Agile Time Management for Teams

If you don’t have enough time, have more meetings… what? Counterintuitive, but potentially powerful. Please, allow me to explain: A few weeks ago my team was facing some technical difficulties that were slowing down our target velocity to deliver results. We then decided to apply some Agile-based principles and started having daily standups (quick 10-15 minutes daily team meetings) at the start of the day, to discuss progress, blockers, and day’s objectives. Soon enough we were producing enough traction in daily deliverables that the project got back on track. Not only that, other projects increased in performance, everyone got to learn of what each team member was working on and were able to cross-collaborate. Furthermore, our weekly team meeting was not running out of time but being spent in more tactical and strategic matters, and even to get to know each other more personally. Weekly 1:1s were more easily focused on career development and member’s wellbeing. On our recent quarterly Performance Reviews, I heard of their satisfaction from the daily standups. I agree that a lot of meetings could have been an email, and I agree with the sentiment of so many podcasts I've heard recently on how meetings are often a waste of time. Nevertheless, don’t throw the baby with the bad water. Meetings can be terrifically productive, especially in a remote environment, if intentionally planned and effectively executed. It worked for us, maybe it will work for you as well. #teambuilding #teamcollaboration #timemanagement #agile #highperformance

Is your software team allergic to deadlines? It’s often not their fault - and here’s the hard truth for the leadership. I’ve seen it happen in startups, agencies, and even in multi-hundred million dollar per year businesses: Software development deadlines slip. Projects stall. Frustration skyrockets. Development teams get fired or projects get dropped. But here’s the thing—it’s rarely the fault of individual developers. They were set up to fail. The real issues? ❌ No design process ❌ Poor scope of work or SOW management ❌ Lack of adherence to a methodology ❌ Poorly trained or completely missing product ownership ❌ Vague and shifting priorities ❌ Minimal/no QA team or process ❌ A leadership gap disguised as a “process problem” I've seen this happen so many times. The team has brilliant engineers. Yet, project timelines keep getting pushed. Release dates are missed. The team is frustrated, and the leadership is considering killing the project or firing the entire development team. The breakthrough comes when LEADERSHIP start doing these things: ✅ Get clear on scope of work (SOW) and stop changing the scope halfway through sprints (spiking the sprint). ✅ Ensure the UX team is always ahead of the development team and has clear and iterated designs complete before they are moved to development. ✅ Train up or bring in a Product Owner who knows how to manage the team and the product. ✅ Get the team on a clear, well-understood, well-documented Agile process. ✅ Ensure every ticket or story is estimated either with story points or hours and log time against estimates. ✅ Bring key stakeholders into every sprint planning meeting to help determine ticket priority. ✅ Bring together the bug pipeline and the feature development pipeline (as much as possible). ✅ Don't let developers QA their own work. Implement a QA team. The result? Deadlines stop being wishful thinking and started being real. 💬 What’s the biggest challenge you face in keeping software teams on track? My name is Jason Long and I help get development teams back on track, back on time, and back on budget. If you're struggling to meet deadlines or budget, let's talk.