Conclusion

The post Best Tools for Startups and Small Businesses in 2023 first appeared on Xebrio.

Integrating a requirements management tool with other software systems like Jira is crucial as it enables seamless information transfer, reducing errors and saving time. This ensures that everyone is working with the same information and helps the project meet its requirements. Additionally, integration can reduce the risk of errors, save time, and automate tasks, ensuring that the project is completed on time and within budget.

What Is Jira and Why Do You Integrate It with a Requirements Management Tool?

Jira is a popular project management and issue tracking tool widely used by software development teams to plan, track, and manage their software projects. Jira provides features such as project boards, workflows, and reporting to facilitate project management and collaboration.

Integrating Jira with requirements management software can offer several benefits for software development teams:

1. Streamlined Requirements Management: Requirements management software provides a structured approach to capturing, organizing, and managing software requirements. By integrating with Jira, requirements can be linked to specific Jira tasks, allowing for seamless tracking of requirements throughout the development lifecycle. This helps teams to manage requirements more efficiently, ensuring that all requirements are met and tracked in a centralized location.
2. Enhanced Collaboration: Integration between Jira and requirements management software enables teams to collaborate more effectively on the requirements gathering and management process. Team members can work together in real-time, view and edit requirements, and provide feedback and approvals within the tool. This promotes collaboration among team members, stakeholders, and other stakeholders involved in the requirements process.
3. Improved Visibility: Integrating Jira provides increased visibility into the status of requirements and their relationship to other project artifacts. Teams can easily track the progress of requirements, view their status, and generate reports to gain insights into the requirements’ completion status. This helps in identifying potential issues and making informed decisions about the project.
4. Full Traceability: Requirements management software like Xebrio provides traceability features that allow teams to link requirements to other artifacts, such as documents, test cases, and tasks. By integrating with Jira, teams can maintain full traceability of requirements, from their initial definition to implementation and testing, ensuring that all requirements are met and tracked throughout the development process.

With Xebrio + Jira integration, you can:

1. Bring Jira issues into Xebrio projects and link them with Xebrio requirements.
2. Centralize and visualize data around design and implementation phases in one place.
3. Get the summary of the latest test executions and associated test cases, and requirement specifications.
4. Export all your project/product requirements to a pdf document for sharing.

Here Are the Steps to Link Jira with Xebrio:

1. Create a new project in Xebrio if you have not already or open an existing project that you want to link with Jira.
   
2. Once you are in the project, navigate to the “Info” tab. Here, you will find the “External Apps” section. Click on “External Apps”.
   
3. In the “External Apps” section, click on the “Link” button. This will open a dropdown menu.
4. From the dropdown menu, select “Jira” and proceed to link it with your Xebrio project.

In Conclusion

Integrating a requirements management tool with other software systems is crucial to enable seamless information transfer, reducing errors, and saving time. The Xebrio + Jira integration helps centralize and visualize data around design and implementation phases, get a summary of the latest test executions, and export project/product requirements to a document for sharing.

The post Integrations 101: How to Integrate Jira with Xebrio first appeared on Xebrio.

When developing a product, the development team requires the correct set of tools to ensure significant productivity. These tools help them work better and properly complete their tasks. Tools, like teams, cannot function in silos. That is where integrations come in.

Integrations like GitHub and Jira with requirements management connect a requirements management tool with other systems involved in the project’s success. Integrating systems like issue trackers, test management tools, collaboration platforms, and other project management tools with a requirements management tool allows for the seamless transfer of information between them.

What is GitHub and why do you integrate it with Requirements Management Software?

GitHub is used for version control and collaboration on software development projects. It provides a platform for developers to host and share their code, track changes made to it, and collaborate with other developers on the same project.

Requirements Management Software, on the other hand, is a tool used to manage and track the requirements of a software project. It helps ensure that the requirements are clear, complete, and testable, and that they are met by the development team.

Integrating GitHub with requirements management software can provide several benefits to a software development team. Here are some reasons why it is important to integrate the two:

1. Traceability: By linking requirements to code changes made in GitHub, developers can easily track the progress of requirements and ensure that each requirement is met. This traceability helps ensure that the final product meets the needs of the stakeholders.
2. Collaboration: GitHub is a great platform for collaboration on code changes and integrating it with Requirements Management Software can help team members collaborate on requirements as well. This can help ensure that everyone is on the same page about what needs to be done and can work together to achieve it.
3. Quality: By ensuring that each requirement is clear, complete, and testable, Requirements Management Software can help improve the quality of the software. By integrating it with GitHub, developers can write tests that ensure that the code changes meet the requirements, further improving the quality of the software.
4. Efficiency: Integrating GitHub with Requirements Management Software can help streamline the development process by reducing the need for manual updates to requirements and code changes. Developers can use the tools they are already familiar with and see everything they need to know about a requirement and its corresponding code changes in one place.

With Xebrio + GitHub, you can:

1. Link GitHub pull requests and commits to Xebrio tasks and bugs, merge pull requests and review changes in pull requests there and then in the context of a task or bug.
2. Centralize and visualize all your software development data in one place.
3. Get to know the code changes while implementing a task or fixing a bug within Xebrio.
4. Link all your GitHub repositories in Xebrio Project.
5. Collaborate with your development team to complete your projects on time.

