Like many other companies, Elements has had to adapt to a new way of working together because of Covid-19.
Elements already had experience in remote work since working from home five days a month was implemented in July 2019. But a government imposed lock-down brought Elements to a new level: working from home 5 days a week for everybody! We therefore had to adapt our way of working together.
Here is my “Remote Scrum Master” toolbox and some practical tips for any agile team working remotely.
Agile ceremonies
Meeting tools
Tools: Microsoft Teams, Google Meet
As an agile company, we are used to agile ceremonies. For daily standup meetings or casual team calls, the Covid-19 lock-down didn’t require a lot of changes since we were used to having one or two team members working from home. The only difference was the number of remote colleagues.
Our main meeting tool is Microsoft Teams, but when we want every members’ webcam to be displayed at the same time (that is the case for Retrospective meetings) we prefer to use Google Meet with the Grid View extension.
Retrospective meetings
Introduction: Sprint numbers quiz
Tool: Microsoft Power Point
At the beginning of each retro, we begin by checking sprint indicators and last actions progress.
For this first part, I like to turn it into a quiz for each member to compare their sprint vision with reality.
Set the stage: Team Mood
Tool: Google Slides (with edit rights shared among company members)
Regarding the “set the stage” part of the retro, we use collaborative activities like this “Team Mood” board done with a shared Google Slides document.
Gather Data / Generate Insights / Decide what to do
Tool: TeamRetro
For the next retro steps, we tested several tools but the one which fits our needs the best is TeamRetro. We found it useful because we were able to
- show our “post-its” all at the same time
- easily generate insights, group ideas and find follow-up actions for all steps of the retrospective
Poker planning
Tool: Planning poker online
A simple and efficient tool to play poker planning like in real life!
White board
Tool: Google Slides (with edit rights shared among company members)
When we were all at the office, we used to display all sorts of information on our white boards. It was the occasion to share information with all Elements colleagues.
For instance, one of our regular displays is our “Sprint objectives poster”: for each sprint we define sprint objectives during Sprint planning. Then we create a fun poster with the name of the sprint and its objectives, and display it on a white board.
Since we didn’t have a real white board, we created a virtual one with a shared Google Slide document on which everybody can find and add information.
Newcomer integration
Integrating newcomers remotely sounded complicated, but we found tools and an organization to welcome and make new people progress and feel included as though we were together in the office.
Onboarding
Tool: Trello
We already had a solid onboarding process with a 3 week program for all newcomers. In order to facilitate it while remote, each newcomer now has his/her own Onboarding Trello.
He/She will easily find on this board:
- onboarding task checklist
- links to important wiki pages
- pictures and information on his/her new colleagues
Integration follow-up
Tool: Google Slides (with edit rights shared among company members)
On our virtual white board, we included onboarding details of our recent newcomers.
He/she can share his/her integration progress to everybody in the company by ticking of steps with colored virtual stickers.
Creating new habits for our team working from home
Some events were already in place before the Covid lock-down, and were particularly important while we were physically separated.
This is the case of our Elements Vox & Talks, which is a weekly event where all Elements members can share news, tips, or interesting subjects (read more about Vox here and Talks here).
But lock-down made us think of new ideas to bring spice to Elements’ life and to help keep links between colleagues.
Elements Confinement Painting
Tool: AWWapp
Lock-down gave us idea to begin our weekly “Elements Confinement paintings” (confinement was the official term in France for the lock-down): each Friday, everybody could express that week’s feelings on a shared drawing board.
AperoVox
Another event which appeared during lock-down is the “AperoVox” which occurred each time a newcomer arrived.
After an Elements Vox event, we organized a game for Elements team members to get to know each other.
Collaborative personal map
Tool: AWWapp
One time we did a collaborative personal map of all Elements team members.
In 20 minutes, everybody added information they knew on other Elements members (family, hobbies, fun facts, …).
Then we reviewed it together and learned a lot of interesting things!
Elements members quiz
Tool: Kahoot!
