DEV Community: pavel-ku

JIRA Product Roadmap and Its Robust Alternative

pavel-ku — Thu, 11 Mar 2021 08:31:28 +0000

Modern project management tools strive to surprise their users with a variety of features and innovations. Many of them try to become similar to JIRA because this famous platform offers useful tools for project management and collaboration.

A product roadmap is one of the most requested and useful tools in the world of project management, which helps managers and teams visualize their plans, tasks, milestones, and project stages without losing sight of anything. What do you know about an online product roadmap? Is it an indispensable tool in your work?

Today, many powerful PM software solutions offer reliable roadmaps, including Jira. However, are they that good at Jira, or are there more interesting alternatives? In this post, we try to figure this out.

What is a Product Roadmap?

In general meaning, a roadmap is a guide that describes all the steps you need to take to move from your current location to your desired destination. In product management, a product roadmap is a plan of action that lines up a product’s short-term and long-term goals and outlines how they will be achieved.

Product Roadmaps document the planned changes for product strategy, direction, and features over a given time frame.

Different organizations and teams can have different timelines, that is why product roadmaps can span a variety of timeframes.
Having a roadmap is critical for getting management buy-in and project funding. It is often used when you present to an audience about your plans for the future for your product or even company goals.

Product roadmaps are usually designed with the help of Gantt Charts.

Why you need to create and maintain a product roadmap

An efficient product roadmap is designed to serve a product strategy. This strategy mandates that you choose one viable alternative out of many and that you say no to many other alternatives.

Roadmaps force you to take your journey one step at a time, meaning that you will take a specific step in a specific sequence. This ensures that your team has a structured plan to follow.
As your team works through product development, you’ll get new info that will validate or disprove your current hypotheses. Therefore you will iterate through new versions of the product roadmap.

Roadmaps meant for your immediate product development teams and are reliable tools for aligning internal stakeholders with the direction that your product is headed.

By sharing them with customers, you can gather feedback from them on why certain items should be added or removed. In many cases, you can use roadmaps to sell or persuade clients to buy the current offering so that they can be part of upcoming improvements or features down the line.

How to use a roadmap?

In order to enable a roadmap for your next project, go to the project sidebar and choose Roadmap in the features list. From this page, you can enable/disable the roadmap feature.

Product owners, while building roadmaps, should weigh up customer insights as well as the team’s goals and targets. After that, the team can begin prioritizing work. It is also important to keep in mind the intended audience for the roadmap. It will guide the specific information and the level of detail that it’s appropriate to add to the roadmap.

When using the roadmap tool consider the elements and features to track. You can:
• Filter the roadmap by status category (To do, In progress, or Done).
• Filter your roadmap and the issues displayed by an assignee.
• View and edit date ranges.
• Add new issues on epics.
• Access settings to adjust your personal view at any time
• Zoom in/out on the roadmap by adjusting the timeline by weeks, months, or quarters.

Introducing a Jira Roadmap

So, what is a product roadmap in Jira and does it require a plugin or app? Agile teams work with the scope and status of work. It is a continuous work in progress that can be visualized with the help of a roadmap. Applying the Jira Software’s roadmap, you let your team attach the stories and tasks in their JIRA project to the actual work on their roadmap.

The modern JIRA’s model for building software – Jira Software Cloud includes new roadmaps.

These roadmaps make it easy to sketch out a big-picture strategy and share it with a few simple clicks. With the help of Jira roadmaps, you’ll have a clear view of what big initiatives are underway and how they map to the actual work items in each project.

What may the JIRA product roadmap include?

• Timeline (where projects are divided into stages)
• Project goals (in the form of deliverables)
• High-level tasks
• Swimlanes
• Milestones
• Dependencies
• Risks

Initially, JIRA had no default roadmap tool functionality. This Agile project management tool had not been designed for long-term planning and was focused on sprint and cadence.

However, JIRA proposed to apply a special app and Jira roadmap plugin created by Atlassian – Jira Portfolio or BigPicture plugin that looks even better and provides excellent roadmaps and other project management functionality, for example, risk modules, Gantt charts, or dependency arrows.

These plugins are really good for collaboration and sharing across your company. Now Jira proposes their users to use a built-in roadmap.

This roadmap proposed by JIRA serves the purpose of getting all stakeholders on the same page when the process of creating a product roadmap is collaborative. This allows team members to better understand the bigger picture and how their work relates to it.

Introducing an Improved Alternative – Hygger Roadmap

Hygger offers a powerful alternative to JIRA’s roadmaps in terms of the design of timelines and their innovative functionality.
Handy and beautiful Hygger roadmaps will let you plan your goals, strategy, releases, and features with the help of smart timelines and additional features.

What Features Do Product Roadmaps in Hygger Provide?

Handy templates to save your time

You may choose any template you like, for example:
• Product roadmap
• Product development roadmap
• Marketing plan roadmap
• Product launch roadmap
• Portfolio roadmap, etc.

Prioritizing for better decisions

With the help of Hygger roadmaps, you can rate features or tasks using ICE, RICE or Weighted Scoring. Then you can pick out the stronger ones from the top of the prioritized backlog.

Empowering development with Scrum or Kanban

Using Hygger, you can apply robust Scrum or Kanban boards to develop planned features 3x faster.

Linking development tasks to the roadmap

You can also import tasks from Development boards on your roadmap to see the actual progress.

Sharing the roadmap

Hygger functionality allows adding customers or stakeholders to your roadmap and share global plans or the closest releases.

The roadmaps in Hygger are a great place to start aligning your team and stakeholders around common objectives.

Because simplicity is an important part of Hygger’s roadmap, anyone in your company is be able to look at the roadmap and receive the status of any project.

Jira’s advantages and disadvantages (except roadmaps)

Pros:

• Provides an advanced ticketing system.
• Offers great functionality for automating workflow, allowing you to assign tasks, track progress, and follow-up.
• Integrates with another Atlassian tool – Confluence.
• Allows working on many projects simultaneously.
• Offers strong task management.
• Provides many ready integrations and features
• Allows working on many projects simultaneously
• Offers iOS and Android apps

Cons:

• Overall complexity that only tech teams may admit and require.
• Integrations come at an additional cost.
• Confusing look and feel.
• Hard to configure and start using for beginners.
• Need to add some features at an additional cost (say, Gantt diagrams).
• UX looks unfriendly, and the information architecture is all over the place.
• Offers complex Kanban board functionality predominantly for techies.