Here are the detailed steps to integrate GitHub with Xebrio 

1. Create a new project if you have just started to work in Xebrio. If you already are working on a project, open the project.
   
2. Once you create/ open a project, go to the info tab. In the drop down, you will see the ‘External Apps’ section. Click on ‘External Apps’.
   
3. Once you go to ‘External Apps’, click on Link. After you click on Link, you will get a dropdown menu.
4. Select GitHub Repositories. Click on Authorize (admin name), select the repositories to be linked, and link it to your project.

Conclusion

Integrations in requirements management are crucial to ensure project success. Xebrio offers powerful integrations with GitHub that centralize and visualize all your software development data, link GitHub pull requests and commits to Xebrio tasks and bugs and bring Jira issues into Xebrio projects. With Xebrio’s integrations, you can collaborate with your development team to complete projects on time and boost productivity.

The post Integrations 101: How To Integrate GitHub With Xebrio first appeared on Xebrio.

What is an Approval Workflow in Requirements Management?

An approval workflow in requirements management is a defined process for reviewing, evaluating, and approving requirements before they are implemented. The goal of the approval workflow is to ensure that requirements are well-defined, relevant, and aligned with project goals and objectives. The approval workflow typically includes the following steps:

1. Submitting the requirement for review.
2. Reviewing the requirement by a designated group of stakeholders or subject matter experts.
3. Evaluating the requirement against project goals and objectives.
4. Providing feedback on the requirement.
5. Revising the requirement based on feedback.
6. Approving or rejecting the requirement.
7. Documenting the approval or rejection decision and reason.

Why is a Requirements Approval Workflow Important??

A requirements approval workflow is important to ensure the project teams and the stakeholders work in tandem with one another. It reduces the risks in a project, as well as any scope creep and later rework in the project. It also provides a written record of the requirements and approvals, which can prove valuable for later auditing.

What Are the Best Practices to Involve Stakeholders While Gathering Project Requirements?

1. The best practices to involve stakeholders while gathering project requirements are:
2. Clearly define the requirements.
3. Schedule regular meetings to gather feedback.
4. Encourage active participation and feedback from them.
5. Document, prioritize, and manage requirements.
6. Validate requirements and adjust according to stakeholder feedback.
7. Foster open communication and maintain transparency throughout the project.

What Makes Xebrio’s Requirements Approval Process Vital for Project Teams?

A project usually has multiple stakeholders, from internal stakeholders (project team) to external stakeholders (clients, vendors, etc.) to an organization.

These stakeholders are often involved in various project or product development phases, starting with the requirements-gathering phase.

It is imperative for these stakeholders to be involved and be actively engaged in gathering requirements with utmost transparency.

Xebrio’s project requirements approval workflow is designed for such use cases.

With Xebrio’s approval workflow, you can:

1. Involve project stakeholders
2. Streamline approvals
3. Get requirements reviewed on time
4. Manage requirement changes with ease

Xebrio’s workflow approval lets you add contributors and reviewers to get your requirements and documents approved. It provides complete transparency from requirements gathering to finalization.

Xebrio has also provided the ‘self-approval’ option if there are no other stakeholders involved in the project. Users can self-approve requirements empowering them with the complete autonomy in the project.

Here Are the Steps to Create an Approval Workflow with Xebrio:

1. Create a requirement

Create a new requirement. You may create a new requirement or use a pre-existing template.

2. Add reviewers and contributors.

Reviewers: External stakeholders who approve or reject your requirement. They may also suggest changes to the requirement.
Contributors: Co-authors who you collaborate with while drafting the requirements.

3. Get the requirement reviewed.

Once you draft the requirement, send it ahead for review. The reviewers may approve the requirement if there are no changes or reject and suggest changes.

4. Finalize the requirement

After you make the desired changes to the requirement and are approved, finalize the requirement draft.

In Conclusion

In conclusion, the process of the approval workflow promotes active involvement and engagement of stakeholders, improving the quality of requirements, reducing rework, and increasing transparency and accountability in the project. Implementing a requirements approval workflow can greatly contribute to the success of a project by ensuring that requirements are well-understood and properly aligned with project goals and objectives.

The post Formalizing Project Requirements Gathering Using Requirements Approval Workflow first appeared on Xebrio.

Who are the stakeholders in a project?

Any individual, organization, or group that gets affected by the outcome of a project or can affect its outcome falls under the ambit of a project stakeholder. They are champions having a vested interest in the success of a project. As such, they would actively work towards ensuring project success. Given this role, it is essential that such advocates are made a party to the project development cycle across different stages.

Project stakeholders can be broadly classified into the following two types:

• Internal Stakeholders: These are project stakeholders from inside the company. As they are employed by an organization to ensure project success, they have a greater responsibility towards it. Examples: project teams and team members, project managers, project sponsors, employees, owners, executives, steering committees, etc.
• External Stakeholders: As the name indicates, these project stakeholders are from outside the organization and are indirectly affected by the project outcomes. They may not be employees but will be influenced by how the project turns out. Examples: customers, end-users, clients, government, communities, suppliers, intermediaries, etc.