Another time, we used Kahoot! to create a quiz with questions to check our knowledge of our colleagues (“how many Elements members are native from a country other than France?”, “who is an arm wrestling champion?”).
Life after lock-down: transitioning from an all remote agile team to a partial remote team
Now that the lock-down is over (for the moment!) and some colleagues have begun to come back to office, it’s very pleasant to meet our colleagues the old way!
But that also bring new concerns: how to manage a mixed local/remote team? what are habits we can keep from this total-remote phase? There certainly are challenges in managing a remote agile team and now a partial remote team. We’re always trying new ideas and trying to implement best practices for working from home to continuously improve.
Sound like a team you’d like to join? Check out our careers page to learn more.
At Elements, we care about our company values. They go right to the heart of our most important strategy ingredient – our employees.
One of the crucial company value for us is Talk straight.
Talk straight
We value open, two-way communication between co-workers, clients and partners. We believe that being true to oneself, saying what you mean and openly sharing knowledge is the key to trust and mutually enriching relationships.
Knowledge sharing is a fundamental part of talking straight making this concept essential to us. It might seem obvious why knowledge sharing is important, but the reality is different – not all companies focus on a “knowledge sharing culture”.
Benefits of sharing the knowledge are numerous. It assures that people are more connected to others, that they are involved with information and knowledge outside of their department. We learn new skills and feel more comfortable with our existing knowledge. Elements is a open community of knowledge that we are constantly expanding.
We use many different tools and events to share our knowledge. In the article I will talk more about one specific event: Elements Talks
Elements Talks are presentations created and given by Elements team members every two weeks in our open space. This event occurs on Friday around 4 PM (France) so that our colleagues in another countries can participate. When it’s not a Talks week – we organize Elements Vox. This assures that every Friday there is a knowledge sharing event open for everyone. It’s been already a year and a half that we are holding this event with success.
Here are some key principles of Elements Talks:
Open for everyone
We encourage different topics from different teams. You don’t need to be a expert to present a subject. It can be about something you personally want to learn, a lived experience or an inspiring article that your read last week and then developed into the presentation. Here are some examples of the previous Talks:
- I recently presented “Atlassian Security: XSS attacks” talk that was inspired by the presentation I heard during the Atlassian’s App Week in Scottsdale. The goal was to make everyone aware of the security issues with which our apps are confronted and to present the recorded version to the newcomers.
- Our colleague presented “Everyone can code, even your grandmother” where he talked about existing coding frameworks for kids and teenagers and low code approach to application development.
- Another colleague presented a very interesting talk “Why we should stop playing video games… and make them instead” that was inspired by his own experience in developing video games.
- Sometimes we invite some external speakers to spice up this event. Security Expert from Thales came to our office to talk to us about “Security Awareness” in our day to day activities.
Organized in a cozy environment
Presentations are usually 30 minutes long so it is important to feel comfortable during this event. This is why we organize talks in our open space. Take your favorite hot drink, sit in a comfortable chair and if you are lucky and not late – you may still find a home made cookies on the table.
Optional
Don’t feel obliged to participate if the topic is not interesting you. Everyone can submit the topic. Keep in mind that content related to our domain (we are a software company) are more likely to interest other people.
Record it
Someone made a great presentation everyone is talking about, but you were on vacation? You just joined our company and you would like to see some previous presentations? Working remotely? No problem: we capture all our presentations and make them available. There are numerous ways of capturing a presentation, here is our current setting:
At the end of each talk, we have open questions and debates about the presented topic.
To get most things done in an organization today requires a collaborative effort. This event helped us learn new things but also reduce the communication barriers between employees to create a friction-less communication.
There’s no shortage of tech solutions to collaborate and communicate at a distance in 2020. But sometimes getting everyone together in the same place at the same time for a day (or a week!) is the best way to share and learn, especially when the topic at hand is new for everyone. In that vein, Elements developers Dusan Spaic and Brice Gestas went to Scottsdale, Arizona for Atlassian App Week from January 13 to 17. The week long workshop was a chance for app vendors from around the world to advance on issues related to data migration and trust, with Atlassian staff on hand to answer questions. Some tacos, beautiful scenery, and an NBA game rounded out the week!