Hygger’s advantages and disadvantages (except roadmaps)

Pros:

• Offers colorful and user-friendly roadmaps based on Gantt charts.
• Allows sharing roadmaps with team members and stakeholders
• Offers robust prioritization frameworks
• One of the best Kanban board functionality
• Allows Scrum Support (story points and hours estimation, burndown charts, velocity, and reports)
• Mobile apps for iOS and Android
• Provides a free version
• Suits tech and non-tech teams

Cons:

• You can not customize the column with the percentage of task completion.
• No way to link multiple tasks from other boards on the timeline.
• Lack of milestones.
• No subtasks (you can add subtasks as checklists)
• No types of tasks (Epics/Stories/Tasks)
• Cycle time report will be added soon

Jira vs Hygger: Essential Tips for Using Roadmaps Effectively

What are the best practices for the best roadmaps? Creating and maintaining product roadmaps is an ongoing process to embark upon with your team. Regardless of what roadmap you choose, follow these tips to set yourself up for success:
• Keep your roadmap evenly focused on short-term tactics (considering how these relate to long-term goals).
• Include only as much detail as necessary for your audience.
• Make sure everyone has access to the roadmap.
• Ask feedback from stakeholders to ensure that it meets their needs.
• Ensure that the roadmap reflects both short-term and long-term priorities.
• Review your roadmap regularly and make adjustments when plans change.
• Stay connected with stakeholders at all levels to ensure alignment.
• In case you have corrupt issues, the roadmap won’t display. Resolve corrupt issues by ensuring that the fields for status, status category, issue type, and rank settings are all complete and correct.

How do you create a roadmap?

The Jira roadmap feature is a great way to demonstrate the product pipeline in an easy and clear format. Roadmaps in Hygger also look powerful and multifunctional.

The roadmaps in both tools can be an excellent fit for a wide range of audiences. No matter you need to communicate priorities for your team or if you’re outlining your plans for executives or for your clients.

What is your choice? Have you tried to use the Jira roadmap or perhaps you’re a fan of roadmaps in Hygger? Maybe you know any other robust free Jira alternatives? Please, share your opinion with us!

Agile vs Waterfall: Which Approach Will Suit My Project Best in 2021?

pavel-ku — Wed, 20 Jan 2021 09:41:00 +0000

Before undertaking a project, development teams have to decide how to approach it. Making this decision can become heated due to the two basic development methodologies. In fact, these methodologies define how the actual tasks of a project are organized and acted on.

In 2021, we still have to face the eternal question of which methodology is better - Waterfall or Agile. Both approaches are typically applied to software development, and thus, project management as well.

What is the difference between Waterfall and Agile? The key difference between Agile and Waterfall is that Waterfall projects are completed sequentially while Agile-oriented projects are completed iteratively in a cycle.

If this brief explanation is enough for your final choice, then then you can click on any other post. However, this matter is not so simple.

Is Agile better than Waterfall? Is Waterfall better than Agile? There is no clear answer to these questions, as, of course, each team decides in its own way, making its own arguments in defense of one or the other approach.

Both methods carry their own set of pros and cons. Overall, both Waterfall and Agile can be beneficial to a software development team. The final choice is highly dependent on the project type and circumstances.

Let's start from the basics and then delve into some essential points that will help you to see the differences between both approaches and choose a favorite in the eternal confrontation "Waterfall versus Agile".

Waterfall Definition: What is the Waterfall Methodology?

The Waterfall traditional method is a linear approach to development based on strict planning and performing plans step by step. Companies with a hierarchical structure usually prefer it.
In order to work with this method, you'll have adhered to the following sequence of events:

to gather and document requirements.
to let the customer be involved in the project performance only at the first and the last stage.
to design, when developers try to find a suitable form to meet all the customer’s requirements.
to test codes and unites.
to test the system and user acceptance.
to fix issues.
to deliver the finished product to the customer.

Usually, every phase finishes before the next one can begin. Besides, there is a stage-gate between each. For example, a customer must review and approve requirements before design begins.

What are the Waterfall pros?

Waterfall is one of the easiest models to manage.
The approach provides a clear understanding of your project timeline and deliverables before the project begins.
It works well for small-sized projects with easily understandable requirements.
It provides faster project delivery.
Developers and clients can agree on what will be delivered early in the development lifecycle that is why planning and designing look straightforward.
Progress is more easily measured because the full scope of the work is known in advance.
Waterfall offers well-documented processes and results.
It provides a shared load when each team member can focus on other aspects of their work, depending on the stage.
It is easily adaptable for shifting teams.

What are the Waterfall cons?

Waterfall is not the best solution for large-size projects.
It has quite a rigid structure to allow necessary changes.
It looks less effective if requirements are not clear at the very beginning.
Testing is done only at the later phases of the project.
It is not easy to move back to make changes in the previous stages.
Waterfall provides less customer involvement and limited customer engagement.

Agile Definition: What is the Agile Methodology?

Agile is a popular team-based approach that emphasizes rapid deployment of a functional application and focused on customer satisfaction. The method contains a sprint - a time-boxed phase with a defined duration of two weeks. All deliverables are prioritized based on customer input at the start of each sprint. And at the end of the sprint, teams, and customers review and evaluate the work for future sprints.

Agile software development includes various flows that share some basic similarities (Extreme Programming, Kanban, Scrum, Lean software development, and Agile Unified Process).

Agile contains two significant elements: teamwork and time. Here are the main principles of Agile development:

Adaptability
-Teamwork
Lean development
Customer involvement
Small units of time
Sustainability
Testing through every phase of the project

What are the pros of Agile?

Agile is about a faster software development life cycle.
It is focused on the client process and ensures that your clients are continuously involved in every stage.
Agile is flexible in accepting changes.
It offers a predictable schedule in sprints.
It ensures the quality of the development and its maintenance.
It promotes efficient communications and empowers team members to manage projects.
The methodology looks ideal for projects with non-fixed funding.
Agile teams are extremely motivated and self-organized.
Customers can provide feedback after each sprint.

What are the cons of Agile?

Agile requires a high degree of customer involvement. However, not all clients are comfortable with this fact.
The method can weaken the principle of self-management, as it assumes every team member is completely dedicated to the project.
For better communication, it recommends co-location that is not always possible.
It may seem not useful for small development projects.
In case when PMs are not sure what outcome they want, the Agile project can easily go off track.
Agile meetings run better with the expert to take important decisions but it is also not always possible.
Agile implementation costs more than other methodologies.

Agile vs Waterfall: What is the Difference Between Waterfall and Agile Approaches?

Let's highlight some of the distinct differences.

