Project Scope is basically the list of features that defines the product. It is generally documented during project planning in a Scope Statement. Scope Statement lists all the features that define the product. Everything else is considered out of scope.

As per the Wikipedia, here's the definition of Project Scope: "The work that needs to be accomplished to deliver a product, service, or result with the specified features and functions."

Here's how to manage Project Scope in Agile

The most common challenge that Project Managers face these days, is Managing the Project Scope. After a thorough research, I came up with below points that can help a manager to manage the scope of the project:

1. Creating & Maintaining Scope Statement: The most important and initial part of any project planning is to create a Scope Statement. This is a document that clearly lists what all is included in the project. Everything else is out of scope. It's very important we maintain this scope statement as we move along with the project. Make sure the client and the team thoroughly understand the scope statement.
2. Clearly, understand if it's a Change or a Defect: It's very important that the team clearly understands the problem statement. Identify if it's a new change or a defect in the current system.
3. Size/Complexity of Change or a Defect: Another important step is to identify the size/complexity of the problem, whether it's a small change or a defect that can be easily implemented or does it affect the timeline and budget and should be a part of a separate iteration. An article by Atlassian also talks about the complexity of a feature causing scope creep.
4. Communication: Communication plays a vital role during any project life cycle. When implementing any kind of changes, and if the size and complexity of the change/defect are far bigger, it's always better to clearly communicate that within the team and to the customer. It has to be implemented in a way so that the project documentation, timelines and budget also reflects the same.
5. Embracing the Change: That's the beauty of Agile, to accept the changes. It's very important we keep including the changes while we perform Product Backlog Refinements and within that, the scope statement should reflect if these are big changes to be included within Releases or not.

Many organizations are now following an approach known as a minimal viable product (MVP). Here's an interesting article by LiquidPlanner, that talks about the same. "The key to successful MVP is to plot the value of a feature against the risk of successful implementation."

To conclude, "Changes are assessed throughout the project, and the scope is replanned at the start of each iteration.", given by an article published in AgilePM

Are you balancing work and life?

Friends, I came across a very nice article that talks about handling "work" and your "life". I am not spending much time writing about this article, as people these days know how to manage their work and life. Here's to the Art of Living article, I just came across that talks about experiencing waves of happiness like never before. They say: All actions we undertake in our lives are to make us happy, isn't it!

You are having a bad day at office, or you feel like leaving your job, or lay off stress? Here's another article by a great author published in Business News Daily, inspires me to share about this- "In our digitally driven world, it's imperative to maintain a work-life balance," by Jackie Stone

Below are some points listed for betterment of balancing our work and life:

1. Letting go of Perfectionism: Another article at Forbes shares about tips for better work life balance. The first point they talk about letting go of Perfectionism. We tend to do everything perfectly, if we are unable to, this brings out stress and frustration into our behavior. Letting go of Perfectionism often give us "better" performances at workplace and into our personal lives too.
2. Exercise & Meditate: The most important part of a healthy lifestyle is to keep exercising and meditation plays a vital role in giving a personal inner strength.
3. Create and own your lifestyle: Create your lifestyle and stick to it. When we say lifestyle, it's about what time you wake up, when do you reach your office, when do you start working etc. It's just not a word, it's about how we live our lives.

In the end, as they say, ups and downs are the part of lives, sometimes we have a bad day at office and sometimes we have celebrations!!!

It's all about how we look towards the direction of our lives and how positively we react to it :)

Scrum Check: Are you following Scrum or ScrumBut or None?

According to a recent article by Forbes, "The overall success rate of projects delivered using Scrum reported by respondents is 62%. (Teams of the recommended size for Scrum — seven plus or minus two -- members — report the most frequent success, while smaller and larger teams both report less frequent success.)"

Success rate of any project framework highly depends on the way we are implementing it.

Scrum or ScrumBut?

Organizations have different work cultures, different teams, different project sizes, and different processes. Many of the times, we see that organizations implement Scrum but with some changes to it. We call it- "ScrumBut"

It is when we ask a team, Do you follow Scrum framework? and they say-

"Yes, We follow Scrum but we don't do Retrospective meeting"

Or
"Yes, We follow Scrum but we don't do daily scrum meetings, we meet weekly."

Click here to Learn more about ScrumBut

Friends, if you are implementing Scrum and unsure about it, here is a check for you to determine whether you are really following "Scrum" or "ScrumBut" or "None"?

Scrum Check!