How to identify key stakeholders in a project?

Before diving into the details of strategic stakeholder management, you need to first apply your understanding of project stakeholders to identify them. Naturally, this is a task that needs completion as early as possible so that the project stakeholders can contribute meaningfully.

The following strategies or documents can come to your rescue while searching for project stakeholders:

• Project Charter: Since the project charter is a documented form of the crux of the project, it would obviously feature those who have a stake in your project.
• Enterprise Environmental Factors: EEFs factor in organizational structure, industry standards, and competition, which can shed light on possible project stakeholders.
• Team Discussions: Involving the existing project stakeholders through brainstorming sessions and by asking probing questions can help you identify other stakeholders that you may have missed out on.

Why are stakeholders important?

The importance of project stakeholders (and, by extension, project stakeholder management) can be summarized in the points given below:

Holistic and well-rounded experience

As much as any project manager would want, they cannot know everything under the sun. On the other hand, project stakeholders are typically experts in their respective areas. As such, they will offer valuable insights that can enhance the project’s performance and functioning.

Thorough risk analysis

In addition to guiding project managers in achieving goals, project stakeholders can also flag possible risks and devise tried and tested strategies to mitigate the same. Being thoroughly prepared beforehand can help project managers handle risks effectively.

Sets realistic expectations

Even though stakeholders have the project’s best interest in mind, their ranging priorities can detract from project success. With an effective stakeholder management plan, it is possible to agree upon terms so that everyone has realistic expectations.

Greater probability of success

Since all project stakeholders are rooting for the project’s success, they would all help in their own ways to facilitate it. Plus, their constant involvement throughout the project development cycle would ensure that everyone is working towards a common goal and nobody goes astray.

Tips and tricks for effective stakeholder management

Project stakeholder management is no child’s play. You have to make sure that everyone walks away happy from each interaction. Plus, it is continuous and exists alongside your project, which means that as long as your project is underway, you will have to resort to stakeholder management strategies. Fortunately, the following tricks and tips can enhance your stakeholder management plan in different ways:

Document everything

As a project manager, one of your primary responsibilities is to document everything – that goes for the project stakeholders too. Prepare a list of the project stakeholders during the identification stage and note their respective needs and importance with respect to the project.

Instill a sense of ownership

The project stakeholder register that you may create above can also be circulated so that every stakeholder has full cognizance of their role and responsibility. In doing so, you will be instilling a sense of ownership, responsibility, and accountability.

Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

Remember, communication is a two-way street and plays a crucial role in strategic stakeholder management. Make an effort to have honest, deliberate, conscious, and open conversations where the stakeholders get an equal opportunity to have their say. Follow a schedule if you must.

Maintain stakeholder data

Your stakeholders are like your customers. And just as customers may get frustrated while communicating without context or asking the same questions again and again, or furnishing critical information like their name, etc., your stakeholders would too. Maintaining historical stakeholder data can offset such pain points.

Offer a high-level project overview

Project stakeholders would naturally be more interested in staying updated on the coming and going of the project. While granting them a high-level project overview is a non-negotiable, you can take it one step ahead to grant them visibility over things that matter to them using personalized dashboards.

Engage stakeholders throughout

Once you have identified the key project stakeholders, make it a part of your stakeholder management plan to periodically engage them with questionnaires, interviews, and interactions. In doing so, you will be capturing valuable feedback to improve the project.

Formulate a stakeholder power/interest matrix

The truth is, not all stakeholders are alike. The stakeholder power/interest matrix is a secret to strategic stakeholder management. It allows you to prioritize high-power, high-interest stakeholders so that you can engage them thoroughly and ensure their satisfaction.

Leverage stakeholder empathy mapping

Stakeholder empathy mapping accounts for what stakeholders see, hear, think, feel, say, and do. Resultantly, you get the chance to step into their shoes while performing a well-rounded analysis from various perspectives. It would also make you more open to their suggestions.

Implement change management

No project is immune to change. In fact, it is more susceptible to it the more stakeholders get involved. Stay flexible with the idea of project changes and have a requirements change management plan ready to honor the same.

How you can manage stakeholders with Xebrio

In a requirements management software like Xebrio, adding stakeholders is crucial for ensuring a successful project outcome. By including key individuals such as clients, project managers, developers, and testing team members, everyone has access to the same information and updates in real-time, which promotes visibility and collaboration throughout the requirements gathering and management process. Furthermore, Xebrio allows stakeholders to be assigned specific tasks and responsibilities, and their feedback can be tracked and reported on. This allows for better accountability and decision making throughout the project. Additionally, stakeholders can review and approve requirements, providing project managers with all the necessary information before starting a project. Xebrio also allows project owners to add client vendors and give them restricted access to only project-related information.

Closing thoughts

Project stakeholders and stakeholder management should not be an afterthought. In fact, they are the very foundational elements of a project that features right from the start. Identify them early and get them on board. Once in, give them their due and make them feel heard and valued, and your project will be rewarded with greater success!

The post How to Effectively Manage Stakeholders in a Project first appeared on Xebrio.

Leaders or project managers often tend to harp on stats and numbers when it comes to project success. And who can blame them? Project managers carry the load of managing people, processes, and performance in the entire project.

