Bring Focus to Your Check-Ins with a Six-Step Meeting Guide

In my last post, I described a process for keeping a large Agile team focused on getting work ready for developers. The process includes a few crucial check-in meetings: product backlog refinement, design refinement, and technical refinement. Because the check-ins are so few, it’s very important to keep that time focused on the work at […]

The User Story Pipeline: A Visual To Guide the Agile Process

Every Agile project needs user stories. But where do stories come from? I’m not asking who types the description into your backlog, I’m really asking how a team works together to create the definition of features that developers should complete.

Three Ways Planning a Conference Helped Me Grow Professionally

This year, I had the opportunity to serve on the committee for GLSEC (Great Lakes Software Excellence Conference). Originally, I thought it was just a way to help support the local development community. However, I’ve found that it has been a fantastic professional development opportunity for me.

“Battle of the Brackets” Supports Kids Sports – and it’s Fun!

We support several charities and events at Atomic Object, but few are more fun than the annual Battle of the Brackets. If your business is looking a fun way to give back to the community, it’s not too late to join! Battle of the Brackets is a March Madness event benefitting the GR8 Sports, Great […]

Why Your Big-Team Software Project Needs a Utility Player

Projects with big teams introduce a slew of interesting problems–problems like keeping developers fed with multiple tracks of work, understanding areas with large technical risks, and sharing knowledge. On a recent project, we developed a role to help solve these problems. I call it the utility player. In this post, I’ll define the role, the […]

Is Your New Feature Worth It?

When you’ve created a successful application, it is tempting to relentlessly add new functionality. You think that if you stop building, you’ll fall behind. New features bring in new business. They show your existing users that you are still active and adding value. However, it’s important to step back and consider how new features will […]

Store Batch Import Metadata to Save Yourself Time Later

Batch data imports are tricky to build. You need to make sure the data is valid, and, most importantly, you need to correctly map that data to your domain. In my experience, that last part is difficult.

Three Ways to Maintain Excellent Customer Experience During a Support Phase

During active projects, we rarely go more than a day or two without talking to our client via Basecamp, a phone call, or in person. Clients appreciate that amount of engagement, and at the end of the project, the relationship is very strong. Then the project enters a support phase, and communication goes dark. The […]

Prioritize Your (or Your Client’s) Projects Using Relative Weighting

I was recently working with a client that was considering many different software projects and struggling to decide which should come first. Each project was valuable in its own way, but when we began comparing them, we weren’t getting far. Then, I remembered an exercise that I did during my Scrum Product Owner training called […]

When Is a Story Done? Three Criteria to Decide

There’s a saying that what’s done is done. Done is straightforward, clear-cut. It’s absolute. So when we talk about user stories being done, why is it so difficult to agree what that means?

Atomic Spin

Atomic Object’s blog on everything we find fascinating.

By: Ryan Abel

Author: Ryan Abel