Below is the list of questions, and here is the scenario:

If you answer "Yes" to all of these below, then "Congratulations!!! You are doing a great job with Scrum implementation". 

If you answer, "No to some of them", then it's a "ScrumBut" and not "Scrum"

If you answer, "No to most or all of them", then "Sorry friends, you are not following Scrum".

Scrum Artifacts

• Are you using Product Backlog?
• Do you have a product backlog defined by the Product Owner?
• Is it prioritized by business value by the Product Owner?
• Is it being refined and maintained?
• Are the top items estimated by the team?
• Learn more about Product Backlog here
• Are you using Sprint Backlog?
• Is it estimated and finalized by team members?
• Is approved by the Product Owner?
• Is your Sprint backlog visible to everyone?
• Is your Sprint backlog daily updated for progress?
• Does your Sprint backlog clearly show what is to do, doing and done?
• Learn more about Sprint Backlog here
• Are you using Burn-down charts?
• Are these used within your sprints?
• Are these updated on daily basis?
• Learn more about Burn-down chart here

Scrum Ceremonies

• Sprint Planning Meetings 
• Does Product Owner participate in this meeting?
• Does whole team participate in this meeting?
• Is the Sprint backlog finalized by the end of Sprint Planning meeting?
• Is the Product Owner satisfied with Sprint backlog?
• Does everyone understand Definition of Done (DoD)?
• At the end of this, Does whole team know what their tasks are and what needs to be delivered by the end of the sprint?
• Daily Scrum Meetings
• Is it Time-boxed for 15 minutes? i.e. It should not last more than 15 minutes.
• Is the team talking about progress and impediments?
• Is the team updating Scrum board or any other Scrum tool for progress? (Moving items from To Do to Doing, Doing to Done)
• Is the team updating Burn down chart? 
• Sprint Review Meetings
• Is the product ready for demo according to Definition of Done?
• Is the team giving incremental product demonstration to product owner?
• Is the product owner participating and giving feedback?
• Sprint Retrospective Meetings
• Is it happening at the end of each sprint?
• Are you checking what to Start, Stop and Continue?
• Is your process continuously improving?

Team

• Is your team size less than 9 and more than 5?
• Is your team self-managed?
• Is your team cross-functional?

Iterations

• Are your iterations more than 1 week and less than 4 weeks?
• Are your iterations estimated and planned?

Handling Changes

• Are you managing Scope while welcoming changes?
• Are you not allowing any change within an iteration?
• Are you allowing changes during Product backlog refinement?

Other factors!

• Are you happy with team's performance and having fun?
• Are you all motivated to improve, inspect and adapt?
• Is it resulting in incremental product deliverable?

Here's how to keep your team happy and productive

How does it matter?

It does matter, we are not getting our work done from machines or mechanical robots. We are getting our work done from humans. 

It is very important for a Project Manager to make sure all our team members, employees are happy. They are not just "Resources" that are assigned on project, they are "Human Resources"!
Humans with feelings!

As stated in article from Business.com about how keeping employees happy benefits a business and a research done at Warwick proves that happy employees are around 12% more productive.

When we talk about teams, it is very important to keep our whole team happy in order to be productive and efficient at work and to deliver best results for our projects.

5 ways to keep your team happy and productive!

1. Transparency

As per the survey conducted by TINYPulse, it states that Transparency is #1 factor responsible for employee happiness. It is very important we involve each of our team member during client meetings, as well as important project discussions.

2. Ownership

When a team is micro-managed and controlled by a supervisor or a manager, it drives down their motivation and happiness. On the other hand, when they are given ownership and freedom, they feel much more responsible and motivated.

This makes me share an interesting article for those who would like to build self-organizing teams. 
Click here to know more, how ownership plays a vital role in that.

3. Welcome Ideas

Individuals are full of great ideas when given a chance. Thinking out of the box and doing it differently from others, this is what makes a difference. A good project manager always encourage & welcome great ideas from its team.

4. Acknowledge & Appreciate

It is very important we acknowledge our team's work. We often find problems and recognize what team didn't do correctly. To maintain a balance, we need to acknowledge and appreciate what they did correctly and how their great inputs made our projects successful.

Here goes the Principle #2 from famous "How to Win Friends and Influence People" - by Dale Carnegie.

"Give Honest and Sincere Appreciation"

5. Support

Treating team as a "Team". It is very important to always support our team in bad times. If there's a problem, whole team is responsible and not a single person. A good manager never blames it on one person, they take responsibility as a whole team and this is what makes them a great Team Player.

