by Anika D | Nov 2, 2022 | Emerging Technology
If you ever got a chance to be a part of the project management team, you must have encountered methodologies like Scrum and Kanban. Scrum is a part of the agile umbrella, and Kanban is from the Lean philosophy.
These are some of the most popular and used approaches in project management. However, there is another innovative methodology that is a combination of Scrum and Kanban, i.e., Srcumban. It is a hybrid methodology that offers the goodness of two in one.
Experts call it a great fit for continuous and fast-paced projects that suffer due to the limitations of Scrum and Kanban. The best part is that it is a flexible methodology that can be used in long-term and short-term projects. So, let us today understand the nuances of this innovative methodology and see how it can help enterprises scale up their operations.
Scrum and Kanban
Before we start with the why what, and how of Scrumban, let us first understand what Scrum and Kanban methodologies are. So, Scrum is an iterative and simple Agile methodology that breaks down a complex project into manageable and smaller tasks. It offers the concept of sprints. They are pre-defined periods where teams solely focus on the task at hand. It also allows teams to choose sprints for 1 to 4 weeks.
In a nutshell, Scrum works on the concept of perception and observation. Over 70% of enterprises use Scrum to streamline their project management systems. On the other hand, Kanban operates on workflow continuity and visualization. It is also known for its compatibility and simplicity. Scrum believes in revamping the existing systems. But Kanban focuses on boosting its efficiency.
Moreover, a Kanban setup comes with an advanced Kanban board. It has at least three basic columns “Ready to Start,” “Under Review,” “In Progress,” and “Completed.” All these columns display the progress of the project. This multi-functional board makes it easy for the team members to update and view the tasks quickly.
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What is Scrumban?
Scrumban combines the predictability and structures of both methodologies – Scrum and Kanban to ensure a continuous workflow. It can help project management teams benefit from Scrum’s dynamic nature and enjoy the flexibility of Kanban.
So, the crux is that Scrumban is an innovative project management framework. It amalgamates the best features of the top two agile methodologies. It aims to make the project management teams more efficient, agile, and productive. This approach can help enterprises focus on the right strategic tasks and improve their processes significantly.
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Why should Enterprises use Scrumban?
- Enjoy the Best – This advanced methodology allows you to enjoy the best features of the Scrum method by eradicating its shortcomings. It helps the teams analyze data and develop the most feasible strategies. However, engineers should also be aware of the top 7 types of data security technology to protect customer and enterprise data to make the most of it.
- Don’t Limit WIP – The best part about using the Scrumban methodology is that it doesn’t limit the work in progress for each stage. Moreover, it seamlessly resolves team management issues and makes teeming natural. It is a process of coming together and completing a task efficiently and quickly.
- Maintains a continuous workflow – Companies prefer to go for Scrumban as it facilitates maintaining a constant workflow. In other words, once a project is pushed into the process, the rest of the work will be completed with the help of a pull approach. Lastly, do you know that applied observability is the new enterprise IT monitoring trend? You can use it to maintain the health of your data systems. It will directly benefit the project management teams in various ways.
- The clarity in Work – Another advantage of using Scrumban is that it displays the complete list of sub-tasks teams need to undertake. The stories pass through various planned stages. Moreover, they also have clarity about which team is working on which project.
- Creative Approach – Project management professionals appreciate Scrumban as it eradicates monotonous retrospectives. It allows the members to voice their concerns and discuss impediments.
- Continuous Improvement – Another benefit of going for Scrumban is its focus on constant improvement. Companies that incorporate Scrumban saw a 41% increase in their productivity. It allows the teams to brainstorm the issues and resolve them as soon as possible.
- Enables Visualization – Scrumban allows the teams to visualize all the steps in your workflow. This process helps eliminate unnecessary steps and identify areas for improvement.
- Optimal Utilization of Resources – In Scrumban, there are different build-ups for iterations, production issues, and product releases. It ensures that the project teams remain focused and productive by utilizing all the available resources.
- Utilizes the Pull System – Scrumban uses the pull system to correct uploaded projects’ technical errors. It strengthens and accelerates the team-building process.
- Allows Retrospective Meetings – Scrumban enables the project teams to set up review meetings as and when needed. The result is process improvements, the development of cross-functional teams, and a reduction in ideal time.
How does Scrumban Work?
Are you planning to develop a Scrumban framework for your project team? If yes, here is a step-by-step guide for your reference.
- Develop a Scrumban Board – It will act as your central workflow tool. However, avoid adding too many columns in it to avoid confusion later on.
- Determine your WIP Limits – The second step needs you to set your limits. Ensure you keep an attainable limit to prevent your teams from becoming frustrated and overwhelmed.
- Set Team’s Priorities on Scrumban Board – Scrumban allows you to establish the priority order of all the projects listed on the board. The project teams will decide who will handle which tasks.
- Prioritize Projects – With Scrumban, work is continuous and has no time constraints. Teams can prioritize the most urgent projects and complete them as per available resources and deadlines.