Agile is famous for its incremental and iterative approach. Waterfall is a linear and sequential methodology.
Agile will help you with completing numerous small projects. Waterfall will help with completing one single project.
Agile focuses on customer satisfaction. Waterfall is mostly focused on efficient project delivery.
Agile divides projects into sprints. The traditional Waterfall method separates projects into phases.
In Agile, requirements are prepared daily. In the traditional approach, requirements are prepared once at the start.
You may change requirements at any time in Agile. According to Waterfall, scope changes are allowed once the project starts.
In Agile, the testing phase is performed concurrently with development. In Waterfall, testing comes only after the build phase.
Agile test teams are allowed to take part in requirements change. Waterfall testing teams are not involved in the requirements change process.
In Agile, the team is able to manage projects without a dedicated project manager. Waterfall projects require a PM to play an essential role on every stage.

Can Waterfall and Agile be used together?

Agile PM methodologies can be actually used for any development project and they often provide some great benefits. However, there are vivid situations where more traditional methods like Waterfall look better.

Complex enterprise-wide development where users are being led through a standardized process is completed more efficiently with Waterfall. Teams that work on developing mobile applications, which must be highly flexible and quickly updated will likely find Agile more powerful and reliable.

However, many projects are not completely black or white in the PM reality. They can benefit most from a hybrid project management approach that includes advantages of both Agile and Waterfall. This is about blending the best of both concepts.

How Do You Choose Agile or Waterfall?

Making the choice between Agile vs Waterfall is not an easy thing as far as you can see.

Which development methodology you go with depends on several important factors. If there is no access to a customer to provide constant feedback (or it is limited), - then waterfall is objectively the right choice. It will suit projects with a dispersed team, fixed scope, and budget.

Agile looks more appropriate for more complex projects, where you can get easy access to customer feedback. Thanks to its flexibility, Agile is preferred for projects with constantly changing requirements.

In recent years, Agile became the predominant development approach, being used by the majority of development companies.

Is Agile really better than Waterfall?

Tastes differ. Many admit that the worst things about Waterfall are trouble managing requirements, wasted time, adapting to changing needs. So it can be expensive and hard to manage. At the same time, developers may feel frustrated that they’re not getting valuable experience working in an Agile company.

Even developers who are still using Waterfall tend to implement a hybrid approach using both methodologies' advantages. Despite the real success of Agile, the traditional method still looks valid in certain circumstances.

FAQ

What is the difference between Waterfall and Agile?####

Waterfall projects are completed sequentially while Agile projects are completed iteratively in a cycle.

Why Agile is preferred over Waterfall?

Agile offers shorter planning based on iterations and multiple deliveries. It assumes a collaborative and interactive approach to requirements. According to the approach, changes in deliverables are expected and less impactful. Customers can be involved throughout the sprint. Agile suits more complex projects, where you can get easy access to customer feedback.

Is SDLC Waterfall or Agile?

The SDLC (Software Development Life Cycle) models' diversity is defined by the numerous product types, starting with a simple website to complex software solutions. The most popular and important SDLC models are Waterfall, Agile, Iterative model, Spiral model, and V-shaped models.

Can Waterfall and Agile be used together?

Yes. This is named a Hybrid approach. It involves the benefits of both methodologies.

Which is better Waterfall or Agile?

It depends on certain factors. For example, Waterfall looks more preferable if there is no access to a customer to provide constant feedback. Agile will be more suitable for larger projects, where you can get easy access to customer feedback.

Is Agile more expensive than Waterfall?

In most cases, Agile looks cheaper than Waterfall.

pictures used are from pexes.com and unsplash.com (A. Malik, Cottonbro)

Typical Mistakes Product Owners Make Dealing with Backlog Management

pavel-ku — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 07:28:51 +0000

Backlog management is an essential work element for any Scrum team. Product owners are those people who must clearly understand what to do and what not to do with the backlog and its parts.

Why is product backlog management important? It clearly defines the direction of the team that is why it is critical to manage it properly and not to fall into pitfalls while handling this artifact.

A product backlog is an ordered list of everything that is needed in the product. It is also the single source of requirements for any changes that the team can make to the product. The content, availability, and ordering of the backlog is the responsibility of the PO.

Unfortunately, not all product owners at the start of their careers understand exactly how to work with the backlog and what obvious obstacles and mistakes should be avoided. The misunderstanding may occur everywhere.

The oversized product backlog, the lack of frequent maintenance, over-refined backlog items, and other mistakes and delusions, may lead to global problems.

Let’s go in more depth with some of the most evident items to be able to optimize backlog management and move it to a high-quality level.

6 Typical Delusions Product Owners Must Avoid

Delusion 1: Only Product Owners can manage a backlog

Many POs, unfortunately, have a serious misunderstanding about backlog management. Product owners are responsible for the backlog, however, it does not mean that they are the only ones who can insert new items into the backlog. Their direct objective is to encourage a Scrum team and stakeholders to create new product backlog Items.

As Scrum fosters collaboration, so a product owner cannot be the only person who manages the backlog. When new items come in, he/she should instead clarify, groom, and suitably order them.
The reason for this misunderstanding may be related to the PO background. In traditional methodologies, requirements are not managed collaboratively. They are typically written down by analysts.

Delusion 2: Product backlog can be broken into different boundaries

According to the Scrum Guide, the product backlog contains everything related to product development. However, some teams split it up into technical and business (or feature) backlog. Dividing the product backlog is a serious mistake.

There is only one product backlog; otherwise, the team collaboration is reduced drastically. There is only one Scrum team that is responsible for everything related to product development. The PO must provide the product vision to let the team understand the technical challenges that may occur.

Delusion 3: Old product backlog items can be kept

Product Owners must continuously review a product backlog as it is a living artifact. However, the cases when product backlogs have items older than one or even two years are not so rare. It is quite logical that the value of such items is very dubious.

Of course, old items should be removed from the backlog to avoid waste. It's a good idea to remove old items from the product backlog that are older than, for example, three months. When a team follows such an approach, they will become more productive and efficient.

As a product owner, do not hoard backlog items, to avoid the risk that older items become outdated. This will render the previously invested work of the Scrum team obsolete.

Delusion 4: Rare maintenance is ok

Many product owners still forget that the backlog is a living artifact. It can not be totally complete, however many teams investing not enough time into the product backlog grooming. You should definitely avoid this approach.

By ignoring product backlog refinement sessions, the Scrum team misses an opportunity to inspect and adapt it. You need to keep refining the backlog items. The Scrum Guide suggests it usually consumes no more than 10% of the development team capacity.

Delusion 5: Over refinement

Don't fall into the trap of over refinement! Having too many backlog Items refined is not a good idea. It is crucial to remember that your backlog is an ordered list, where the top items are more detailed than the lower ones.

Planning too far ahead, we get waste, since, during the sprint, we learn more, meaning that the lower Product Backlog Items might be refined or become obsolete.

Delusion 6: Over planning

Product owners who are transitioning from traditional methodologies tend to over plan. As we know, Waterfall requires all requirements to be defined up-front. In addition, the requirements are commonly characterized by a single person or separate team, which means the team is not involved.

