Webinar highlights: Project Management using Backlog
In August, we held a webinar called Offshore software development: Project Management using Backlog in collaboration with our Backlog user, Kiwi Advanced Technologies.
The webinar consisted of two parts: a quick introduction about the IT and software outsourcing industry in Vietnam, followed by the main talk on using Backlog for project management.
It was a pleasure to host our guest speaker, Kiwi Advanced Technologies’ Chief Operating Officer Pham Viet Duc.
In his talk, Duc shared about how his company works with clients, some of the collaboration tools they used, their Agile/Scrum practices powered by Backlog, and their experience and best practices in using Backlog for project management.
Closing his presentation, Duc also shared some of the exciting artificial intelligence projects that his company has developed for the current Covid-19 situation.
Check out the full event video:
Highlights:
On sprint planning and WBS planning:
“The most suitable tool for task breakdown is not any task management tool, but I think Google spreadsheet is the best fit. Task management tool is best for task status monitoring during sprints and during implementation. But to have an overall view of sprint objectives, and to be able to see the integrity of all sprint objectives at once, I think Google spreadsheet is better.”
On automating the creation of project tasks:
“Backlog is very powerful in making the project backlog — by automating the process of creating new tasks by using the Backlog API. Backlog API is very powerful and very well-documented. It is well explained in the document that you can create, you can change status, delete or edit the content of the task very easily by using the Backlog API.”
On task management:
“In the implementation phase, Backlog also has built-in features for monitoring and controlling the status of tasks. It provides us an easy to use UI, you can follow the Gantt chart of the project, including the information and assignee of each task, which tasks are done, and we also can see the due/start dates of each task, and status indicated by color of each task.”
On sprint reviews:
“Backlog has user-defined task filters that allow you to create a filter for yourself. Imagine you have a team of 10 or 20 members working on different implementations of a mobile or web application, how can you monitor the status of each team in an efficient way? You can create a filter to list all the assignees or teams working on Android tasks, and you can save it for later use. By using user-defined filters, you can at the same time monitor the status of different teams by using just one tool, which is very helpful.”
“You can use the function of Batch Update to help you update the content, status, assignee, and many other attributes of the tasks, at once. After you filter all the tasks in some category, e.g. category for Android development, you can update all the status of the tasks as one, very quickly.”
On creating project reports:
“It is necessary for project managers to create a report… In my experience, it takes about 15 to 20 minutes to make a daily report. And for a sprint review report, like a two-weeks’ sprint of 10 working days, it used to take me about 40 minutes per week, per report. Using Backlog, I think the time is reduced to just one or two minutes. I just need to build some tools, and when the tools are built, I use it (with the Backlog API) and it takes me just several minutes to finish the report.”
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For future events, please stay tuned to our recently refreshed events page!
Previously, we featured Kiwi Advanced Technologies’ parent company in our Backlog user blog, check it out: Kiwi Universe reduces project administration efforts by 25% with Backlog.