- Set Daily Meetings – Scrumban allows teams to conduct short stand-up meetings to strategize their next moves and combat present challenges.
Bottomline
So, this is all about Scrumban methodology. It has originated to identify the best solutions to boost output and reduce waste. It portrays projects in a new way, making them more attainable and approachable.
by Anika D | Oct 29, 2022 | Data Science
As more and more enterprises are turning to the cloud to advance their infrastructure and reduce their workloads, DaaS, or Data as a Service, is becoming a popular solution for data management, integration, analytics, and storage.
By incorporating this service, enterprises can enhance their data agility, boost the integrity and reliability of their data, and decrease time-to-insight. It is what this blog post is going to be about. Stay with us as we outline all the essentials you need to know about this revolutionary concept.
What is DaaS?
DaaS is an advanced data management strategy that leverages cloud services to store, integrate, process, and analyze data services through a network connection. It outsources a major portion of its data integration, storage, and processing operations to the cloud. All these qualities make DaaS one of the most popular data management tools so far.
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Advantages of Data as a Service
According to the latest survey report, the desktop visualization sector is expected to cross the $13.45 Billion mark this year. Moreover, companies can double their chances of leading the race by keeping an eye on the top enterprise technology trends to watch for in 2023. It is high time enterprises consider investing in these high-end technologies at the earliest. Here are the top benefits of DaaS for enterprises:
- Improved flexibility – It is more flexible and scalable than other on-premises alternatives, as more resources can be allotted to cloud applications instantaneously.
- Better functionality – Cloud offers a robust infrastructure that is less likely to fail. It makes DaaS less vulnerable to disruptions and downtime.
- Cost-effective – Companies can effectively optimize their processing costs and data management expenses with its solution.
- Smaller manpower requirement – Managing this service is an easy task. Companies need not hire in-house data setup and management staff to manage it. Experienced DaaS providers can effectively handle this task for enterprises.
- Automated maintenance – The services and tools on DaaS platforms are managed and updated automatically by the DaaS provider. It eliminates the need for the customers to manage all the tools themselves.
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Challenges of Data as a Service
DaaS comes with a range of challenges for enterprises. Let us have a look at them:
- DaaS can pose a security risk for the business. However, they can reduce the risk by installing a digital immune system in the organization. They can hire experts to understand how the new digital immune system is helping enterprises.
- DaaS also needs an additional compliance setup.
- Transferring a high volume of data on DaaS is also a time-consuming affair.
Bottomline
Gartner forecasted that the number of DaaS users will increase by 150% in the span of 3 years – 2020-2023. With the workforce model developing to adopt the hybrid working system, flexible schedules, and contract and temporary employees, it has become a must-have for enterprises to meet their business needs in this new culture. And we can expect to touch and even cross the 150% estimate soon.
by Anika D | Oct 25, 2022 | Emerging Technology
Applied observability or data observability is a tool used to understand an enterprise’s data systems completely. You see, enterprises heavily rely on their data for major business decision-making and operations. Therefore, they must have the latest and high-quality data in hand. It is where data observability comes into the picture.
With well-applied observability, businesses get clear visibility into their data pipelines. It empowers the teams to develop processes and tools to apprehend how data flows in an enterprise. It also helps in identifying the bottlenecks and preventing data inconsistencies and downtimes. Keep reading as we delve deeper into this technology and understand the factors that are making it a leading monitoring trend.
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What is Making Applied Observability a New Trend?
Data observability helps boost the entire data operation processes by:
- Enhancing the usefulness, quality, and comprehensiveness of the data for more precise decisions with full context.
- It also ensures that the data is timely delivered to the concerned department.
- It helps in delivering higher trust in data. The result is that enterprises can make more informed data-driven actions.
- Data observability also helps improve the responsiveness of the data operations team to the enterprise and meet the organizational goals
- Applied observability also helps in SLA tracking. It can assess the pipeline data and data quality against predefined benchmarks.
- Data observability is beyond alerting and monitoring. It allows businesses to understand their data systems, helps them fix data issues, and proactively prevents them.
What are the Drivers Behind Applied Observability?
The modern digital economy and digital transformation have exponentially boosted the data volumes used in enterprises. As per the latest reports of IDC’s Global Datasphere, over 59 ZB of data was generated, copied, captured, and consumed by the world in 2020.
And it also predicts that this growth will continue through 2024 with a CAGR of 26%. Another contributor to this IT monitoring trend is the increase in data replication across enterprises, usually for analytics. Over 70% of organizations will use this technology by 2026 to attain shorter dormancy for decision-making. It will also help them gain a competitive edge in IT processes.
Along with this, enterprises are also concerned about the security of their confidential data. Going for a digital immune system can be a wise idea here. Managers should meet the experts to understand how the new digital immune system is helping enterprises in 2022.
Moreover, a major portion of the data is transferred through emails. Knowing the best practices to avoid email security compromises can help enterprises protect their data.