In Scrum, you have to accept you do not know your path from the beginning. You know where you want to go, but the path you discover within experience and learning. The more you walk, the more you know - it is all about Scrum.

Final thoughts

It does not matter what product you are developing, as backlog management should be an integral part of the overall product management functionality.

For product owners, it must be evident to learn how to manage a backlog following easy rules and available approaches, in collaboration with their product teams and using professional backlog management software.

With these common truths, they will be able to change managing the product backlog from a routine into a pleasant process.

Pictures used are by K.Grabowska, Cottonbro, T.Gouw (Unsplash com, Pexels.com)

Sprint Backlog vs Product Backlog: How to Manage Both Backlogs in Agile

pavel-ku — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 08:15:37 +0000

A dynamic environment is not the best context for task planning. When things change frequently, we have to be ready to meet the changes.

It is especially evident in the development cycle. It contains many stages and you should be careful while making changes.

In the middle of the development, it can be difficult to include or remove priority. However, there is the iterative method that makes Agile methodology special. It has made many organizations transform their development method.

Right, the process of adding or removing tasks becomes easy and cost-effective thanks to constant planning, review, and adjustment happening in each step. The term backlog plays a key role here.

This word is critical in any project and we must understand it better to work for the successful delivery of the product.

A backlog can be defined as the pending work or accumulation of work that needs to be completed. In the Agile terminology, this word is accompanied by product and sprint.

In our previous article, we defined the basic differences between Sprint backlog and product backlog. Now it's time to delve deeper and try to understand the specifics of managing both backlogs in the Agile environment as well as determine which process Sprint backlog vs product backlog management seems easier and more maintainable.
Let's first remind some basics.

Sprint Backlog vs Product Backlog: How do they differ?

Product Backlog lists everything that must be done for a project to be completed. This exhaustive catalog clearly demonstrates what your team must accomplish during the Sprints in order to finish a product. In order to make your Product backlog effective, you should include details that breakdown each item into steps, making the task easier for developers to understand. Every single step should include time estimates to help teams determine how soon to start each project and how long they should take to complete.
Sprint Backlog is about determining which steps of the Product backlog will be completed during each sprint. This typically happens during a sprint planning meeting where the entire team works together. The sprint backlog includes the projects that are added to this “to-do” list. The number of items in this list varies depending on the project complexity so that teams have a chance to complete everything on time during their dedicated sprints. The Sprint backlog remains frozen during each Sprint as it can be changed only during a sprint planning meeting.

Sprint Backlog vs Product Backlog: Which Characteristics Seem More Understandable?

Product backlog's characteristics

A product backlog is a very active document that contains all wishlists and user requirements.
A product owner guarantees that the product backlog “user stories” are defined in detail.
User stories in the product backlog should be enough to fit in one sprint. They should provide scenarios, conditions of satisfaction aka acceptance criteria.
It also contains bugs, issues, epics, and themes.

Sprint Backlog's characteristic

A sprint backlog is a subset of the product backlog. It is an output of a sprint planning meeting.
The sprint backlog is dynamic in nature. Nevertheless, it is a good idea to keep it aka sprint goal as static as possible during a sprint.
The team returns back to product backlog during every sprint planning session, with the aim to pick recently prioritized user stories for the sprint.
In Sprint backlog, the Scrum team divides it further into tasks and estimates it.
The sprint backlog is owned by the development team.

Effective ways of managing Product backlog in Agile

The product owner is the key person, so if you are a PO in your team, quickly grasping and prioritizing the backlogs is your direct responsibility. The following steps will help you to succeed:

Understand. Understanding the project and breaking it down into steps will allow the team to visualize and complete all tasks in a proper way. Discuss your understanding with clients before communicating the same to the team.
Prioritize. Setting priories and listing them in order is another essential step. Gather your team to the prioritization process and include the advantages of the story point, efforts, complexity, and the client need in mind while prioritizing.
Estimate. A thorough estimation of the stories is important as well. Keep your stories at a high level and never dive into the details at the time of estimation.
Keep the backlog dynamic. Give a chance for revisiting backlog based on the suggestions given by clients and the possibility agreed by the team. Allow additions or deletions of backlogs at any time during the project.

Managing Sprint backlog in the Agile environment

Based on the PO’s prioritization, the Scrum team will see the list of the items in the product backlog. They will select the task and will complete it in the sprints.

You can easily manage these Sprint backlogs following the next stages:

Discuss. Sprint meetings are usually organized by Scrum Masters. However, it does not mean that they own the decision making. Your team should discuss each backlog and let every team member work on his/her strength.
Accept, not assign. After the collective discussion and agreement, let your team members accept work and prohibit one individual assign any item.
Update it. Backlog updates should be done regularly. Check the document daily during standup meetings too let the Product owner make the burndown chart and analyze it to make sure that the Sprint backlog is completed.

Conclusion

Having clarified the facts about the two core Scrum artifacts namely, Product backlog vs Sprint backlog, you will be eager to play around with them.

In order to become an effective Product owner, you must drive your team by creating and managing backlogs. As the sprint backlog is the subset of the product backlog, the right steps to the way of understanding the product backlog are the key to successful project delivery and customer satisfaction. Luckily, there are plenty of backlog management tools that can help teams to stay on track. However, we will not overload this post and will talk about them in one of our next publications.

The pictures used are from unsplash.com and pexels.com

What is Sprint Backlog and How Does It Differ From Product Backlog?

pavel-ku — Tue, 08 Dec 2020 08:41:48 +0000

Agile philosophy continues to be involved in the list of current project management trends. Agile project management can be a real helper in a variety of projects, but if it is not understood in a proper way, there will be challenges.

Specialists that work according to the Scrum methodology, know that common Scrum events include sprint planning, daily Scrum meetings, sprint review, and the retrospective event. And the key Scrum artifact is the sprint backlog. This backlog is highly versatile but it is easy to misuse.

In this post, we define what the sprint backlog is, how it fits into Scrum, and how it differs from the product backlog.

Sprint backlog vs product backlog: let's dive into these two potentially confusing terms.

What is a Sprint Backlog?

A sprint backlog is a set of items identified by the Scrum team that must be completed during the upcoming sprint.

Sprint planning is the meeting where the team selects some number of product backlog items. Usually, these items are presented in the form of user stories. They define the tasks necessary to complete each user story. It is crucial to estimate how many hours every task will need to be completed.

The team should select the items and size of the sprint backlog. A typical sprint backlog is a spreadsheet or a special tracking system. It can be also managed with the help of any special project management software solution designed specifically for Scrum.

It is expected for the team to update the sprint backlog during the Scrum sprint, as new information is available. Many teams do this during the daily Scrum meeting.