App Week in a nutshell
App Week was a by-application event for developers from Marketplace vendors, with the theme of “Data migration and trust”. Cloud app development is a priority for Elements in 2020, starting with a new Cloud version of Elements Connect, as well as security issues, which meant Elements was a good match for the week’s topics. Dusan and Brice were selected from 146 applicants to be among the 76 participants, and 32 Atlassian team members were present.
Organized at a resort on the Native American Yavapai Nation just outside Scottsdale, the official program kicked off with presentations from Atlassian staff on the Atlassian Cloud suite and environment, as well as security issues. Then each day there was a morning stand up, followed by Hack time and ending with fireside chats. Friday was an opportunity for all the participants to demo the progress they’d made during the week.
The benefits of getting Atlassian staff and vendors together
Developing Cloud versions of apps already available on Jira Server and Data Center isn’t always a walk in the park, which is why having Atlassian staff on site was helpful. Amaresh Ray, Jira Service Desk Product manager, Oliver Wessels, who is responsible for the JSD API, and Ben Kelley, Senior Developer for Jira Cloud), were all at App Week.
“With the Atlassian staff at the event, you could ask a question and get a response without having to wait for an email or press release, which was really helpful for us to work on our app. It also means we know who to contact the next time we have a question about Jira Cloud” Brice explains.
“And if they didn’t have an answer on the spot, they would get back to us later that day or the next day and we could pick up the conversation. They also had members of the support in in Sydney available for any unknown questions. For example, a bug was found in the first day of the app week, and the team in Sydney corrected it for the next day, ” Dusan adds.
There was a lot to learn from the other vendors as well: “It was really helpful to learn about their experiences developing for Cloud, compare our methods, or just finally put a face to the person behind the Slack account” says Brice. “We could also talk with vendors who want their app to be compatible with ours, which is important for future planning.”
Elements has been focusing on End-to-End integration testing in order to ensure app stability, and Dusan discussed this with vendors to get their experience on different end to end testing solutions: “Atlassian is still gaining perspective on E2E testing for Cloud, so talking with other vendors to learn what solutions they’ve tried meant we came home with some ideas we could implement right away.”
Some time to connect and network
App Week was obviously focused on developing great new apps for the Atlassian environment, but there was also some time to discover Arizona and get to know the other participants.
For those who arrived early before App Week started, Michael Lauricella from Atlassian organized an outing to have drinks and catch a professional basketball game in Phoenix between the Phoenix Suns and the Charlotte Hornets.
The Phoenix Suns won the game, maybe since they had a few more fans than usual!
And what would traveling to the American Southwest be without trying some of the local cuisine? Dusan and Brice got to try some tacos and scrambled avocado huevos rancheros.
Having a beer together, watching a game, or just hanging out at the beautiful hotel were all great opportunities to get to know the people behind the Slack feeds and JSD tickets and finally put a face to a name.
Take away from App Week
With such a beautiful (and slightly remote) location, all the App Week participants stayed on site and contributed to a full week of focused work. Elements team members got answers to a number of questions, whether about a specific technical aspect of Jira Cloud or more generally about the roadmap, as well as good ideas from other vendors about how to develop for the Cloud and what tools can be used for E2E testing.
To make the most of an event like like App Week, Dusan and Brice think there are a few key things to keep in mind.
Dusan: “You should make sure the theme fits well with your current projects.”
Brice: “The technical aspects are essential, but it’s not just that: networking and learning from others in a friendly atmosphere are also really important.”
Want to see more about what we’re up to?
For agile teams working on sprints, most of your time is spent in Jira, and rightly so: that’s where the progress on the sprint is tracked. But once the sprint is finished, you might shift over to Confluence to prepare your sprint retrospective. Sharing data, comments, and input from colleagues on a Confluence page can help organize the process, and you might already be using one of the many Confluence Blueprints available to structure your Agile retrospective page. But if you want to export your sprint data from Jira to calculate finished story points on your Confluence page or filter by colleague, the native Confluence options are probably not enough. That’s where Elements Spreadsheet can help.