Top 5 Awesome Project Management Tools!

The main causes for any Project failure are Poor Planning, Poor Management and Lack of Communication/Collaboration.

To avoid these, we should be seriously looking at the type of project management tools we are using for our projects, and to what extent they meet our organization needs and the process. How simple it is to use, and how motivated our team feels when they use it :)

Choosing the right management tool can increase the work efficiency and improve the collaboration, which aims in getting the projects successful as well as the process being improved.

Remember! The success of any project majorly depends on the project management and collaboration.

Let’s go through the list of some of the top ones.

Trello

Trello is a simple and easy to use project management tool. It consists of "Boards". Each board contains a "List". We can create & name our lists as “To Do”, “Doing” and “Done”!

Each list can contain tasks which are called as "Cards" in Trello. Assign members to each card with proper due date and description.

So, as the project goes on, just drag and drop your cards from “To Do” to “Doing” and then “Doing” to “Done”.

Used by top clients like - Google, Paypal, Adobe etc.

Pros

• It’s Free!
• One-page picture of a project status through Trello Board
• Easy Drag and Drop updates
• Great tool for Agile teams
• Provides a facility to add a Checklist to your Cards
• Easy commenting feature for collaboration
• Upload files using different platforms like Dropbox, Google Drive, etc.
• Can be used on mobile devices

Cons

• No Gantt charts
• No Calendar
• No Time tracking, will have to use third party tools for this

Atlassian JIRA

Atlassian JIRA is a top tool used by Agile teams. It provides lot of features like agile planning, tracking time, release planning, reporting etc. It enforces the use of scrum and Kanban framework using Scrum and Kanban boards.

Issues/Tasks are being created as a part of product backlog and then assigned to team members.

Pricing starts from $10 per month for the basic plan or try it for free for 7 days.

Used by top clients like – eBay, Cisco, LinkedIn etc.

Pros

• Provides all the features to easily use Agile management
• Supports Scrum & Kanban framework
• Provides all kind of reporting features like burndown charts, etc.
• Easy drag and drop feature for prioritization and sprint planning
• One-page board view for the project
• All the features for planning sprints to planning the releases
• Bitbucket Integration
• Can be used on mobile devices

Cons

• Requires a learning curve for people to understand using this tool
• Some team members feel it’s too complex to use
• With Lot of features, if no proper process or workflow is there, can confuse the users

Asana

Asana is simple and easy to use software for tracking tasks and team collaboration for different projects. It allows easy collaboration using commenting feature for tasks. Great tool for managing small projects.

Used by top clients like – Harvard University, Khan Academy, Uber etc.

Pros

• It’s Free & easy to use!
• An open source project management tool
• One-page list view for your tasks and your team tasks with due dates
• Ability to create recurring tasks
• Mark the task complete using a simple tick
• Assign tasks by forwarding emails to Asana projects
• Allow integrations with third party tools like Dropbox, Slack, GitHub etc.
• Can be used on mobile devices

Cons

• No time tracking, will have to use additional app integration
• Not a best fit for implementing Agile methodologies

OrangeScrum

OrangeScrum is the simple project management tool for small businesses, freelancers, agencies etc. Great project view, quick reporting features, & simple design makes it easy for you to stay on top for daily task updates.

It provides features like resource planning, Kanban boards etc. Easy to work with remote teams.

Used by top clients like - InsidersHealth, AuditNet etc.

Pros

• Free & Easy to use!
• An open source project management tool
• Share documents from Dropbox, Google drive with ease
• Sync and integrate with Gmail
• Integrated Cloud Storage Apps
• Real-time collaboration
• Time tracker and report generation
• Can be used on mobile devices

Cons

• Doesn’t give all the features of Scrum like managing the product backlog
• Can’t setup user based permissions

Basecamp

Basecamp provides a “To Do” list which is used to keep the track of all the tasks that are needed to get completed. It provides a platform for reviewing the schedules and staying up to date. It also provides facility for group chats like Campfire and posting messages through Message board.

Used by top clients like – NASA, WWF, Petco etc.

Pros

• It's Free!
• Simple & Easy to use!
• Ability to upload docs and file storage
• Real-time collaboration
• Report generation
• Can be used on mobile devices

Cons

• Not a best fit for implementing Agile methodologies
• No Time Tracker, will need to use third party integrations

To Conclude, I would like to wish you "All the best" in your search for choosing the Best Project Management tool for your organization and projects. Hope this helps!

