Handling a Coworker’s Departure the Atomic Way

At Atomic Object, our culture is defined by a handful of company values. These values drive our collective success by creating close-knit, on-site teams. When a coworker recently announced they were moving back to their home state, I was surprised at how applicable these values were to the way we handled the change. Act Transparently […]

Adding Blockers to Your Backlog? Always Include a Specific Next Step

A pet peeve of mine is when progress on a story is blocked with a reason like: “Need code sample to add live chat feature.” Or: “Don’t have VPN access.” What needs to happen next? Does someone know they need to help unblock this? I’m sure I’m not the only one who would be wondering […]

My Five New Backlog Management Habits for 2020

It’s 2020! In theory, you should be staying on top of your backlog all year long, but we all know how that goes… So, like working out, eating better, and getting into better habits, the new year marker can give us a chance to refresh and improve our product backlog management. Here are five ways […]

Dissent Is Inevitable. How Can we Make it Constructive?

Disagreement from within the ranks can be a great resource for a leader. A functional organization allows people to voice disagreement, debate the issues, and then commit. Disagreement lets you know that the people you lead trust you enough to be honest with you about how they’re feeling. When engaged in properly, disagreement can offer […]

Why Agile Adoption Fails (+ 8 Ways to Find Success)

Agile adoption failure stories are abundant, especially in large organizations. There are many vague reasons and lame excuses for this: "Our culture doesn’t support change initiatives." "Our leadership won’t adopt an agile mindset.” "Our change order process can’t integrate with an agile process." And so on. Here are some concrete things you can do or […]

Four DOs and DON’Ts for Software Systems Integrations

Systems integrations can be wonderful when they work, but they often end in failure. Here are four tips to improve your success rate.

How I’m Improving Predictability with Pivotal Tracker’s ‘Team Strength’

I was reluctant to embrace Pivotal Tracker when I joined Atomic because I valued Jira so highly. But over the last year, I’ve come to rely on a handy feature that I didn’t have with Jira — Team Strength. Why? It allows me to adjust overall velocity by configuring variations in my team’s schedule from […]

More than a “Manager” – How to become a Career Coach & Help Your Makers Thrive

There is a big difference between being a good manager and a good coach. Managers focus on making sure team members are meeting expectations and help them navigate the policies of the organization. Good coaches, on the other hand, bring out the best in team members so they can reach their full potential.

Two Ways to Improve Your Daily Stand-Up with a Large Team

At this point, anyone who is doing Agile software development is familiar with the daily stand-up. Traditionally, during that meeting, each team member answers the following questions for the larger group: What did you do yesterday? What did you do today? Is there anything blocking you from moving forward? This approach works well for teams […]

What Makes a Good Scrum Master?

Atomic does not have a dedicated scrum master position. The closest comparison is our delivery lead role, which is a blend of project management, account management, and product management. However, we often work with clients that do have dedicated scrum masters. Many times, the people in these roles were hired as traditional project managers, but […]

Atomic Spin

Atomic Object’s blog on everything we find fascinating.

Project & Team Management