Katie Sanford

It’s typical to aim for 15-minute Standups, but how many times have your standups gotten side-tracked and suddenly more than a half-hour has gone by? These occurrences are not exactly my cup of tea… Of course, sometimes topics need to be discussed, and planning a follow-up meeting will only slow down or delay resolution. It’s […]

Sometimes purely looking at an Azure DevOps backlog or Board may not tell the right story in terms of progress made towards a specific goal. At first glance, it may seem like a horror story, but in reality, it is not the case. The data needs to be read or conveyed in the right way. […]

Out of the box, Azure DevOps provides black-and-white capabilities in terms of how it can be utilized to support a project and its code repository. Over time, teams establish and settle into work processes, often continuing to use those basic settings, which can lead to a mundane operation and, perhaps, risk losing sight of the […]

I like to look at projects as if they are puzzles. All the pieces are established, but as a project manager, you must figure out the most appropriate and logical sequence to complete the bigger picture. An Iteration Plan is a helpful tool that can help to organize and visualize the sequence of work. In […]

Have you ever suddenly found that a person you depend on for a project is out on vacation? No matter your role on a team, a mitigation plan can be an ideal way to capture your expectations when it is your turn to take vacation. Your plan can provide guidance for how to handle certain scenarios, […]

Software delivery projects are most often organized into “Sprints” of work where the team is executing in what can feel like a never-ending loop of plan, execute, demo, repeat. This non-stop, fast-paced cycle leaves little breathing room for reflecting on or implementing unplanned improvements or technical debt which the team is bound to accumulate through […]