Scrum teams should do their best to pull the right amount of work into the Scrum sprint. However, sometimes too much or too little work is pulled in during planning, so the team needs to add or remove specific items.

Product Backlog vs Sprint Backlog: How We Define the Difference?

All product owners, product managers, and their teams know that the product backlog is the comprehensive list of product-related tasks. This list should anyway involve all the things the cross-functional team is working on, either to deliver the product to market or to improve it.

Thorough prioritization helps these teams to keep all items in the order. It makes the product backlog communicate which user stories, features, bug fixes, and other essential items developers should work on next. A product backlog is also about as a tactical breakdown of the strategic plan outlined in a product roadmap.

A sprint backlog is much shorter. This list is pulled from the items on the product backlog, from the items the team defines during a sprint planning meeting. Those items are typically the most important tasks that need to be completed next.

Comparing a sprint backlog vs product backlog, we can note the following takeaways about the distinction between them:

Product teams should take the items for the sprint backlog directly from the product backlog.
The sprint backlog should remain fixed throughout the duration of the sprint, even if the product backlog can be changed frequently at any time in accordance with changing realities in the market or in the company.
The top-position items on a healthy product backlog will often represent the upcoming sprint backlog.
Product backlog grooming sessions should be conducted regularly to ensure that sprint planning meetings are effective and that the team is able to quickly identify proper tasks to place on the next sprint backlog.
In case it is impossible to complete certain sprint backlog items by the end of the sprint, the product team can add those unfinished tasks to the next sprint backlog or to the product backlog to be addressed again next time.

The role of the sprint backlog owner

The Scrum framework assumes that the Agile team (Scrum master, product owner, and developers) all share ownership of the sprint backlog. It means that all Scrum team members bring unique knowledge and insights to the project at the beginning of each sprint.

The PO should be aware of new market realities or changing the company's priorities changes. The insights from the entire team will help to arrive at a more feasible and healthy sprint backlog.

Often teams choose the items based on how well they align with the sprint goal, which the product owner sets (even though choosing the tasks for a sprint backlog is a team objective).

Final words: What is the value of the sprint backlog?

When a Scrum team is developing a sprint backlog, it looks like a valuable ritual and that is why:

At the beginning of each new sprint, it provides everyone with an opportunity to discuss what’s most strategically important to work on next.
It provides the development team with a set of tasks and to-do items that they should be focused on for the upcoming sprint. And there is no fear about their workload that could be completely upended at any time.
Finally, it provides Agile teams with a chance to apply new learnings about what types of user stories, bug fixes, and other development work can be completed within a sprint timeframe. It will allow them to better estimate timeframes and resource levels.

Running a Product Backlog Grooming: Importance and Benefits

pavel-ku — Thu, 03 Dec 2020 13:43:51 +0000

From the beginning of their careers, product owners or product managers expect their product backlogs to be healthy and structured. Alas, it does not work that way. Unfortunately, a backlog can grow rapidly and ultimately turn into unmanageable chaos.

In order to maintain the product backlog clear and healthy, product teams must organize backlog grooming. This process can be critical to successful product management.

What is Backlog Grooming?

Backlog grooming is a regular session where backlog items are reviewed, discussed, and prioritized by product owners, product managers, and the rest of the team. The process is also known as backlog refinement.

The main goal of the backlog grooming event is to keep the backlog up-to-date and guarantee that all necessary items will be prepared for upcoming sprints. The meeting also helps product owners align the organization behind the strategy that reflects the backlog items.

Agile backlog grooming occurs on a regular basis. It can be officially scheduled or become an ongoing activity. The key goal for product owners and their teams is to keep the backlog tidy permanently.

The meeting was added to the list of official Scrum ceremonies in 2011. However, the new version of the Scrum Guide, released November 2020, claims that Backlog Grooming is not an official ceremony now.

What are the Most Essential Backlog Grooming Activities?

Any upcoming backlog grooming session should motivate product owners to balance the needs of all stakeholders, their team, and project objectives. This process includes many tasks. PMs and ROs have to take into account their resources and available project management tools. Here are some basic activities required for a healthy backlog meeting:

Adding and eliminating user stories

Getting rid of the user stories that no longer appear relevant is one of the more significant backlog grooming maneuvers. At the same time, as some user stories drop off the backlog, others should be included.

Splitting the stories

You will probably want to break down user stories that have gotten larger than they should be. This process is called splitting. It will relate those user stories that are of a high priority but too large to fit in an upcoming iteration.

Updating estimates and priorities

Priorities will definitely change. They must be labeled in the backlog and the listing of the user stories. So, backlog grooming is also about the regular reassessment of the user stories' priorities. Estimates will also be changed.

Who should attend the backlog refinement event?

Note that product backlog refinement is not yet an official Scrum meeting. This event should induce team members to a more productive sprint-planning meeting.

There is actually no consensus on who should attend the backlog grooming meeting. It'd be perfect if the whole team participate. However, it may be not really practical for this meeting. Here are a couple of reasons why:

Backlog grooming usually happens 2-3 days before the end of the sprint. Any team will probably have someone who is extremely busy two or three days before this date. If you ask that specialist to attend the grooming meeting session, you could risk the delivery of whatever product backlog item the person is working on.
Not all team members have an opportunity to participate. A good idea is when 5 -10% of the effort in each sprint should be spent on backlog grooming.

The Benefits of Backlog Grooming: Why Is It Important?

Some people think that all this grooming is more trouble than it’s worth. There are also procrastinators who prefer to wait until the last minute to gather all tasks for the next sprint. However, if care about it, regular backlog grooming have some evident benefits, meaning that it:

Improves team efficiency

Inspiring teams to continue pushing forward and boosting productivity is the biggest motivation for engaging in product backlog grooming.

Eliminates backlog chaos

Product managers, QA testers, or even developers constantly add new items to the backlog. This may lead to loss and mess. That is why backlog refinement is a way to take that chaotic list and clean it up to make it a manageable task list for the team to use.

Keeps the entire team updated

Everyone can see where the team stands in terms of the different features, bug fixes, and improvements. This is also a crucial benefit of Scrum backlog grooming. It leads to keeping transparency among all team members.

Provides new info

The story grooming process can be also considered as the act of communication. When the backlog is updated, new information is disseminated throughout the team. Everyone is on the same page. Team members may get feedback and the backlog also captures feedback from clients during live demos.

Backlog grooming and Sprint planning: are they similar?

Both ceremonies are aimed to engage all attendees in the conversation.
Backlog grooming and Sprint planning aim to ensure that a team has a shared understanding of a particular body of work.
If there is an experienced facilitator, who can professionally guide the conversation, both meetings are more likely to have successful results.
If there is a person who can act as the “Voice of the Customer”, both activities will succeed.

