile mindset, and instead focused on a certain set of principles and practices done in an exactly prescribed way. And this is not what Agile is. Agile stands for adaptation and adjustments to help you tackle uncertainty.

As Agile fosters the “just do it” approach, you won’t have as many details and planning as you usually have when implementing Waterfall. Therefore, it can be hard to pin down a precise shipping date. The end product may also look like nothing similar to what was initially expected.

Moreover, with Agile, PMs are often re-prioritizing tasks while adding new ones which can result in missed deadlines.

Developers should be skilled in a variety of areas to be able to handle multiple aspects of the product being developed. Therefore, newbies may find it hard to keep up with the pace of senior developers. As a result, they may figure Agile to be unnecessary hard to follow. Agile projects, more often than not, will require your full commitment to the project and 40 hours a week sometimes won’t be enough.

Suppose you are working in a blame culture where nobody puts themselves in other people’s shoes and just minds their own business. In that case, no Agile framework will likely save you.

Whereas, suppose you have a well-coordinated team with high levels of chemistry between the team members. In that case, you’ll be just fine with any Agile framework you pick.

“Agile, for all its flexibility, can go off course very easily if left unchecked. So it requires a constant focus on the tenets which are not prescriptive, unlike Scrum.” - David Johnson, Chief Technology Officer at Mulytic and Founder at Clear Blue Data.

Getting certified in Agile

PMI-ACP is one of the best certifications you can obtain to showcase real agile knowledge and skills to your future employer. The PMI-ACP cert will get you familiar with Scrum, Kanban, Lean, and other frameworks as well. The courses (+ all the Agile tutorials and video content) are priced at $1,195. It’ll definitely embellish your Agiler resume.

“The exam material ranges roughly 8 different books / guides and leans a lot on the PMBOK (Product Management Body of Knowledge) textbook. It covers Scrum a great deal, but also XP, Kanban, Crystal and Lean.” - William Chin, Web Consultant at PickFu.

APMG International - a great place to acquire a certification in Agile program management, Agile project management, or Dynamic Systems Development Method. Prices may vary.

Strategyex Certificate - The online learning company TwentyEighty Strategy Execution has partnered with George Washington University to provide you with either Associate or Master’s in Agile. It’ll definitely provide you with the necessary Agile skills to thrive in your work environment. Prices start at $1,645.

International Consortium for Agile (ICAgile), an independent accrediting agency, is offering Agile certification that will get you well versed in Agile and its various frameworks - Scrum, XP, Kanban, and more. Three certification levels are available - Professional, Expert and Master. Fees depend on the course you choose, head over to here to find out more.

Scaled Agile Academy - if you are a fan of the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), the Scaled Agile Academy offers a variety of courses and Agile tutorials to get you educated on the subject so you can confidently demonstrate your skills during interviews.

Certified Agile Project Manager (IAPM), a global professional association for certifying Agile project managers, offers four levels of certification: The Junior Agile PM, Agile PM, Senior Agile PM, and the International PM. If you are just entering the Agile space, then the IAPM will be a perfect fit for you as it’ll teach you the basics of planning, structure and execution of multiple agile-based projects. Prices depend on your nationality. For example, for US students, the Agile Project Manager course is priced at $122, and the exam cost sums up to $650.

“I would recommend teams to not jump directly into Scrum without getting some sort of in-depth training first in Agile and then, in Scrum. Also, transitioning through a less intense Agile philosophy such as Kanban would be beneficial. They can obtain more information on PMI-Agile Certification and Scrum Certification here.” - Martha Carrera, Publicist at Otter Public Relations.

What Is Scrum?

Scrum is a subset of Agile, it’s a framework that encourages you to deliver working software in sprints (2-4 weeks).

It stresses the importance of accountability, team collaboration, and product iterations aimed at achieving a high-quality product.

Scrum is based on Empiricism meaning knowledge & skills come from experience and making decisions.

“Scrum follows the example of " Fail Early" that says it is better to fail early as it reduces the cost of rework and ensures the development is happening as per business requirements.” - Neha, a SAFe certified software professional sharing personal thoughts on NaturallyHappyMom.