Project management can sure feel like a thankless job at times. One can forget to reflect on what went into a successful project –– several teammates giving their best efforts, pulling long hours, perhaps burning the candle at both ends. It’s essential, as a project manager, to be thankful and show gratitude to those who worked hard and made it happen.

Why You Need to Be Thankful and How Gratitude Affects Your Project’s Performance

Being appreciative and thankful, having gratitude, rather than a “you just did your job” attitude goes a long way in improving your relationships with your teammates. A team that likes their manager and looks up to them always performs well, making you a better manager in turn.

But the positive effects of gratitude are much deeper than that. Neuroscientist and author Dr. Alex Korb believes that gratitude is capable of making a powerful impact on your life since it engages your brain in a virtuous cycle.

A Psychology Today article outlines the areas of the human brain affected by appreciation and gratefulness. The all-important hypothalamus, the mission control center, is positively affected. The hypothalamus regulates basic bodily functions and hormones, such as dopamine. When you feel and express gratitude, all bodily functions and day to day behavior are improved, and you perform markedly better.

As you can imagine, this stimulus has significant positive effects in the workplace, such as prosocial interactions and better work-life balance. This directly impacts work results and elevates not only performance and engagement but also wellbeing and health.

According to professor Robert Emmons from the University of California, “A lack of gratitude is one of the primary reasons for job dissatisfaction, burnout, absenteeism, and attrition. He adds further, “Most of our waking hours are spent on the job, and gratitude, in all its forms, is a basic human requirement.”

Appreciation, a sister discipline of thankfulness, is a stronger motivator than monetary benefits. According to a study conducted by Glassdoor, 80% of employees would work harder for an appreciative boss, and 70% would feel better about themselves and their efforts if their boss expressed gratitude and appreciation more regularly.

What Are Project Managers Grateful For?

Kristyn Medeiros from Planview has a remarkable anecdote to share –– This year, I thank resource requests.

She says, “A few years ago, I was in charge of running the entire PMO. The team was executing the process to the letter, yet somehow we were consistently delivering projects late. We invested in professional project management training, went over every little detail in the projects, reached out to stakeholders to get their feedback, but nothing seemed to work.”

Kristyn realized, the team was facing these problems because of an informal approach that left severe gaps in communication with the resource manager. As a result, all teams were overbooked and overcommitted.

She soon put a project work authorization and resource requesting process in place, monitored by a project management tool. Now, Kristyn’s teams were delivering projects on time, and everyone loved how the new tool and a structured operation process made their lives easier.

Such anecdotes serve to remind how project management is an exciting, challenging, and fulfilling job.

How Should You Thank Your Team When Celebrating Thanksgiving?

Gratitude is a core element necessary for effective team building. Most of us recognize it, but not everyone expresses it.

Mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead says,

“No one who achieves success does so without acknowledging the help of others. The wise and confident acknowledge this help with gratitude.”

The former CEO of Campbell Soup famously 30,000 thank you notes to his employees. That is heartwarming and indeed an impressive feat! If not 30,000 ‘Thank Yous.’, you could definitely give out 30, right?

You could follow this guide mentioned in Gary Chapman’s and Dr. Paul White’s book ‘5 languages of appreciation in the workplace’.

The book details the 5 ways in which you can express appreciation and gratitude for someone, characterized by:

1. Words of Affirmation : Send a personalized email, a heartfelt message thanking a teammate for their efforts and the skills they bring to the project. Or, better yet, put up a post-it or a card expressing gratitude for all that they have done for you so for. A hardcopy will serve as a pleasant reminder of the attitude of gratitude, and thankfulness felt in the project team. Besides, handwritten notes are a rare and valuable commodity in today’s times.

If you’re having trouble with it, see if you can mention most of these things in your personalized note.

• What have they helped you with?
• What character qualities do they demonstrate?
• What do they do that is indispensable to the team?
• What talents or skills do they bring to the project?
• What did you learn from them?

At the end of your message, add a special touch by asking if you can reciprocate in some way.

e.g., Dear Ted,
I really appreciate what you do for me. Thank you specifically for the [effort you put…/ the way you handled that situation…] with your [decision…/ quick-thinking…/ expertise…/ courage…/ flexibility etc.] and you [saved the day…/specific desired result… / helped us deliver on time, etc.]. You have always been such a help, I appreciate your [ character skill…/ talent…/ unique quality] and support in every way. I am happy to have you on my team, and I’m looking forward to making this project a success.

2. Acts of Service : Help out a teammate with their project work, or do something that’ll make their life at work easier. It can be as easy as getting them coffee, reminding them to stay hydrated, supporting them and their vision in a meeting, helping out with any dependencies their tasks might have, or merely being obliging and mindful of their time and efforts.

3. Giving Gifts : Give your team a small, inexpensive holiday-themed or Thanksgiving gift. You can go for personal items that hold specific value to the particular teammate, and something that can adorn their desk. A picture of the team celebrating in a festive photo frame will also do the trick. Depending on your teammates, get sweet treats like candy, cupcakes, a slice of pumpkin pie, or healthy munchable snacks. Encourage your teammates to do the same for each other and see how much of a better place the office remains all year long.