In general, backlog refinement ensures that the requirements will be clarified and user stories will be prepared for work in advance prior to the sprint planning.

As the result, your team will have a well-defined set of user stories split into independent components; They will be thoroughly evaluated and prioritized. In order to set priorities better, you may implement any friendly project management tool with built-in prioritization that will assist you to remove not relevant user stories, increase/decrease the priority of separate tasks, add new features, revise them, and more. For example, a convenient Value vs Effort matrix may be helpful there.

Bottom line

Backlog story grooming should be a permanent activity as this process is the norm for the qualitative development of the product. Optimization of tasks in the backlog for subsequent work with them is the most important thing here.

The refinement process helps product teams to clarify the relevance of the tasks presented in the backlog, review existing issues, and receive additional info on tasks that are still unclear.

Quick Tips-Set on How to Keep Product Backlog Healthy

pavel-ku — Thu, 26 Nov 2020 05:55:27 +0000

A well-ordered and properly prioritized product backlog is aimed not only to make releases and iteration planning easier but also
to broadcast the things a product team intends to work on.

A backlog is a kind of a wish list that contains short descriptions of the desired product functionality. A product owner is a person who describes its top items during a Sprint planning meeting, typically. He or she describes the items in a simple business language without complex tech specifications.

Is it easy to maintain a backlog? How to keep it healthy and live? And what is a good product backlog, after all? This brief post is right about it.

What is a Product Backlog?

A product backlog is a list that contains the new features, changes, bug fixes, knowledge acquisition, technical work, or other essential activities that a team may deliver with the aim to achieve a specific outcome.

The backlog is the only authoritative source for things that a team should work on. It means nothing should get done that isn’t on the backlog. Adding a backlog item to the product backlog should be fast and cheap. It also should be quite easy to remove a product backlog item that does not result in direct progress to achieving the desired goal.

Backlog items may have a variety of formats. One of the most common is a user story. Teams that utilize the product backlog define the format, choosing the items as reminders of the aspects of a solution they may work on. These items may vary in size and extent of detail depending on how soon a team will work on them.

The sequence of backlog items changes as team members gain a better understanding of the outcome. This kind of reordering of existing items, the addition and removal of the new ones, and the continuous refinement of product backlog items make the backlog live and dynamic.

A product owner has the primary responsibility for maintaining the product backlog. The key activities in managing the backlog include prioritizing backlog items, deciding which items should be removed, and facilitating the backlog grooming process.

A typical product backlog is an efficient way for a team to communicate what they are working on and what they are planning to do next. They get info from story maps that provide a clear picture of the backlog for the entire team and stakeholders.

You can represent your product backlog in physical form using index cards or sticky notes, or apply electronic forms such as text files, spreadsheets, online Kanban boards, etc.

A virtual board is one of the most effective options for product teams that have remote members or collect a great deal of supplementary info about the backlog items. The key advantage of this board is that it makes the product backlog continuously visible and clear during discussions.

How do product backlogs differ from to-do lists?

A product backlog has some certain properties:

Any entry in the backlog is estimated.
All entries in the backlog add value for clients.
All entries are thoroughly ordered and prioritized.
The detail level depends on the position of a certain entry.
The backlog is a live document with no action-items or low-level tasks.

Product backlogs may grow rapidly

One of the core objectives of a product owner is focusing on priorities. But often, they have no time to learn and track all of the new competitors’ features. Users may suggest advice and improvements and team members offer new ideas. New updates may happen constantly, but how to make everything in time?

When the backlog increases, it becomes difficult to control it. The solution can be found in applying a proper backlog management tool that will propose systematic solutions for the issue of making a choice:

Ideas assessment (in accordance with Value and Effort criteria).
Backlog structuring (based on Kanban boards, Labels, and Swimlanes).
Visualizing the most essential ideas with a Backlog Priority Chart.

There are other challenges that may happen with your product backlog. Here is a brief list of tips on how to keep the backlog healthy.

Tips on How to Keep a Backlog Healthy

Take the PO role seriously

There should be only one person completely responsible for the backlog of each team. Ideally, this person should be only responsible for one team. He/she needs to have plenty of time available for managing the backlog in collaboration with the entire team and stakeholders.

Limit work in process

It is a good idea to set a limit as to how many items you can have in your product backlog. There is not a size that fits all, but a starting point can be the size per product owner.

It’s rather difficult to give common advice on how long a roadmap should be as it depends on many factors, including a product type and market maturity.

Choose the way of how to maintain the backlog

Develop a clear strategy of how you will manage the backlog and involve team members in that process. The PO holds the responsibility to maintain the backlog, but he/she is not the only one that contributes to the vision.

Make proper decisions

Try to restrain yourself from entering every idea that comes up. Just keep it in mind and if it still is in there after a week it might be worth adding. It is not easy to discard things but having that skill is an important trait of a product owner.

Prioritize

Finding an appropriate prioritization technique or methodology will help you to get all things done quickly. Luckily, there are many built-in prioritization matrices and frameworks that you can get, applying modern backlog management software.

Follow your own rules

You may want to bypass your own rules and instead pack an abundance of information into each item. Don’t follow this way.

Conclusion

Do not confuse the backlog with a product roadmap. They both serve distinct purposes for Agile teams. The product backlog typically lists tactical details of development, and the roadmap focuses on the broader strategy.

Product backlog management is a joint activity that involves everyone in a team. A successful product backlog management will definitely result in a great release. Do not hesitate to pay enough attention to this important process.

6 Prioritization Techniques for Product Management Worth Your Attention in 2021

pavel-ku — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 09:01:51 +0000

Product managers will agree that sometimes it is rather difficult to pick the right tasks or features for development, filter the most important, and skip the less urgent ones.

Prioritization is a talent and skill that comes with experience. It depends on the number of tasks and features, internal or external conditions of products, and the entire business.

What is a prioritization framework? A proper prioritization framework provides quantitative rankings, charts, and matrices with values that are directly tied to your customer feedback and product strategy.

If you experience problems with prioritization skills and strive to get more, this quick post will assist to discover some of the best prioritization techniques that are expected to be popular in the upcoming 2021.

Best Prioritization Techniques

MoSCoW prioritization method

The popular MoSCoW approach is widely used in product management, software development and business analysis. At first sight, it may seem cheesy and simple; however, this method would be definitely demanded and popular in 2021 as it easily helps to reach a common understanding with stakeholders.

The MoSCoW technique will help you to pick which issues, tasks or objectives are Must have, Should have, Could have and Won’t have. The MSCW consonants define a specific priority:

M is must. This is about tasks or features that look critical and must be applied as a matter of priority.
S is should. Here you put important but not critical and not sensitive tasks.
C is could. These tasks are desirable but not mandatory for your release.
W is would. Here you place not critical tasks that may not correspond to the product strategy at all.