Sprints

At its core, the Scrum project management method is made up of sprints. Sprints are time-boxed events averaging from two to four weeks. During the sprint, working software is developed until it reaches a certain level, known as "Done." The "Done" phase tells that product is ready to be deployed on the scrum release date.

"With a dedicated time-box or "sprint" usually around two weeks in length, it's possible to build a short feedback loop, which can improve the decisions you make about the future work the team will do." - Jay Hyett, Senior Delivery Coach at Envato.

Once the Sprint starts, no changes can be made during project development. Yet, the scope can be redefined and re-negotiated between the PO and the development team as the project progresses.

“Our Sprint is broken into the following phases: New, Analysis, Read For Dev, In Dev, Ready for QA, In QA, Ready For Acceptance, and Completed.” - Jonathan Sanchez, Co-Founder at ParentPortfolio.

Sprint planning

Every sprint starts with a sprint planning. A sprint plan helps the team understand the goals they’re after. During sprint planning, tasks with clear instructions are defined. The sprint planning should take no longer than 8 hours for a month-long sprint.

The most common questions asked in a sprint planning are:

What can be delivered in the Increment resulting from the upcoming Sprint?
How will the work needed to deliver the Increment be achieved?

Daily Scrums

The daily scrum is the most salient part of the agile team collaboration process as it replaces most conventional meetings.

It usually takes no longer than 15 minutes with an 8-people team. It’s held at the same time and same place every day to dwindle complicatedness.

Daily scrums keep everybody on the same page and increase the team’s probability of completing the project successfully.

In most teams, during a daily scrum, you need to answer the following three questions:

What did I do yesterday that helped the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?
What will I do today to help the Development Team meet the Sprint Goal?
Do I see any impediment that prevents the Development Team or me from meeting the Sprint Goal? (Source - Scrum.org)

More often than not, developers will meet right after Scrum to elaborate further on the problems they’re facing and find ways to fix them.

It’s important to note that the daily scrum is only for the developers. If external members would like to participate, the Scrum Master should ensure that they don’t disturb the developers.

Sprint Reviews

Except for daily scrum, you also have sprint reviews that are held at the end of each sprint to review the released piece of software. At most, this meeting takes no more than 4 hours for one-month sprints.

During the sprint review, the development team shares what problems & challenges it stumbled upon and how it solved them. The work that has been completed is reviewed and developers answer any questions that stakeholders may have.

Market’s reactions are also reviewed during this meeting which helps the team understand the customer’s desires so that it can develop a better product in the next sprint. Time spent and budgets are also reviewed to help the product owner make better time & cost estimates in the future.

Sprint Retrospective

The Sprint Retrospective is a meeting held after the sprint review and it helps the team assess the past sprint so adjustments in future sprints can be made. Scrum diagrams are inspected to review the team’s performance as well.

Sprint backlog

The sprint backlog is made by the developers themselves.

It consists of items picked by developers from the product backlog.

The sprint backlog allows you to clearly see all the current and upcoming tasks of your team.

The sprint backlog can change and evolve along with the development of the product as well. All changes to the sprint backlog are usually discussed during the daily scrum so everybody can be aware of what’s happening. It’s worth mentioning that only the dev team can make adjustments to the sprint backlog during development.

Increments

The Increment, according to Scrum.org, is the sum of all the Product Backlog items completed during a Sprint and the value of the increments of all previous Sprints.

When to Use Scrum

You can use the scrum project management framework In the following scenarios:

When project requirements are likely to change and continuous customer feedback is required.
You don’t have a clear picture of what the end product should look like and you will adjust along the way.
The scrum development team is experienced enough to manage its tasks without the management of a PM.
And also when working software is required to be released quite frequently.

Roles in Scrum

The Scrum Team consists of a product owner, a development (scrum) team, and a scrum master.

Product Owner

The product owner is the guy who designs the product backlog. He lists and prioritizes all the items in the backlog so the team can focus on the most critical tasks first.

However, the scrum development team has the power to renegotiate the product backlog with the PO if it thinks there’s too much or little work for the sprint.

