Author: Ebru

Streamlined Project/Team Management via A-ha

I came across this tool, A-ha, recently and after looking into it a bit more deeply, I think it could be really useful for some organizations/teams.

A-ha can be used at the high level for Strategic Planning and Roadmap or can be implemented for more detail level processes; such as Requirements Gathering, Scoring & Prioritization and Capacity Management.

I captured some of the high level functionalities; along with a few sample screenshots and links to those specific functionalities, so you can see more information on their website.

A few points to highlight:

  • Each team can have their own Workspace and have their own appropriate template, unique configuration, customization, setup and integration
  • This is a highly customizable tool. It’s very easy to add custom fields, change the scoring mechanism, integrations etc. either at the company level or workspace level
  • Integration with DevOps (VSTS) works really well. I tested it myself and it could be customized at the Workspace/Team level. Each integration can have its own field mapping, each individual fields can be set up to indicate whether this particular field is flowing from A-ha to DevOps, from DevOps to A-ha or both ways, whether that’s 1 time flow or continuous update
  • The presentations and reports can be published publicly or a certain group of people. Because it’s integrated with VSTS/DevOps, the data in the presentations/reports are live and always accurate (well, as accurate as the data in VSTS). No more manual updates for decks. Executives, Stakeholders, Internal and External customers can be given access to the Roadmaps, Presentations or Reports and can easily follow the status of their projects, requirements or requests, live! 
  • Very detailed Capacity Planning. Management can easily see who is working on what, what bandwidth everyone has and manage the teams much more effectively
  • It can be a great, centralized and consistent tool to receive requests, requirements, feedback and ideas from our internal teams/users, from our clients and suppliers via customizable Ideas boards
  • It can work with minimal or no distraction to existing processes.  PMs, Tech Leads, Development, QA, BA can still do what they are doing today and manage their projects and work via the tools that they currently use (as they do today). Via the powerful integration capabilities, the data can flow from current development tools, such as VSTS into A-ha or vice versa, from A-ha to VSTS. New backlog items can be entered into A-ha (via Ideas Boards, manually or maybe even from other third party tools, such as Salesforce), they can be managed/prioritized (via scoring) in A-ha and pushed to VSTS for the teams to work on. Updates on Effort, Remaining Hours, Statuses etc. can be sent from VSTS back to A-ha.

Streamlined Presentation / Generating Documents, PPTs Automatically with Dox42

I recently came across this tool, dox42, that I think is pretty cool and can help teams and organizations reduce/eliminate some of the administrative tasks and produce information from the source systems not only correctly, efficiently and in a consistent way but also automatically.

Some of the benefits for using this (or similar tools) can be:

  • Dox42 allows business users to create complex, detailed document templates via the tools that they already use such as MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint
  • The tools allows integration from different source systems; such as MS Teams, SharePoint, CRM systems, MS Excel, Access or SQL databases
  • The tool allows the templates to be centralized. They can be updated (adding/removing fields, changing company logo etc) very quickly and easily (versus telling everyone to update their templates individually)
  • The templates allow users to generate documents (Word, Excel or PowerPoint) with a click (regardless of how many slides or pages)
  • It prevents incorrect data to be shared. Since the data would be coming directly from the source systems, no manual updates to the documents needed
  • It eliminates copy & paste errors, misalignment or inconsistent formatting throughout the documents
  • It can include complex calculations or graphs that could be automatically updated, thus, eliminates incorrect data

Dox42 can integrate with a lot of technologies, not just MS products (as shown below).

I explored and tried generating PowerPoint slides for my projects. You can see the dox42 template I created below. This template brings data from an existing project management SharePoint site and a SQL database. The PowerPoint slides are generated automatically per project, so it doesn’t matter if it’s 1 project or 100. Since this is a template, once the data points or labels or format is changed in the template, it would be automatically changed in all slides generated. Once the slides were generated, they can still be updated manually with further data/comments too, if needed.

Here is the screenshot of one of the PowerPoint slides that was generated automatically for a sample project. As we discussed above, all fields are coming directly from SharePoint Project Tracking or SQL database. Budget Chart calculations are done in a temp Excel and then brought into the PowerPoint. The data/images are displayed dynamically (i.e. indicator colors, project manager’s picture, etc).

Below short video shows how easy and quick to create documents directly in SharePoint, from an end user point of view.

Useful Tools, Resources & Links

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[cryptothanks]

Let’s Talk About Why Blockchain and Bitcoin

There are several reasons why I love Blockchain Technology and one of its first global implementation; Bitcoin.

Let’s start with characteristics of Blockchain Technology:

  • It’s Distributed. That means, it’s not control by a group of people, organization or even a government. It also means that it’s Censorship Resistant. There’s no one central place that can “shutdown” or “change” the protocol or discriminate the users of the network.
  • It’s Immutable. You cannot go and change any part of the consensus chain. Once the consensus is reached, the data is there forever! Which makes the whole system very Transparent. People and software can easily validate the legitimacy of the transactions that they are dealing with.
  • It’s Encrypted. So the data can be safely stored in the network. Mathematically related Public-Private key pairs are created using the Elliptic Curve Digital Signature Algorithm (ECDSA) and users of the network can easily validate the correctness and the ownership of data, without giving away their precious private keys.
  • It’s Peer-to-Peer. This is one of my favorite characteristics of Blockchain. This revolutionary attribute of Blockchain allows us interact with each other without the need of a third party. We can finally empower the person on the other side of the world, directly!
  • It’s Trust-less/Permissionless. We don’t have to rely on a third-party company, organization or group of people to manage our business or interactions. We can rely on the software and strong math behind the technology.
  •  It’s Open. Even though we could create “Private” Blockchains, the main benefits of this technology will come from being Open and Global. Anyone with the Internet connection (or even some cases, without needing to be connected to the Internet), we are able to interact with the system and each other; no matter where we might be.

Via these powerful features of Blockchain, we are able to create “Disruptive” systems and solutions; replacing the current (mostly corrupted systems and processes) with trust-less, immutable, censorship resistant, peer-to-peer, open and global revolutionary technology!

Let’s also review the characteristics of Bitcoin and why it is called the Internet of Money:

Before we do that, let’s take a look at what makes something “Money”

On top of every advantage of being implemented on Blockchain, Bitcoin has all the characteristic of Money, and in certain areas, it exceeds the limitation of Cash or Precious Metals, such as Gold. Bitcoin is:

  • Fungible
  • Durable
  • Divisible
  • Portable
  • Acceptable
  • Uniform
  • Limited in Supply

Here’s a nice comparison of Bitcoin vs. Credit Card Systems from an End User Experience point of view (click on the picture to see the larger version):

[cryptothanks]