How to give an Amazing Business Presentation?

We spend plenty of our time creating a product or launching a service, we put all our efforts and then we go to the customer to sell it, but in the end it gets rejected. Why? Where are we failing?

Of-course, the way we are presenting it. It is very important we communicate our ideas well.
In order to communicate them well, We should have the ability to present them in an impressive manner.

Below are the 10 points that can help an individual present well. Let's have a look on How to give an Amazing Business Presentation?

1. Set a Goal for your presentation:We should have a proper focus and goal for our presentation. We should not randomly talk about it. We should structure it in a proper manner, giving the proper table of contents. When audience start listening to a presentation, the first question that arise in their mind is Why we should buy this product? or buy this service? or Why it's even worth listening? Second is, What are you talking about? It's important that speaker makes the audience understand this during the first sections of the presentation. 
2. Understand your Audience: It is very important we place ourselves on the seats of our audience. Look at it from audience perspective, What they want to listen? Why they should listen? What they will understand? Knowing the audience is the key to a good presentation.
3. 10-20-30 Rule: It's a PowerPoint rule given by Guy Kawasaki. It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points. (Reference: http://guykawasaki.com/the_102030_rule/)
4. Make it Interactive: No-one wants to sit for hours and listen to a person. People nowadays want to interact. They want to ask questions, get clarifications. Make your presentation interactive so it keeps the audience indulged.
5. Talk with the Mind and not just reading out PowerPoint Slides: Don't read your PowerPoint slides. They are for audience and not for the speaker. They should be kept simple enough. 
6. Try telling stories: Everyone likes stories instead of statistics. Stories are the very interesting way of keeping your audience indulged. It helps build emotional connection between the audience and your topic.
7. Arrive Early: Reaching the stage at the eleventh hour and then setting up the projector, opening up your laptop, is not a good practice when audience are waiting to hear from you. Arrive early, make yourself comfortable and start confidently. A good start often leads to good presentation.
8. Maintain Eye Contact: Don't just read out the stuff. Talk, Interact with your audience. Maintaining eye contact is very important to show that the speaker is confident enough in presenting as it makes the audience believe the presenter.
9. Talk Slow: Less confident and nervous speakers often talk fast. Talk slowly, take pauses, it will help your audience understand you well.
10. Practice! Practice! Practice! An old saying, Practice makes the men perfect. Keep practicing so at the final presentation, we are well prepared.

Hope it helps. All the Best for your Presentation!

Meeting your Project Deadlines!

What are the 3 constraints every customer is concerned about the most?

Well, these are Time, Cost and Quality. For every project, it's very important to meet the deadlines. Each hour, minute and second is important for a project.

It is always advised to plan ahead!

There are several measures we should take care in order to meet project deadlines.

1. Clarify the deadline with the customer: Make sure you understand the deadline given by customer. Generally, customers are having a due date of their own in order to launch a product or a service. Make sure you negotiate the deadline with the customer well.
2. Make a plan: Analyze the requirements in detail. Breakdown the work into smaller tasks. Estimate the requirements well to come up with due dates. Make sure internal due dates are prior the due dates being given to the client.
3. Never Over Commit: Never make over commitments. Always plan to commit less and deliver more. Spend time during estimations to make sure you provide them with greater accuracy rather than just ballparks.
4. Always take buffer time: Give yourself an extra time. We never know when it's internet issues or networks goes down or any other software or hardware related issues. It is always advisable to take around 10-15% of buffer time while estimating.
5. Identify Risks: Make sure you identify risks at each stage of the project. If a risk is known earlier, it can be handled well.
6. Execute the plan: In order to make sure you execute your plan well, make sure you note down all the due dates that are visible to all the team members. Everyday team should know if they are on schedule or not. Also, they should know what is expected from them and when it is expected.
7. Track the progress on daily basis: It's not good to know about the challenges at eleventh hour. A project manager should track the project progress on daily basis in order to know the challenges, task due dates. Each team member should be aware if they are on schedule or not.
8. Communicate Challenges on time: Each team member should be proactive enough to communicate the challenges on time during project life cycle. They should not wait for the due date to communicate it.
9. Keep customer in loop: It is important to make the customer aware of the challenges/risks coming along the way. They should know prior if we are going to deliver it on time or not. It should not be a surprise for them.
10. Keep learning and improving: As you keep working on the project meeting the due dates, keep learning about making more accurate estimations, more effective communication, better planning and execution.