In the product backlog, you can find all the features, functions, enhancements, requirements, and tasks for the completion of the project. Each item is given a description, order, estimate, and value to make things more transparent and easier for developers.

It’s important to note that the product backlog is never fully completed. In fact, it’s in a constant evolution along with the project being developed and the environment in which it’s located.

It’s crucial for the team to follow the product owner’s decisions to move the project towards the goal line smoothly.

The Development team

The development team ostensibly consists of developers who do the actual work and release “Done” increments after each sprint.

The scrum team should be cross-functional as well as self-organizing.

Developers in the team should have the necessary skills to deliver working software without being micromanaged.

No titles are present in Scrum. Testers, analysis, and developers are all Scrum teammates. In the end, every team member is equally responsible for the success of the project.

Scrum Master

The scrum master helps the dev team to clearly understand the scrum values, principles, and techniques so that everybody (+ stakeholders) is on the same page.

It’s likewise his job to ensure the dev team is working in a distraction-free environment without any interruptions. He helps the team clearly understand the instructions of their tasks.

The scrum master can also help the product owner by finding efficient ways for managing the product backlog. He is also responsible for the prioritization of tasks along with the PO.

Moreover, the scrum master is responsible for imbuing the organization with Scrum principles and values. He cooperates with scrum masters in other departments to bring everybody in the company on the same wavelength when it comes to fostering the Scrum process.

Advantages & Disadvantages of Scrum

Pros of Scrum:

The scrum process brings clarity in the team through the daily scrum meetings. You can keep your whole team synced and up to date so that no issues occur further down the line.

Usually, most Scrum teams possess a sense of accountability, as there is no PM to manage them. Developers spread tasks among each other and are responsible for completing them. They are constantly collaborating with each other to achieve the sprint’s goal without facing tons of hurdles along the way.

Scrum can also help you save costs. Due to the daily scrums, the team keeps everybody on the same page meaning issues can be identified early on for developers to prevent them from happening.

Sometimes, taking 1-2 days to clearly map out the requirements and user stories of the Sprint may be well worth it rather than conducting your planning session hand over fist.

“Scrum includes joint planning exercises to help ensure reliable commitments from team members.” - Chris Williams, Agile and Elite Performance Coach, The host of The Badass Agile Podcast.

Cons of Scrum:

If scope creep occurs due to constant backlog refinements, complexity may crop up and wither the team’s productivity away.

In scrum, teams foster high accountability and level of skills. Therefore, developers need to be quite familiar with the Scrum techniques for the project to succeed.

The scrum master shouldn’t control nor manage the team. Otherwise, the project might fail as disparity might emerge between the team and the scrum master.

When tasks aren’t precisely explained, time and cost inaccuracies might occur and cause the project to fail. It’s important for the team to understand the project’s goals initially so that no big problems & discrepancies crop up along the way.

The Scrum framework can be quite overwhelming for some developers and cause team burnouts. Sometimes, instead of helping the team, daily stand ups can turn into unpleasant and unproductive meetings that nobody wants to attend. That only happens when the team arbitrarily parrots what’s on their Jira board for the sake of saying something.

With Scrum, there aren’t any time windows in between the sprints to let off steam as the new sprint usually starts right when the previous one ends overlapping each other.

“Many teams do not implement Scrum or Agile 100%. They usually take a few bits of it and try to glue them with their already existing processes and methods. As a result, discrepancies might crop up during the development phase.” - Elandas Miller, PMP, PMI-ACP, CSM -- CEO & Founder at Kicking It Sports.

Getting certified in Scrum

Professional Scrum Master™ - three levels are available based on your skills & goals - fundamental, advanced, and distinguished.

Professional Scrum Product Owner™ - three levels are available here as well - fundamental, advanced, and distinguished.

Professional Scrum Developer™ - if you’d like to niche down as a developer and focus only on Scrum projects, this is the certification for you.

Scaled Professional Scrum™ - this one proves your knowledge and skills in scaling Scrum and using the Nexus framework.

Professional Scrum™ with Kanban - if you are a fan of both kanban and scrum, go with this one.