This approach provides a quick solution for prioritization. Therefore, the method is better suited for internal projects but not for products with a large number of clients.

Feature Buckets technique

This MVP development method is a common way of validating features and specifying the required minimum.

The method was created by Adam Nash, the Vice President at Dropbox. He says that the Feature Buckets approach works best for prioritizing functionality in consumer online solution delivery.
All you should do is divide the list of features into 3-5 buckets (three is for the classic version):

Metric movers - the features that will positively affect the main KPIs. The KPIs will judge your project's success or failure, so this bucket is important in terms of reaching business goals.

Delights -the features that will accelerate customer satisfaction. For example, entertaining elements, animations, leaderboard, and so on.

Customer requests - the features that users would like to see in the app. They will not totally solve the problem, but clients want to have them.

Feature Buckets allow visualizing and concentrating more on product development directions and help the team clearly understand the goals behind developing a certain feature.

Story Mapping

This prioritization approach became known at the beginning of the century from the article written by Jeff Patton.

Story Mapping means that a product backlog is not enough to prioritize your work. The author thought that you need a more detailed structure, that's why he suggested the following mechanics:

There are two axes.

The horizontal axis is the sequence of use. All tasks there are placed in the sequence in which they are performed by the user.
The vertical one represents criticality. The tasks are placed vertically, relative to how important they are from top to bottom.

Equally important tasks can be defined at the same height.
Related stories groups are combined as activities.

The Story Mapping prioritization method is a simple visual presentation that allows teams, partners, and clients to share a common understanding of what is happening. It clearly defines how to gradually release product iterations.

RICE Scoring method

The RICE Method helps to identify Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Efforts. This approach assists product and project managers in determining priorities and getting better business outcomes.
Using this prioritization technique, you may ask your team the following questions:

How many people will the project impact in a specific period? How many users will feel the changes? (Reach).
How will the product impact users? (Impact).
Do you have valuable data that backs up your estimation? (Confidence).
What teamwork does the project require? (Efforts).

After estimating these factors, you should combine them into a single score. Then you’ll be able to compare projects at a glance. The result will measure the total impact per time worked.

This approach helps immensely when deciding between hard-to-compare ideas. The RICE framework will help you make better decisions about what to work on first.

There are some smart project management tools that contain build-in prioritization techniques. For example, you may find an advanced RICE Scoring model in Hygger:

To get a RICE score you need to combine these factors.

ICE technique

To apply the ICE score prioritization method, you will have to calculate the score per idea, according to the formula: ICE = Impact* Confidence* Ease, where:

Impact demonstrates how much an idea positively affects the core metric you’re trying to improve.
Confidence is about how sure you are about the Impact. It also reflects the ease of implementation in some way.
Ease means the easiness of implementation.

You should rate the values on a relative scale of 1–10 so as not to over-weigh any of them. Choose what 1–10 means, as long the rating stays consistent.

The method provides a convenient matrix format and it looks useful for sorting out the tasks that need to be realized but compete for the same resources. ICE scoring will definitely be popular in 2021.

Value vs Cost model

Value vs Cost is a handy technique with the vivid advantage of also being very simple and easy-implemented.

You can score features and tasks on their Value and Cost of implementation. This is the key idea of the method. The features with the best ratios will have higher priority.

This method is quite intuitive and is also embedded within other prioritization methodologies. It provides a chance to maximize value delivery over time. For a given release timeframe, you work on the most valuable items you can fit in the period.

You may visualize it with the help of the Value vs Cost chart. Draw all considered features with regards to their score in each dimension. Prioritization rankings will be visible as the slopes of the lines, where the higher the slope, the higher the priority.

Why do we all need to master prioritization?

How can I improve my prioritization skills? This question is quite logical here. You may say that the detailed prioritization approach is needed mainly for complex technical projects. However, the ability to prioritize professionally can be crucial for everyone in 2021: from students to top managers with their global purposes.

Prioritization may enhance your professional life if you are a software developer, product manager, project manager, business analyst, marketer, designer, event manager, constructor, university professor, HR specialist, and so on and so forth.
Whatever method or technique you choose, it is important to implement it with all seriousness.

Try a simple approach first, and then move on to more complex prioritization frameworks. All of them look like a reliable success factor in business management worth paying attention to in 2021.

How do you prioritize features?

Why Kanban Board is the Trend of 2021

pavel-ku — Wed, 11 Nov 2020 08:58:24 +0000

Kanban is a work management method aimed to provide real-time updates on the status of current tasks. The concept was invented by a Toyota employee. He wanted to eliminate bottlenecks in workflow while providing a view of current work in progress and projects.

Nowadays this is one of the most popular systems for Agile project management. Kanban boards can really improve workflows and lead to increased productivity. Let's define the most obvious reasons for Kanban’s popularity and predict the nearest future for the method and Kanban-focused tools.

What are the reasons to use Kanban for project management issues in 2021?

1. Flexible release time

Some other Agile methodologies such as Scrum or XP do not allow releasing in the middle of an iteration. Applying Kanban, you can release anytime. You are able to release a user story when it is ready.

It is not easy to set up the development process this way. You will have to merge, integrate, and test often. However, you will have a chance to release often. Of course, you will need to have a powerful automated test suite. Otherwise, you won't make small releases with good quality.

2. Priorities changing

Scrum management typically means that you can not add stories into a sprint on the fly or this will be a complex process. That is why developers often resist replacing a story from a sprint backlog. When new stories are discussed in a hurry, some details may be missed. As a result, essential re-work will be required.

Kanban allows for changing priorities. In case you have an urgent request to implement a new user story, you can just place it on top of the queue. When a free slot is available, it will be taken.

3. No need for iterations

Iterations are aimed to help in revealing real problems in the development process. They also assist in establishing a project rhythm and rituals. However, at some point in the project, they may seem useless.

Your backlog may be fuzzy and plans may often change. This is where iterations are not helpful anymore. No iterations mean no iteration demo meetings. Instead, you can run quick just-in-time meetings before starting the development for each user story. Kanban sets a more complex rhythm and it may take time for developers to recognize it.

4. No need for estimates

Estimates are needed to predict how many stories you may take in the next iteration. Product owners also want to know how big the user story is. If the story is big, it may be moved to the next release.

Logically, iterative development is hardly possible without estimates. However, it is possible to live without them or practice very rough estimates. For Kanban-focused teams, it is more important to have a prioritized backlog and take the most critical user story and implement it.

5. Excellent flow visualization

Kanban method includes applying robust Kanban boards. They provide a clear and cozy view of current work in progress. The boards visualize the flow and enable fast planning and tracking. This characteristic makes Kanban boards especially promising for project management in 2021. Therefore, we would like to dwell on them in more detail.