4. Quality Time : Take your team out to a sumptuous lunch or indulge in some team building activities. Multiple studies such as this one from the Department of Health Policy Management (iBMG), Rotterdam show that such team building activities will not only make your teammates feel de-stressed and happier resulting in elevated productivity and performance levels, but also create a sense of oneness and induce a greater understanding of each other’s strengths, weaknesses, and interests resulting in an excellent and well-adjusted team that delivers great projects together.

5. Physical Touch : Some teammates respond better to a high five, a warm handshake, a pat on the back, or a hug, supplemented with a few kind words than to a thank you message or a gift. Small gestures and physical contact establish an emotional connection with a person, making them feel loved, appreciated, and valued. Obviously, everyone’s comfort levels and personal boundaries are different. You need to know which of your teammates would be okay with what. Some may find hugs endearing, some will only like a handshake or a high five. Check out how to make teammates feel comfortable with physical gestures of appreciation and gratitude.

The key to thanking someone lies in figuring out what they like, what their love language seems to be. As a project manager, your teammates look up to you. You can lead by example and introduce an attitude of gratitude, thankfulness, and appreciation.

How to Bring the Thanksgiving Cheer to Your Project Team?

Along with saying thanks, to get your team in the spirit of Thanksgiving and give yourselves a reason to replace the Halloween decorations with fresh ones until Christmas. You can do the following things:

Think of a fun team activity.
Instead of the age-old, cumbersome, cliche tradition of just making a turkey dinner, pull a secret turkey party ––– precisely like secret Santa, but, you give a small trinket or gift and a big, heartfelt, personalized thank you note to the person you are assigned. The gifts are not the focal point of this activity, the notes are. The gifts can be as simple as office supplies and stationery. Although you can personalize the gifts and make it even better. Bonding over making amusing turkey day crafts and decorating the office is also a good idea.

Create a room of thanks, or a thank you tree.
Give your teammates a warm surprise they’ll never forget by making a tree or filling a wall(s) with little post-its of names of teammates written all over it, and letting teammates write short thank you messages all over.

Throw together a turkey day play.
Perform a thanksgiving play or, for more fun, dress up, include some inside jokes, involve the audience – make it a fun and fresh way to celebrate your company’s history and the people who have made it what it is.

Compete in festive games.
Play festive games with your team to enjoy Thanksgiving with some team bonding while also preserving the traditional cheer. You can always put a festive spin on regular team building games, or reprise some of the fun games you played as a child on Thanksgiving. Coming up with these is almost as much fun as playing them!

Hold a recipe competition or make it a potluck.
You can count on everyone’s fridges and cabinets being chock full of thanksgiving food and hold a recipe competition that makes uses of the thanksgiving feast. You can also celebrate the diversity in your team by announcing a potluck where everyone brings food they traditionally like to enjoy with the family and friends.

Bonus –– a Guide to Celebrating Turkey Day the Project Management Way

We think you could make great use of your inner project manager to make sure your dinner party guests will never forget what a success Thanksgiving at your place was.

Step 1 : Outline the project scope.
How big of a celebration do you want? How many guests? What do your guests like?

Step 2 : Chalk out the requirements.
How many pots, plates, and pans would you need? Would you have to take out your fine china? Do the guests want a turkey, or do you think they would be okay if you tried the ‘turducken’ recipe you’ve wanted to.

Step 3 : Make a task list, collaborate with your team.
Make a menu, a list of whom you’re going to invite, delegate what you need to –– who’s bringing what, who’s helping how, and create your shopping list.

Step 4 : Set the timelines.
Schedule sufficiently ahead of time what you’re going to make exactly when. Figure out what time everything needs to go in the oven and in what order for it all to smell delicious and be ready at just the right time.

Step 5 : Manage Risks.
What if someone’s on an ill-timed diet? What if someone has turned vegan for the festive season? What about the gluten and nut allergies? What if the carving knives are not sharp enough? You need a risk management plan.

The Essence of Celebrating Thanksgiving in Project Management

Thanksgiving is a great holiday. Sure, everyone, along with the turkey looks forward to watching a game of football and being stuffed while enjoying the company of people who love you. But, its real virtue is greater, since it is born from a beautiful historical tale of hardship, intercultural tolerance, sharing, celebrating abundance, resourcefulness, friendship, peaceful coexistence, and support –– values that are as important in project management and working as a team as in life.

The post Celebrating Thanksgiving With Your Team As a Project Manager first appeared on Xebrio.

Here, we have compiled a list of alternatives to Confluence for requirements gathering, so read on! You’ll find five options that can suit your needs better. Each of these alternatives has its own unique benefits and advantages, so make sure to read all of them before making your decision.

What is Confluence?

When it comes to gathering requirements, many developers turn to a tool like Confluence. It’s free to use, easy to install, and popular among developers. In addition, it offers a wide range of collaboration, file sharing, and version control features. If you’re looking for an alternative to primarily task management tools such as Trello or Asana, Confluence may be the right tool for you. However, when it comes requirements gathering during a project, there are other Confluence alternatives that do a much better job.

So, before you decide to settle on this tool, take the time to explore other software and their features and see if it’s the right fit for your project.

