Access to onshore software engineering talent, when and how you need it

Efficient communication is a primary function and necessary skill for a project manager. Without it, they cannot manage expectations between the development team and project stakeholders. Development teams and project stakeholders need a flawless communicator because these two groups tend to speak different languages. They share the same concerns and goals – a successful project – but use different words and draw on different experiences to express their wants, needs and concerns. To bridge these different backgrounds and experiences, a project manager must be skilled in the use of one of the most powerful literary and poetic tools available: the…

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A piano and standard laptop keyboard have just about the same number of keys, 88. As a classically trained pianist and product owner, Abby Edwards has moved from one keyboard to the other. But in this transition, she's never lost sight that both are creative instruments that can inspire and bring joy to people's lives. You can read her full story here (an excerpt is below) and learn why you should embrace your artistic side, no matter how technical your role is. Don't lose your artistic spark in a technical world Staying creative will bring satisfaction to your work and…

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“Prioritization of work” is an important Agile concept. It helps ensure teams complete work that is most important to the business first. However, many people still conflate the prioritization of important work with work that delivers business value. Business value is the combination of all economic, human and intangible forms of importance to the business. In an agile or scrum methodology, all these dimensions contribute value to each feature. Prioritization is the process of putting the card with the highest business value ahead of the next most important card. In this way, the backlog reflects story cards in the order…

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Enterprises can save time and money while improving agility through organizational assessments. From learning to adoption to practice, agile journeys are often not smooth. As organizational structure becomes more intricate and layered, it becomes exponentially more complex to resolve issues at the organizational level. Here’s a look at the limitations of agile frameworks to overcome organization impediments, and how organizational assessments can be the solution to avoiding potholes along your agile journey. Limitations of agile frameworks Agile coaches can reinforce agile values and key practices while working at both the team and organizational levels. However, coaches are handcuffed as most…

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How to find great QA engineers who can keep problems from slipping into production before they impact your bottom line, brand reputation or development capabilities. What makes a great QA engineer? What qualities do they possess that elevate them above just average testers? We’ve compiled six traits of a great QA engineer. 1. Inquisitive Asks, “What if…?” to better understand the product or the requirements. Questions bad practices. Finds defects by wondering what will happen if you do things differently. 2. Thorough Obsessed with checking work, recreating defects to verify them and testing everything that needs to be tested. Not…

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IT must make it easier for business to meet the ever-increasing pace of changing customer/user demands. Who controls the flow of information, technology and innovation in the enterprise: business or IT? It’s a fight as old as the circuit board itself. The relationship between business and IT becomes more complicated as organizations pursue digital transformation. The increasing pace of technological change makes it harder for the business to meet changing customer/user demands. It also makes it more difficult for the business to identify the most current technologies or methods to develop the platforms, services and/or applications that make a difference…

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