Productivity & Estimation
Articles and resources about productivity, efficiency, and managing deadlines
Understanding the Agile Triangle’s Role in Product Development
Learn how the agile triangle helps teams better manage the quality, value, and constraints of their projects.
Rabo James Bature
June 7, 2022 12 minute read
Agile Engineering Best Practices
Agile engineering preaches being efficient and responsive to change in order to develop the best product. Learn its best practices and how they can enable you to create a rapid, continuous development cycle.
Alexander Yu
May 31, 2022 9 minute read
Engineering Estimates
Learn about story point estimation, the problems it solves compared to time-based estimation, and how best to implement it with your team.
Michael Nyamande
May 24, 2022 10 minute read
Distributed Agile: Tips and Best Practices for Global Teams
A distributed team enables you to draw from a much larger talent pool but can come with some challenges, especially in an Agile environment. Use these tips to improve collaboration and efficiency while building psychological safety and rapport on your team.
Rabo James Bature
February 8, 2022 5 minute read
Scrum Estimation: Tips for Improving Engineering Estimates
Accurate estimation is critical for managing project timelines and stakeholder expectations. Yet many teams struggle to do it effectively. Use these tips to improve your team's estimation process and accuracy so you can get your projects back on track.
Nikhila Jain
February 1, 2022 11 minute read
Scrum Templates for Running Effective Meetings
Having set meetings is one of the pillars of using Scrum, but for Scrum to work well, the meetings have to be productive. Utilize these templates to ensure that your team keeps their meetings efficient and effective.
Kasper Siig
January 25, 2022 9 minute read
Scrum Metrics Every Team Leader Needs to Track
Using Scrum with your team and want to know how you're performing? Learn which metrics are most important to track and why so that you can get the best results from your team.
Cameron Pavey
January 18, 2022 9 minute read
Using Jira for Scrum Teams
Organizing, maintaining, and managing an agile team can be huge, complicated work. Learn how you can use Jira with your team to more easily and continuously deliver quality software to customers and clients.
Sheekha Singh
January 11, 2022 7 minute read
The Scrum Board’s Role in Agile Development
Scrum boards offer a quick visual and interactive display of a project’s progress, allowing the entire team to be on the same page about the day-to-day work that needs to get done.
Kumar Harsh
December 21, 2021 8 minute read
5 Best Practices for Effective Team Meetings
Meetings don’t have to be something your team dreads or tries to avoid. The key is to make them effective and worthwhile. Check out these 5 best practices to get the most out of your meetings.
Juliette Chevalier
October 8, 2021 6 minute read
Project Management on a Remote Team
Project management is hard. It can be even harder on a remote team. Learn to successfully manage a project while embracing the freedom and independence that comes with remote work.
Tanaka Mutakwa
September 15, 2021 6 minute read
Increasing Focus With No Meeting Days (or Weeks!)
In a world where it's accepted that meetings are bad yet unavoidable, what’s the solution? How can we balance making time to get things done with the need to communicate with the rest of our team? That’s where no-meeting days come in.
Karl Hughes
September 8, 2021 8 minute read
Project Management with GitLab
GitLab is great for teams looking to manage the entire DevOps lifecycle inside of a single platform, with many teams using its project management features instead of a separate tool. Learn how you can manage complex projects effectively with GitLab's built-in features and improve visibility and team communication even more with a little help from some popular integrations.
Tanaka Mutakwa
September 1, 2021 8 minute read
Project Management with GitHub
Struggling to manage projects in GitHub? Learn how to use its features alongside third party tools to get organized and effectively run a project in GitHub.
Keanan Koppenhaver
August 24, 2021 6 minute read
Comparing Scrum, Kanban, and Lean Methodologies
There are multiple Agile approaches available to use, but when and how to use them depends on your product, team, and goals.
Linda Ikechukwu
July 27, 2021 11 minute read
Everything You Need to Know About Standups
Whether you're new to standup meetings or just looking to make them more effective, we've got you covered.
Mihir Patel
June 23, 2021 9 minute read
A Comparison of Waterfall and Agile Methods
Learn the advantages and disadvantages of Waterfall and Agile methods so you can choose the one that's right for your team.
Marie Starck
June 22, 2021 8 minute read
The Rituals of Agile Development
Learn about the history, terminology, process, and rituals behind the agile development methodology.
Tanaka Mutakwa
May 3, 2022 10 minute read
Time to Think
To accomplish something meaningful, you must fight back against constant distractions and get into a state of deep work.
Michael Karampalas
May 6, 2022 6 minute read
On Meetings and Wasting Time
Human progress comes from collaboration. People don’t hate meetings necessarily, they just hate having their time wasted.
Henry Poydar
February 26, 2022 3 minute read
The Essential Guide to Tuning Slack for Team Productivity
Let’s face it - Slack can be too noisy. Through my own personal quest to optimize my use of Slack I discovered there are many settings and adjustments you can play with to fine tune Slack so that it’s still very useful, but not as...
Henry Poydar
January 4, 2022 13 minute read
The Keys to a Successful Project - Simple Guidelines for Project Planners and Managers
Thanks for checking out our guide on the keys to managing a successful project. We’ll lay out the fundamental keys to running a successful software project and provide you with the techniques to use in your own work. Topics covered in this guide: Critical Questions Scheduling...
Michael Karampalas
January 3, 2022 25 minute read
Better Software Delivery Estimates with Goal Tracking
Ever been way off on a software delivery estimate? Wished you could more accurately predict when a project or feature would be ready to ship? Of course you have. Most thrashing and trouble that I’ve witnessed in software — that isn’t design or experience related — is the result...
Michael Karampalas
December 28, 2021 3 minute read
Daily Goals and Software Teams: Why and How
One thing. Per day. People who make stuff, like programmers, writers, and designers, are limited to working on one or two intellectual tasks per day. That’s it. You might hear otherwise from developers on your team, compounding the difficulties of figuring out when you might...
Henry Poydar
February 22, 2022 6 minute read
Top Reasons Why Your Projects Fail (and How to Fix Them)
When you embark on a new project, everything seems possible, doesn’t it? The project will be completed on time, maybe even under budget, and you will finally be recognized as the hero that you are. Except that’s not what happens. In reality, you’re two weeks...
September 28, 2021 5 minute read
6 Questions to Ask at the Start of Every Project
You meet with a client. They share their vision, you share yours. You go away and create an efficient and beautifully rendered deliverable. You’re practically beaming when you show them how you’ve crafted their disjointed ideas and fragmented thoughts into a masterpiece. And then they...
July 27, 2021 7 minute read
Simple Tips To Rejuvenate How You Schedule Projects
When people think of project management, their minds typically jump to long lists of tasks, droll meetings, or that one person that just didn’t do what they were supposed to. With so many pre-existing negative connotations, how do we transform people’s attitude about project management...
July 20, 2021 8 minute read
Hello there! 👋
I'm Henry Poydar, founder of Status Hero. I've been writing software and leading both co-located and remote software teams for 20+ years.
In that time I've learned a lot about team communication, software estimation, and managing people — mostly the hard way.
If you want to learn from my missteps (instead of your own) our newsletter is just right for you.
Subscribe to get curated articles, tips, and links to support your efforts leading a modern, productive digital team every week or two.
This is a private mailing list. Your name and email address will never be shared with any other entity. And every email to you will have an instant unsubscribe link.
Try it out!
Join thousands of other successful teams today.
Use Status Hero for 21 days with no obligation, payment, or credit card required. Take it for a spin by yourself, or add a few other people to see if it works for your team.