Blog

Not all user stories are equal. Some may be larger and more complicated than others. The challenge in agile delivery is to keep stories at the right size. That way, they are easily understood and delivered. Those that are too large pose a risk. Wherever possible, you should break them down into smaller, more manageable pieces. In this blog, I will explore factors that might lead to user stories being too 'large'?

Are post-it's enough?

Recently a few of our team members attended Celonis SuperFluid Tour in London, where we found that post-it notes and a whiteboard are still one of their biggest competitors. Celonis, for those unaware, offer a solution, powered by process mining technology that empowers companies to visualise their processes, thus providing insights to which of these can be improved. It can come as a surprise, that in the age of digital transformation, many organisations are satisfied with getting the room's opinion during a whiteboard and/or post-it note session as the best process discovery technique.

At Infomentum, we love to share. We do it daily with our clients through close collaboration with their development teams, training sessions, Agile sprints and support calls, etc. Our team members also share by regularly organising charitable events and donation initiatives. On this occasion, we had a chance to give something a little different – share our knowledge and experience of Agile methodology.

Do you know what your customers need? Not what they want, or would like, but what they need. It is not always obvious. Faced with a complex mix of competing priorities and challenges, some companies may think they need one thing. In reality, however, they need something entirely different.

Today I was greeted by a happy grin on Dan’s face, Dan Shepherd is our Head of Delivery. He and his team had a reason to smile - in one day they received fantastic feedback from several of our customers.

Few events in life have the impact of starting a new job. As any career person can attest, acclimating to a new workplace or role requires patience. It’s a social and intellectual challenge. Balancing task competence with a sense of social comfort are prerequisites for doing your job well and enjoying the hours you spend at work. And while these lines may appear crisp and smooth, coloring them in neatly has its difficulties. This consideration led me to a simple concept, a modus operandi for adjusting to a new organization.

The artist Pablo Picasso once said you should learn the rules like a pro so you can break them like an artist. It’s clear he wasn’t in charge of a large corporation, though. Breaking the rules in business is costly, and it’s getting even more so. According to research by Thomson Reuters, 61% of compliance and risk practitioners expected to spend more on complying with rules and regulations in 2019 than they had in 2018.

Many business documents, from invoices to medical records, are boring, necessary and tedious to deal with. And until recently only humans had the ability to process them, locking smart people into low-value work. But now, technology has got to the point where it can not only read standard documents but also pick relevant information out from images and designs in complex layouts.

The Terminator has a lot to answer for. As the prospect of Artificial Intelligence (AI) becomes a reality in the workplace, barely a day goes by without a headline warning of some machine-led threat to jobs and livelihoods. It is indeed likely systems integration based on AI and Robotic Process Automation (RPA), an emerging form of business transformation based on the software robots, will change how we work and live. But not in the doomsday-scenario way often portrayed.

A week after I attended Getahead festival, my mind is still racing with all the amazingly interesting information and insights that came my way during the course of the 24-hour event. I went along to see what it was all about and how our Wellness Programme can benefit.