Export from Jira and import into Confluence with Elements Spreadsheet
When you’ve finished your sprint and want to analyze the issues for your retrospective, the first step is to export the issues from Jira.
This creates a CSV file, which you can convert into a basic Excel file, and then import it to your Confluence page using Elements Spreadsheet. Your Jira export will be embedded right on your Confluence page.
Since the Elements Spreadsheet is embedded in your Confluence page, you can get started on all the calculations or filtering you want to do without switching back and forth between the rest of the retrospective content, like your burndown chart from Jira, and an external spreadsheet solution.
Filter and calculate your sprint data right in Confluence
With your Jira issue export on your Confluence page, you can use Elements Spreadsheet to quickly filter or calculate what you need for your retrospective, like the number of story points finished. Similar to native Confluence tables, you can also list colleagues with user mentions, making it easy and error-free to enter members of your development team to the Spreadsheet. Each sheet can be displayed separately, so you can have the information you need where you want it on your page.
To get an easy summary of the number of story points per status, you can easily create a second sheet in your Elements Spreadsheet, and use a Sumif formula to reference the first sheet.
Want to add some percentages, colors, or additional tabs? Elements Spreadsheet will let you do all of that and more since there are over 400 formulas available.
Start adding advanced tables to your Confluence sprint retrospective
Confluence is where your team is collaborating, so skip the headaches of trying to embed Excel files or Google Sheets and maintain the advanced table functions you need with Elements Spreadsheet. Exporting issues from Jira and importing them to your Confluence page with Elements Spreadsheet is easy, and lets you organize your sprint data like you want without leaving Confluence.
The 2019 edition of AtlasCamp, the annual conference for developers organized by Atlassian, took place in Vienna September 11 and 12, and Clément Garin and Dusan Spaic, part of the Elements developer team, were able to attend. This was the first time Clément and Dusan have attended AtlasCamp, and they came back with lots of news to share. So what were their top take-aways from the conference? Diversity, bug bounty, and cloud cloud cloud.
A diverse and open conference
Clément: The focus of the conference is obviously software development, but it’s not just for developers. There are a lot of diverse topics beyond just programming, like how to balance a team, how to leverage multi-culturalism, and how to think about the user experience. I was really impressed by the presentation by the Atlassian intern Huw Evans on using Sketch to create screen mock-ups and designs, especially with the use of a neural network AI to generate realistic users.
Dusan: The AtlasCamp attendees were diverse, with consultants, scrum masters, product owners, and other people in the ecosystem beyond just programmers, which was really enriching. Plus it’s so important to talk with people from different companies and countries and hear about their processes and their problems. You feel less alone with your difficulties when you realize you’re not the only one facing them.
Bug bounty program
Dusan: Atlassian has started a Bug Bounty program where you can submit bugs you find in Atlassian products. The beta program was run with 4-5 vendors, but they’re opening it up to everyone.
Clément: K15t was one of the first companies to find a bug and receive a bounty of $5,000, which they gave to charity.
Cloud
Dusan: Cloud is clearly the future for the Atlassian environment, and I think the tools that are coming to help companies prepare for a migration to cloud will be really useful. For example, the page they shared during Opening Keynote session showed how companies will be able to evaluate how their apps are currently used (so whether or not they are fundamental to their instance), but also to see if the app is currently or will soon be Cloud compatible. We are working on a cloud version of our app Elements Connect, and the opportunity to provide users information “We’re working on it” is more helpful than just “Yes” or “No”.
Clément: I was at the session “Supercharge Your Pages – New Ways to Extend the Confluence Editor” given by Klaus Ihlberg, Senior Development Team Lead at Atlassian, and the new features released in Confluence Cloud were mentioned. Since I work on a Confluence app offered on both Server and Cloud, I asked if those features will be offered on Server in the future too, but the answer was no. They gave some statistics that cloud apps have grown 60% in 2019. We still have a lot of users on server and data center, but if the new features are all on Cloud, that’s probably going to change. There also were some announcements on how developers will be able to work on Cloud apps in the future, which should be really interesting.