1. Xebrio

Xebrio’s comprehensive requirements management ecosystem, teams can collaborate with one another to collect, evaluate, and finalize requirements.

It also includes every phase of project development, from requirements through releases. The approval workflow for gathering requirements in Xebrio enables active participation from all stakeholders, and it includes a mechanism for group approval.

Xebrio makes it easier to link requirements to tasks, milestones, test cases, and bugs. To ensure end-to-end traceability, these requirements can subsequently be linked to releases. Version tracking and version traceability for requirements as well as real-time collaboration for requirements gathering are some of the tool’s important features.

The task management, test coverage, milestone tracking, and bug tracking are some of Xebrio’s further noteworthy features. Additionally, the tool also includes reporting, time-tracking, and document collaboration.

Xebrio is essentially a project management ecosystem with built-in requirements management capabilities. It can be used by various industries such as engineering, HR, marketing, hospitality, and more.

Xebrio offers reduced pricing for start-ups and small teams starting at $1/user/month. For more details on the pricing plans, you can check out the pricing page.

2. Jama

Jama Software provides a tool for managing requirements, risks, and tests. Jama helps teams designing complex products, systems, and software to accelerate cycle times, boost quality, decrease rework, and spend as little time as possible demonstrating compliance.

Throughout the development process, this enterprise-grade solution allows for the precise capture and communication of requirements, goals, progress, and interdependencies. You can better coordinate software, firmware, and hardware development stakeholders; increase productivity; control change; and demonstrate compliance.

Main features include:

• Team communication, real-time impact analysis, reviews, and approvals, as well as end-to-end live traceability of people, data, and processes.
• Define, arrange, and carry out requirements-based test plans and test cases.

These functions are all packed into a piece of software that can handle a variety of technical specialties and development approaches. The result is a complex product that is yet simple to use when combined with an intuitive, web interface.Teams can work in accustomed tools and contribute to projects via Jama Connect with the help of API interfaces and third-party integration hubs. A yearly subscription model is used to purchase user- and floating-based Jama Connect licences.

Pricing and trial information are available upon request.

3. Visure

Visure offers a simple-to-use, tailored solution for requirements, risk, and test management.

For teams creating complex products, systems, and software that need complete traceability from conception to testing and deployment as well as standard certification compliance, this is a must-have solution. It is a flexible and adaptable RM platform, and makes it simple for stakeholders to work together on straightforward or challenging requirements.

Visure works with IBM DOORS, JIRA, Sparx EA, TFS, ReqIF, MATLAB, VectorCAST, and other essential tools for system engineering teams. It also provides one of the best capabilities for exporting and importing from MS Office. Additionally, a wide range of project types and methodologies, such as agile, waterfall, and V model, are supported.

End-to-end traceability from conception to testing and deployment, right down to source code like Java, C, and C++, graphical representation of your workflow (data model) to enforce and protect a full traceability, one-click impact analysis and test management, and AI-driven quality analysis to automatically verify the quality of your requirements are other important platform features.

Upon request, you can obtain a 30-day free trial and examine their reasonable pricing.

4. ReqSuite

ReqSuite® RM (developed by OSSENO Software) is a robust but user-friendly utility. It offers a variety of helpful features while remaining lightweight, simple to use, and reasonably priced. It also strikes a great balance between customizability and simplicity.

This tool for requirements gathering and administration comes with a comprehensive set of configurable templates, the capacity to handle reusable requirements, the design of workflows, capabilities for teamwork, and support for automatic requirement quality checking.

ReqSuite® RM’s main selling points are its simplicity of use and setup, as well as the extensive vendor support that is provided without cost. The customisation is quite intuitive but still very powerful, and the navigation makes sense.

It is well suited for all other RM use cases in typical product development or procurement projects, regardless of the industry, even though it does not provide the capabilities of a comprehensive PLM system that can scale to millions of requirements or even support all downstream development processes.

Costs for ReqSuite® RM start at 70 euros per user per month. There are 5 users in the smallest licence bundle.

5. Requirements and Test Management for Jira 

Requirements and Test Management for Jira is more than a tool for requirements management. It is an app that allows you to conduct the entire software development process directly from within Jira.

Your requirements should have a clear structure, and your testing strategy should be precise. Because they both concentrate on the quality of your product, the two processes are closely tied to one another.

Since Jira can be expanded in so many ways, you don’t need to interface it with other programmes in order to have access to all the essential tools and items.

RTM for Jira will assist you in creating an environment where all of your teams can work, from requirements to release, whether you want to get rid of your present requirements management tools or are just beginning your software project.

The post 5 Best Alternatives to Confluence For Gathering Requirements first appeared on Xebrio.

Business Insider’s healthcare editor, Zach Tracer, has managed a team of five for over a year. He says, “It’s not easy, so don’t be too hard on yourself.”

However, following tips will help in making Work From Home more comfortable :

1. Keep your routine the same
Follow your morning routine, as you would if you were going to the office. Start early, get dressed and look presentable (this goes a long way if you have video conferences later in the workday). If you have the habit of catching up on the news on your way to work, make sure you dedicate some time to it before you begin working. This sequence of activities serves as a positive work trigger for your brain since it always ends with beginning productive project work, much like a Pavlovian response.

