Afonso de Gouveia

<- Technologies

What do you need to manage a project?

Backlog

The user stories defined in the third step of planning have to be frequently consulted and updated alongside bugs that pop up and must be resolved. This is done in something called a Backlog, used by everyone on the team.

This usually involves a platform with a Kanban board. Ideally, you'd associate it with a VCS, so you can see what it took to complete the task along with other VCS information. This integration is normally provided by platforms like GitHub or GitLab.

Time Management

As a developer, it's important to develop a good sense of how long it takes you to develop things. Platforms like Jira or Leantime allow you to input work hours in tasks, which is usually the simplest way, but a notepad or spreadsheet can be sufficient too.

Scrum Masters and Product Owners shouldn't micromanage Developers' timeframes; they should just check in to see how much progress has been made.

Version Control System

You should always use a VCS to keep track of code changes, not only so you can know what work you did and when in the future, but most importantly so that when you change something that breaks the code, you can see what code is new and focus on that.

Please always use a VCS on any programming project of any scale. It appears at the bottom because it's obvious, not because it's irrelevant.