Professional Agile Leadership™ - if you’d like to lead a scrum team by helping the team to understand Agile values & practices, then this is the certification you need.

Professional Scrum™ with User Experience - this certification will help you understand the best-in-class UX practices so you can deliver tremendous customer value & experience.

Check out Scrum.org to learn more about the certifications. You’ll be able to find tons of scrum methodology tutorials.

Differences and Similarities Between Agile vs Scrum

Differences
First off, Agile and Scrum aren’t the same.

Agile, in a nutshell, is more of a mindset, a project management philosophy, whereas Scrum is a set of values & principles. Originally, scrum is a subset of Agile.

“Agile is something you ‘are’ not something you ‘do.’ Scrum is something you ‘do’ in order to build and deliver software in an Agile manner.” - Chris Alexander, Enterprise Agile Coach at EXPANSIA.

Agile describes a set of ideals in the Agile manifesto. It doesn’t give any specific set of rules to follow to manage your projects. On the other hand, Scrum provides you with ways to manage your project efficiently to meet your project’s goals.

“Leadership plays a crucial part in the Agile process; on the other side, Scrum fosters a self-organizing, cross-functional unit.” - Matt Scott, owner of Termite Survey.

Similarities:
Both Agile and Scrum share many similarities as ultimately Scrum springs from Agile. Both Agile and Scrum rely on delivering working software frequently while embracing change and receiving continuous feedback.

As mentioned earlier in the “Agile Methodologies” section, Scrum is just one of the frameworks that stems from Agile. Tons of other Agile methods are available as well that you can try, test, and see if they work for you.

Hybrid Agile Approaches

The reasons for which you might want to be on the lookout for Hybrid approaches may vary from lowering the project’s cost to speeding up the development process or handling complex environments better.

Here are some hybrid approaches to Agile:

The Disciplined Agile Delivery (DAD) is based on Agile, Scrum, and Lean frameworks. It was initially designed to take the most salient parts of other Agile frameworks and cobble them together so you can have everything you need to move your projects smoothly towards the goal line.

Another hybrid framework is the Large-Scale Scrum (LeSS) made to expand the use of Scrum through scaling rules & guidelines.

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), another hybrid Agile framework, is a combination of Agile & Lean values & principles.

AgilleAlliance covers the topic of Hybrid Agile quite thoroughly here.

Best Project Management Tools For Agile and Scrum

Codegiant

Codegiant is ultimately one of the simplest tools out there for managing your Agile projects. It’s designed with both Kanban and Scrum boards so you can get extra functionality when managing your projects.

The uniqueness of Codegiant stems from its ability to allow you to create tasks and distribute assignments across your team within just a few clicks.

Also, it boasts practically-designed roadmaps that will help you visualise your project’s progress so you can identify issues early on and prevent them from happening.

Features:

Kanban and Scrum boards.
Roadmaps.
Sprints.
Epics.
User stories.
Keep track of progress.
Tasks and subtasks.
Tags, mentions, and comments.
Time estimates.
Jira importer.
Codegiant has a free plan for up to 5 users, then starts at $3/user a month.

Pros:

Hit the ground running within a few clicks—no complex onboarding processes.
Tags, mentions, and comments will help you bring your team on the same page to accelerate your development process.
It’s risk-free for up to 5 users on board. No payment is needed or will ever be.

Cons:

It lacks integrations. Currently, it only integrates with Jira and Slack.

ClickUp

“The one to rule them all.” - ClickUp’s slogan.

ClickUp definitely boasts heaps of features that can replace most of the PM tools you might be using. It has everything you need from A to Z to manage your project efficiently.

Moreover, it has its own importer tool that will help you move your projects over to ClickUp without any hassle.

It’s worth mentioning that ClickUp raised a funding round of $35 million recently which means they’ll be further improving their product and adding more great features to help you manage your projects smoothly.

Features:

Tasks.
Real-time chat.
Custom statuses.
Custom fields.
Time tracking.
Multiple assignees.
Priorities.
Free plan. After that starts at $9 per month.