2. Select the right workspace
Make sure you build the right kind of home office. It should mimic your desk set up at the office while also being comfortable as much as possible. Your makeshift office should not be your bed or your dining table, where your brain is accustomed to relax or eat and hang out with family. It should be a separate space where you can mentally and physically disconnect from your home and truly step away when you finish. Make sure your desk is clean. There is inherent wisdom in the old adage “A cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind.”

3. Plan more for the day
Start by making a plan of what all you wish to do today. Commit to doing more, so that you end up doing your best. With so many distractions and obstacles to work, planning for more helps you be productive and accomplish a substantial amount of work.

4. Build clear boundaries
Let your family or roommates know that you’re working or that you’ll be telecommunicating a little ahead of time so that they can give you the time you need, and you’ll not have to deal with distractions and disturbances. Consider putting up a sign that will let others know whether you’re working or on break. Some people who have young children put up signs that will make it clear to children to occupy themselves otherwise. However, some people tend to work better with pets around, looking at them as silent cheerleaders keeping you company while you work.

5. Work in productivity bursts
Analyze the way you work. Keep track of how much you’ve accomplished and when. This will help you organically build a remote work schedule that works for you since your focus and the desire to work ebbs and flows. Research has proven that when you do the most tedious work in these sprints of productivity, you work your hardest.
Author and productivity expert Travis Bradberry says, “Frequent-break-takers outshine the competition by getting more done with more focus during their working time. There’s a neurological reason for that – the human brain naturally works in bursts of high activity that last about an hour, and then it switches to low activity for a while. When that happens, it’s in your best interest to take a break. “If you are cooped up with kids, try to find productive hours around their schedules. Isn’t the best, most productive time the time your little one naps?

6. Stay away from social media
In today’s hyper-aware world, the current overdose of information surrounding COVID-19 is amplified. It is best to take a break from the news cycle and ensure emotional well-being. Constant news updates only cause distractions and hamper your concentration. You can sign out of all social media accounts so that it’s harder for you to steal a quick look that can disrupt your mental space.

7. Take ‘stepping away’ breaks
When you take breaks, don’t look at cat videos on YouTube, step away from your bed, take a stroll in your backyard or your balcony, or just look out the window for a while. The idea is to take a clean mental break. Also, put aside some time for exercise. There are definite cognitive benefits to exercise, as studies have shown.

8. Talk to your team
Talk to your teammates, informally. Ask them how they’re holding up and whether they need your help with work. Similarly, make sure you make yourself available and visible to people through collaboration and communication apps, and that people know what your status is and when you’re on break.

9. End at the same time every day
One of the major drawbacks of working from home is having to be unable to unplug from work. Set a definite start and end time to not let your work bleed into your time.
These habits will make working from home more comfortable. But, not everything mentioned in this list may work for everyone. Everyone is wired differently. The key is to figure out what works for you the best.

The post Work From Home Tips first appeared on Xebrio.

The post The Guide to Maintaining the Emotional Well-Being of Remote Teams first appeared on Xebrio.

The pandemic’s overarching effects on the order of life around the world have been crippling. Evidence is mounting that the month of March marked the start of a global recession. Business leaders are dealing with sudden, unprecedented dilemmas of managing the economy of their organization and directing the resources at hand accordingly.

Organizations and project leaders have to improvise and adapt on the fly. Along with helping your organization adapt and deal with the pandemic’s effects, it is natural to want to contribute to society in some way or the other. Here, we will talk about how you, as a project manager, can take specific steps to ebb the effects of the crisis in your favor and use your skills to help the society.

Your Project Management Skills Can Help Mitigate the Coronavirus Outbreak

Project managers are useful and extremely sought-after resources for their risk assessment and management skills. The United Nations Volunteers is inviting such skilled professionals to aid the UN in mitigating the social, economic, and health impacts of the crisis while securing the progress made in the achievement of the ‘Sustainable Development Goals’. Project management volunteers wishing to indemnify health and public institutions in certain selected areas with their skill set can register with the UNV after filling out a Motivation Statement.

The Research Council of Norway has also called for a shared, collaborative, and knowledge-building endeavor among adept leaders with a call for proposals. Its scope is wide-ranging, and it aims to support research that can help understand and contain COVID-19, all the while enhancing health preparedness and patient management. Project managers can apply to several eligible organizations with a project description that details their skills in the areas mentioned in the scope of proposals

Apart from obvious benefits to the community, volunteering helps to assess the impact of the situation on various aspects of life. This insight is immensely valuable, life-changing, even. Individuals who are assisting the community in undoing the effects of the pandemic are also likely to fare better in professional terms after the outbreak ends. Take a look at how you, as project managers, can volunteer your skills and services.

1. Contribute Knowledge to Free Resources

As a project manager, you can contribute your knowledge to free resources so that organizations lacking resources of your caliber can make particular use of it.

The structure of suitable project management methodology and the benefit of project management-trained resources to projects can increase the likelihood of achieving goals in the required budget, scope, time, and quality.