The Power of Kanban Boards

What are Kanban boards?

A Kanban board is a tool that aims to visualize the flow of work and enable a team to manage its processes. It includes two main components: workflow and Kanban cards.

Workflow represents the process steps a task has to go through in order for it to be completed. The workflow is depicted in a Kanban board through columns and swimlanes.

A Kanban card represents the task a team will work on. All cards should flow through the columns and swimlanes, allowing teams to know the status of their work.

A typical Kanban board has at least three columns – To Do, In Progress, and Done.

What are the benefits of Kanban tools?

Kanban software platforms offer unique benefits that are often even better fit for Agile strategies than Scrum systems. Kanban boards provide more opportunities for a great collaboration. Any team member with permission to view and edit a board can add comments, files, update statuses, or create additional to-do lists.

Kanban boards perfectly suit the teams that need to carefully monitor individual task progress within larger overall progress. Online boards also help to pinpoint roadblocks, set more accurate deadline estimates to customers, and prevent people from getting overburdened.

Kanban tools keep pace with the new era of remote work

Remote work is becoming the norm. Thanks to technology and the rise of the new generation of managers, remote work is embraced now more than ever. Additionally, we can not forget about the Coronavirus, that have added special popularity to distributed work.

This kind of work is an arrangement where employees do their job outside the traditional office environment.

A team must be equipped with powerful tools to perform their duties and collaborate. This is where Kanban board tools come to help. With their help, everyone in the team can know what’s being worked on and what task they should pick up next. Here you can explore some examples of beautiful Kanban board for remote teams:

Kanban board in Hygger

Kanban board in Trello

Kanban board in Hubstaff

The Kanban boards mentioned above allow for more efficient workflows and visual representations of tasks.

A smart online Kanban board is one of the key components of the Kanban method that will definitely be a trend in the upcoming New Year. Use Kanban boards to manage remote teams, track and analyze workflows, and get better accessibility.

7 Best Places to Learn Python in 2020

pavel-ku — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 16:30:54 +0000

Nowadays Python is one of the most universal and reliable programming languages to learn. Guido van Rossum developed this high-level and object-orientated programming language in 1980.

Many coders admit that Python is one of the easiest languages to learn, as it requires a unique syntax focusing on readability. In fact, Python codes are much easier to understand for developers than the other languages. That is just a small asset of what Python means in the current computer science environment.

If you are thinking to learn Python or already started coding with Python but still looking for some available resources, then you have come to the right place. Here we list some powerful free Python resources you may use right away. Take advantage of learning from free resources, as it does not require a credit card or paying for the course. All you need is time and hunger to learn. But first, let’s dive into some theory.

What are the benefits of Python?

Many advantages of Python have come from the variety of libraries amassed since 1991. These libraries are advanced tools that handle a lot of coding for you. Scrapy, Requests, or BeautifulSoup libraries can extract data from webpages. SciPy, Pandas, or NumPy may assist you in manipulating and analyzing massive datasets.

Logically, software developers usually turn to Python for data science, web scraping, statistics, and artificial intelligence. However, it is also advancing into web development.

Python programming can even open doors to a beginner. It worth it, as the average yearly salary for a Python developer in the U.S., is more than $118K+.

Python is likely to stay relevant for years to come. This programming language has gained popularity from the last year or two, surpassing C#.

Best Places to Learn Python Online

There are so many resources where you can learn Python online for free. Here we propose just as some sources as possible but still with some options.

1. Udemy

This is a reliable and popular online course platform that has the biggest collection of online courses about everything. Here you do not need any subscription. Create a free account, and enroll in free Python programming courses.

This is a common practice when instructors keep their courses free when they first launch them. It gives them some traction, social proofs, and reviews. The strong side of Udemy is that you get to learn from experts, but it is not so interactive as some other courses.

2. CodeCademy

Codecademy is one of the best places for interactive learning, where you get theory and then are just asked to write code online. You will not need to do any setup like installing Python in your machine, as you may run Python code right from your browser. Additionally, you don't have to write a complete program until you are ready. You will have to make some changes and execute them. Many admit that this is a cozy way to learn Python.

There are free and paid courses there. If you can afford CodeCademy, subscribe and start with their Python 2 course. It looks great for beginners with no coding experience.

3. LinkedIn Learning

LinkedIn Learning is a subsidiary of LinkedIn. It was formed as an online support platform for books and classes of Lynda Weinman (known from 1995). Then in 2015 LinkedIn announced its intention to buy the platform. The platform has been rebranded to Lynda.com from LinkedIn.

Now, this is a leading online learning center that focuses on helping people to learn software development, business, technology, project management, and other skills. The courses are held by only industry experts, such as professional Python developers.

4. Coursera

If you want to learn Python for free, getting the expertise from the world's leading universities, then Coursera is what you actually need. It proposes online courses taught at famous universities such as Stanford and the National University of Singapore.

Their course Python - Programming for Everybody is one of the clearest and popular free courses to learn. It will teach you Python 3 from scratch. You will not need prior programming experience because you will learn in the course.

This course is a part of the Python for Everybody Specialization that also contains 4 more classes to learn Python (Python Data Structure, Using Python on Access Web Data, Using Database with Python, and Capstone Project: Retrieving, Processing, and Visualizing Data with Python).

5. Google's Python Class

Did you know that Google itself uses Python for many of its projects Google's Python class is a nice set of Python tutorials for beginners? This class suits people with a little bit of programming experience and who want to know more about Python.

The Python class includes written tutorials, lecture videos, and many code exercises to practice Python programming language. You will learn basic Python concepts like strings and lists and will prepare for the next exercises, which are full programs dealing with text files, processes, and HTTP connections. By the way, the lecture videos of the class are available on YouTube.

6. Microsoft's Python Course

Microsoft does not leave behind as well. It proposes you to learn its free Python course on Edx, another popular online portal for free education. The course is titled "Introduction to Python: Absolute Beginner" and is taught by Eric Camplin, Senior Content Developer.

It will teach you Python in Jupyter Notebooks, an online browser-based coding editor for Python. This is a 5-week course with 3-4 studying hours every week.

7. CodeMentor

Another great place to learn Python is a one-on-one education platform CodeMentor. It has been created to provide instant help for software developers by sharing videos, screens, and text chats between instructors and students.

The system that CodeMentor provides duplicates the real-life situation of a student and a teacher to have the most useful user experience on programming and debugging.

CodeMentor helps programmers to train with expert developers in Python and other programming languages. Students can ask questions in two different ways on the platform: to ask directly on the website (and later be matched a certain mentor) and to ask programmers to embed widgets on their blogs to let followers ask the questions directly from posts.