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Bottomline
So, this was all about data observability. It is an innovative way of monitoring, alerting, tracking, comparing, and analyzing data across the pipeline. Its ultimate motive is to provide crisp insights to organizations and help them make informed decisions and attain business goals. Enterprises should create a special team to handle data observability operations effectively.
by Anika D | Oct 22, 2022 | Artificial Intelligence
When it comes to AI, technology has certainly transformed several industries. Whether it’s medical or retail, AI has taken the whole world by storm. While that is true, there is another concept called adaptive Artificial Intelligence, which can update its code and include the things that it has learned through new data.
It also suggests that adaptive AI can transform the customer experience in various sectors and ensure that the brand maintains good relationships with the customers. Wondering how it can do so? Read through:
Working Principle of Adaptive AI
The working principle of adaptive AI is quite simple to understand. It works by learning and monitoring any new changes that are made to both input/output values, plus any events that affect customer behavior.
Put simply, if there is something that a customer likes/dislikes, the adaptive AI will learn from that particular feedback and utilize it to come up with efficient and data-informed decisions. This eventually provides quick solutions and an overall good experience for the customers. As 55% of customers would pay more to get a better customer experience, adaptive AI is an important aspect for businesses.
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Adaptive AI works on three important factors, robustness, agility, and efficiency. While robustness helps to come up with high algorithmic accuracy, efficiency ensures better performance and low resource usage. Agility, on the other hand, is focused on transforming operational conditions as per the given requirements. With all these features, AI is revolutionizing out-of-home advertising for small businesses.
Ways By Which AI Can Transform Customer Experience
Now that you know about Adaptive AI and how it works, let’s learn some of the ways by which it can transform the customer experience:
Chatbots
One of the most useful benefits of adaptive AI is the chatbots, that is ideal for improving the chating experience and ensuring the customer
experience that the buyers need. Whether in retail or healthcare, AI technology has been exclusively used in many industries and is changing the future of work. It uses several data sources, starting from databases to websites, to improve the service without human intervention. It can ensure accurate replies and personalized messages, so customers can get a real-time feel.
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For this reason, chatbot’s market revenue is likely to shoot up to 454.8 million USD by 2027.
Edge Computing
Adaptive AI has also shown promising effects in adjusting to the computing needs of edge systems. Its outstanding support can ensure that you do not require much compute horsepower or memory resources whatsoever.
It also helps the edge applications to adjust as per the workload that corresponds to the requirements and the atmosphere. Additionally, it’s useful for processing locally on edge systems.
That’s it. Hopefully, now you know how adaptive AI is useful for transforming the customer experience in various sectors.
by Anika D | Oct 18, 2022 | Emerging Technology
The concept of sustainability has been around for some time now. Sustainable practices enhance the quality of our lives, preserve natural resources, and protect our ecosystem. It is a holistic approach that includes everything from production to customer services to logistics.
Information Technology has been the latest addition to this list. You see our natural resources for finite and are depleting at an alarmingly fast rate. You would be surprised to know that the global material footprint increased by over 70% in 2017.
Sustainable IT or Green IT includes manufacturing, management, use, and disposal of IT such that it has minimum impact on the environment. Stay with us as we shed light on how sustainable IT revolutionizes the environment and social approach.
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How Does IT Affect Resources?
Corporate offices, desktops, servers, and laptops rely on constant energy sources. Besides resource consumption, these devices are also responsible for harmful GHG emissions. It is particularly true when a new IT device is built.
Studies say that around 81% of the energy a computer system needs in its lifetime is spent only during its formation phase. Energy consumption continues even after the technology enters your office. The majority of technology devices generate heat, especially servers. Therefore, additional energy is needed to cool these computing machines.
How Sustainable is IT Making a Difference?
Sustainability has become a way of life that the world needs to adopt to combat climate change. The IT industry is presently the highest used office hardware, having a massive impact on the planet.
Work-from-home has become the new normal, boosting the demand for portable IT equipment and laptops. Besides this, remote learning also creates an extra burden on fast-depleting natural resources.
The concept of sustainable IT recommends using functional second-hand laptops and reprogramming them to be as good as new. These refurbished laptops reduce the negative impact that the new devices bring.
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Tips to Make an Impact Towards Sustainable IT
Here are some thoughtful ways in which companies can make an impact with sustainable IT:
- Collocate and relocate Servers to maximize the data center space and minimize the energy and cooling costs.
- They should follow best data center practices like automating light, outdoor cooling, and security. Apart from this using outside air cooling and unplugging devices when, not in use are also effective ways to save energy.
- Migrate to Cloud energy and use state-of-the-art IT tools. However, they should also know the best cloud security practices to protect their confidential data.
- Purchase and promote devices that are renowned for energy efficiency.
- Offer rewards and rebates to teams that promote sustainability in the office.
- Employees should be free to identify the most efficient, sustainable IT practice for their teams.
- Management should also know the top enterprise technology trends to watch in 2023 and identify ways to incorporate them sustainably.
Bottomline
So, this was all about how sustainable IT is revolutionizing the entire world. Companies should take this approach seriously and make every possible effort to preserve as much energy as possible for future generations.