Interested volunteers can partake in the esteemed Project Management Institute’s VRMS programs and various volunteer opportunities for knowledge and collective wisdom sharing. You can find the right opportunity based on your skills and donate your expertise to programs like PMI Educational Foundation (PMIEF), Knowledge Shelf, and Project Management Journals (PMJ). Project managers can share their experiences and viewpoints from lessons learned, case studies, and other specialized or general opinion pieces and articles.

2. Offer Expertise to Manage Projects for COVID-19 Tracking Websites

Several websites have sprung up to assess and display the impact of the pandemic, provide help in tracking cases, and aid governmental incentives for delivering large-scale support. A global community of leaders, project managers, scientists, journalists, and concerned citizens have already joined hands to understand COVID-19 and coordinate on the best response.

Many of these shared undertakings follow the same collaborative development model as software development projects with curated data sets and DIY instruction sets in place. High-quality datasets, such as the nCoV2019 dataset by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, are available in a unified dashboard.

Project managers can get involved in such programs as direct volunteers to contribute their skill set in a self-organized and collaborative way. The Wuhan 2020 community project is an excellent example of this. An open-source community project aimed at “establishing a data service for real-time synchronization of hospitals, factories, procurement, and other information, and convening all those who want to contribute to this fight against viruses,” it comprises more than 3000 volunteers to facilitate information exchange between resource providers to help people in the worst affected areas.

Along with contributing your expertise, you can also assist those in need to maintain emotional well-being during such times of stress.

3. Help Colleagues Cope With Stress

In times of uncertainty, anxiety is a normal reaction, especially for working professionals in the face of a foretold recession. Work-related stress is a common derivative of poor work organization and design, poor management, and lack of support from supervisors and leaders. In the wake of this crisis, the onus is on project managers to guide their associates to maintain effectiveness as remote work becomes the norm. You can act on the three-step procedure below:

• • Provide employees with all the help they need to ensure business continuity. Equip them with the right tools so that they are prepared to work from home.

• • Train yourselves to become better leaders and ensure that lines of communication are open and more active than ever. Adopt a supportive and trusting approach. Providing support and going the extra mile to improve employee engagement is vital.

• Come up with a disaster management scenario that involves telecommuting, and train resources so that they can manage their jobs much more effectively for future situations such as these. Plan scenarios to come up with ideas on how your company could come together and resume operations in even a limited scope and form.

Read More: The Guide to Maintaining the Emotional Well-Being of Remote Teams

4. Influence Teams to Avoid Panic

The single most important endeavor to undertake now is to educate your team. People are scared and anxious about their jobs and careers. Your number one priority should be protecting and supporting them, and assuring them that they are valuable to the organization.

You can start by taking measures such as:

• • Adopting policies conducive to remote work.

• Ensuring all information regarding operational and project-related goals percolates down to all individuals across departments.

With your team management skills as a project manager, you can influence and educate your teammates through this period. This will ensure that the organization is in an infinitely better position to do business when the situation dies down.

Read More: How to Build a Thriving Remote Culture for Distributed Teams

5. Help Your Organization in Risk Management

It’s prudent to set risk management procedures in advance for your organization. The middle of any crisis is the worst time to draw up basic operations. But putting out fires is a standard part of a project manager’s job, and project managers are traditionally trained for risk management. The current situation has disrupted business continuity; the stress has taken a toll on employee productivity and supply chains, and business relations with clients have suffered too. However, investment pull-backs and resource shortages might be affected the most. Your risk management expertise is what will save your projects and the organization. Here are some risk management steps you may need to take immediately.

1. 1. Assess the organization’s readiness to sustain the immediate impact on the continuity of revenue-generating operations. Analyze whether best practices of the core business processes can be followed and, if not, ascertain where gaps, new risks exist.

1. Build a risk management framework with a crisis response team that engages representatives from all organizational levels. This way, the ill-effects can be minimized and controlled from every part of the organization. To start, department heads and project managers can conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to determine and deal with business interruptions as soon as possible.

3. 3. Lend your experience and expertise in drawing up remote work policies and guidelines based on new key performance indicators for working from home and recent changes that cause impediments to it. Project managers act as a bridge between teammates, clients, and management. Your assessment of project progress and employee productivity can help to draw policies and guidelines that are genuinely beneficial. These ad hoc policies can be escalated to the responsible committees and converted to more robust, long term ones, to ensure compliance to government and regulatory standards.

3. 3. Conduct drills and assess issues. The duration of the outbreak and its effects on business continuity seem longterm. Scenario-planning drills in today’s experiential situation can help the organization prepare better and sniff out underlying issues that may arise later or even in the recovery stage. Speed up the incident and issue management process.

3. Gather information about complimentary risk management consultations and special governmental relief programs or other targeted assistance schemes. For instance, the Chinese government earmarked a gross total of U.S. $114 billion to support short term loans to SMEs in February.

Even as the current situation takes new turns and unfolds rather rapidly, leaders and project managers are expanding their focus to accommodate unprecedented measures. Their new dynamism will see the better redressal of employee grievances in addition to equipping those less fortunate with the necessary know-how to pull through these tough times. Whatever way you choose to volunteer, ensure safety. Take a look at the volunteering and safety guidelines by the British Red Cross.

The post How and Where Can Project Managers Contribute to Mitigate the Coronavirus Outbreak? first appeared on Xebrio.