Pros:

ClickUp is notorious for a large number of features it brings to the table - you won’t find yourself in a dire need for extra functionality.
The support team is absolutely outstanding. It will go out of its way to ensure your problems are solved. You can use ClickUp for free.

Cons:

Creating tasks and working in multiple layouts can be overwhelming at the beginning. It may not be the simplest project management solution according to some customers on Capterra and TrustRadius.

Jira

Jira is one of the most popular PM tools for developers these days, dating back to 2002.

A downside of Jira, however, is that it initially features a bug-tracking design which makes the software quite inconvenient for non-tech folks nowadays.

Nevertheless, Jira is a fantastic tool with tons of well-designed and robust features.

Jira comes in three main versions - Jira Align, Jira Core, and Jira Software (in fact, there’s also Jira Mobile). Jira Core and Jira Software are mainly suited for personal use whereas Jira Align makes greater sense for enterprises. You can learn the difference between the three Jira versions here.

Features:

Scrum and kanban boards.
Roadmaps.
Reporting.
Drag and drop.
Automations.
Customizable workflows.
Rich APIs.
Free for open-source projects and teams with up to 10 users.

Pros:

Jira can handle your project management from A to Z without any problems. It’s also widely preferred by developers due to its initial bug-tracking design.
It comes with a large number of integrations so you can have all the tools you like in one place making your project management a pleasant experience instead of a chore.

Cons:

The UI, according to some users, seems a bit clunky. When signing up to Jira for the first time you’ll have to go through a rather steep learning curve in order to get a sense of the tool.
Not the best tool for folks without technical background due to its initial bug-tracking design.

Asana

Asana is another fantastic tool for Agile teams that features incredible simplicity and functionality.

Originally founded by the Facebook co-founder, Dustin Moskovits, in 2008, Asana was meant to become one of the most popular project management tools in the world.

With a valuation of over $1.5B, Asana brings great features (+ animations) to the table to help you manage your projects smoothly while keeping you entertained.

It comes with more than a 100 integrations so you can have all your favorite tools in one place.

Features:

Projects.
Tasks and subtasks.
Assignees.
Custom fields.
Forms.
Due dates.
Milestones.
Timeline.
It comes with a free plan for up to 15 users. It then starts at €13.49 billed monthly.

Pros:

When you finish a task, rainbow unicorns pop up on the screen to add extra enchantment.
Navigating your way through Asana can feel like a breeze when you get used to it.
You can try it risk-free.

Cons:

Asana email notifications can be aggravating at times. Despite the free plan, Asana can be very, very expensive for larger teams compared to the other tools on this list. Prices start at €13.49/user per month.
Asana’s UX can be unbelievably slow sometimes putting you in a black mood.

Basecamp

Perhaps the oldest PM tool out there, from 1999, Basecamp has definitely kept up with the trends throughout the years. As a matter of fact, Basecamp has its own unique style that suits smaller businesses and individuals to a tee.

What makes Basecamp great is that it’s super straightforward. You can create tasks and assign them to your team in a matter of minutes. No hassle whatsoever.

Features:

To-do lists.
Docs.
Schedules.
Real-time chat.
Hill charts.
Reporting.
Notifications.
Search bar.
Comes with a 30-day free trial.

Pros:

Basecamp’s support team is super reliable. They’ll handle your issues professionally making sure you have a smooth and pleasant experience.
It has many features that you can easily adjust to your workflow to smooth out the development process.
Basecamp comes at affordable prices. Flat monthly fee of $99, no matter how big your team is.

Cons:

As with many other tools, it has a steep learning curve that you’ll need to overcome.
You only have one message board and chat meaning communication with other departments can be quite hard.

Conclusion

That’s about it on the topic Agile vs Scrum.

Just to encapsulate what we’ve talked about...

Agile is more of a mindset or a philosophy that you can follow (The Agile Manifesto).

Scrum, however, is an Agile framework that comes with a set of rules and principles that you should adhere to in order to meet your sprint’s goals.

All in all, when you are using Scrum, you are also using Agile in a way.

Yet, Agile offers a variety of other frameworks you can explore and find the one that suits you the best.

Stay unparalleled,