Dusan: The framework will much more scalable, and means we will be able to focus on the customer experience. It will be easier and faster to develop apps that work on Cloud. Programming for the cloud is a big priority for us right now, so we’re eager see what Atlassian will announce in the coming months.
Vienna
Dusan: Vienna was a really good location for a lot of people in Europe since they could drive their (although not a choice for us coming from France). The conference app Atlassian developed for their events was really useful too for all the practical information like scheduling, but also to exchange contact information. I was chatting with someone from Atlassian and he couldn’t answer all my questions on the spot, but he was able to reply through the app a few minutes later when he had the answer.
Clément: The convention center was really nice and modern, and right by the Danube. With the happy hour networking events at the end of the day, it was a great time to chat with people, and it seemed like the waiters had a magic never-ending supply of beer!
Key take-aways from AtlasCamp
Clément: Cloud, cloud, cloud! Everything was really focused on how to help clients migrate to cloud, how to help developers build for the cloud.
Dusan: Connecting with people, whether they be Marketplace vendors or Atlassian staff, is important for the community, and I look forward to meeting them again at a future event. The Forge framework should be really helpful for our team too.
If you’d like to meet the Elements team, we’ll be at two upcoming Valiantys Enterprise Days: meet us in Paris or in Bern.
It’s official: the Elements blog is live
As part of the new identity revealed March 20, for Elements, a Valiantys company, we are launching a new blog to talk about our apps, share user case examples, and provide you a peak behind the scenes of the company. The new identity and product names reflect how our apps work together like building blocks you can assemble to fit your needs in Jira or Confluence. We will of course continue to publish content on the Valiantys blog (after all, we we’re still part of the Valiantys family), but we are excited to create this new space to showcase how our apps augment the functionality of your Atlassian tools. It’s been more than 10 years since we got started, and our growing number of apps and the team that supports them means we were ready for some more space!
How we got started
Valiantys began building Jira plugins in 2008, and one of the first products was VertygoSLA, an app for managing service level agreements in Jira. Four years later, Atlassian acquired the technology from Valiantys and used it to build Jira Service Desk, it’s fastest growing product. We went on to develop four additional apps that help teams work smarter and collaborate in Jira and Confluence. In 2018, we formalized the creation of Valiantys Software, and we are confident in reaching our next goal of becoming one of the top ten editors in the Atlassian ecosystem by 2020. The new Elements brand reflects our identity as a software publisher and is a visual reminder of the connectivity between our different apps.
Jira and Confluence apps: Smart tools to boost your team’s productivity
Today, Elements sells three apps for Jira: Connect (formerly nFeed), Copy & Sync (formerly Exocet), and Checklist; and one app for Confluence: Spreadsheet.
A new name, some new faces, but the same Agile team
Back in February 2018 Alexandre Alquier described on the Valiantys blog how our team works and our Agile process. In the year and a half since then we’ve changed our name and our team has more than doubled from 8 to 18, with full fledged departments in QA, Support, Marketing, and Development, but we are still focused on developing software as an Agile team to help you work faster and smarter. As part of the Valiantys family, we regularly talk with consultants about their experiences on the ground helping companies implement Jira and Confluence, and that means we never lose touch with the day to day challenges of our clients.
What we’re working on
Top of our list right now is a focus on user experience: new Elements Connect 6.0 version with a revamped admin interface, UX redesign of Elements Spreadsheet, and we’ll continue to make our users our top priority, whether they’re Jira admins or Confluence end users. We also have some webinars planned for the coming months, which is a great chance to see some use-case demonstrations and ask any questions. Our team members will be at events across Europe this fall, so come out and meet us.
We’re also working on taking Elements Connect to the Cloud. If this is music to your ears, send us an email to learn more.