Here at Mobomo, having dedicated project management for each and every project is essential to our process. Our clients often have complex problems or seeking solutions, which requires the strategic navigation and assistance of one of our project managers from the start of the project all the way until your website or app launches.
The Mobomo Way
You can think of your project manager as your liaison and main point of contact. Here’s what you can expect from them in terms of communication:
- Weekly check-ins and status reports
- Weekly product demos
- Collaboration on project management software (JIRA or Basecamp)
- Direct communication via Hangouts, Slack, phone or email
- Facilitation of design, developer and QA communication
As project managers, one of the key concepts we discuss with our clients during the project kickoff is the “iron triangle”, or “triple constraint.” Both of these terms directly relate to the scope, cost, and schedule of a project. Think about the scope, cost, and schedule as the three edges, surrounding quality. If any one of these edges falls short, the entire quality of the project is affected. Thus, the importance of project management to keep all sides of your project on track!
Another key concept which we practice at Mobomo, we embrace Scrum — and, we’re all Certified Scrum Masters! If you’re unsure of what we mean by Scrum, we’re not talking rugby here.
Scrum is an Agile framework for completing complex projects. Scrum originally was formalized for software development projects, but it works well for any complex, innovative scope of work. The possibilities are endless.
Generally speaking, Scrum allows us to…
- Increase the quality of our deliverables
- Deal better with changes (and expect changes)
- Provide better estimates while spending less time creating them
- Be more in control of the project schedule and state
While it might sound too good to be true, Scrum is deceptively simple! Here are some key pieces of the Scrum process you’ll hear about and be involved in (if you’d like)…
- Sprint planning meeting: Because we’re an Agile organization, we work in sprints, which are two-week (typically) segments of work that we’ve broken off from the larger backlog. In the sprint planning meeting, we’ll review the current product backlog and determine which tasks to work on during the upcoming sprint. The team then decomposes the items into work tasks and estimates hours.
- Daily Scrum: This is how we stay on track in the heart of each sprint. The daily scrum is a 15 minute meeting where we find out what the delivery team worked on yesterday, what they plan to accomplish today, and if they have any blockers.
- Sprint retrospective meeting: Finally, the retrospective. This meeting is all about what went well and what we accomplished during the previous sprint, as well as what we can improve upon for the next!
Now that we’ve talked about the key pieces of our process and methodology, let’s chat tools! The following are tools that you’ll have access to with us throughout your project…
- JIRA: This is our ticket tracking software. All user stories, epics and tasks are stored in the backlog in JIRA, and moved up into our visual sprint boards. You can check on your JIRA board at any time during the project and review where tasks are and who is working on them. Our JIRA phases can be completely customizable to you and your project, but we typically use the following statuses:
- To Do / Reopened
- In Progress
- Ready for QA Review
- Ready for Client Review
- Accepted
- Basecamp: If you’d rather just see a high level overview of what we’re working on, and JIRA is a bit too busy – we recommend collaborating with our PMs via Basecamp. Basecamp is an easy-to-use tool where we can share files, status updates, and answer questions.
- Slack: Unless you’d strongly prefer the phone or email, we will invite you to have access to your own client Slack channel where you can communicate in one spot via instant message directly with the team. We strongly recommend using this form of communication, as we can integrate with our tools to provide you with real-time updates throughout the day and it allows us to work with you more directly and transparently than sorting through email chains.
Do you have a project or a question about our project management process? Get in touch so we can get started!
