01 June 2023

First steps to digitalizing your business

mediamanager

IT Cluster

«If earlier it was possible to plan for years in advance, now there is no such possibility — the world is very changeable and uncertain, but it is possible to achieve results through the use of modern methodologies,» Olga Shapoval, Executive Director of Kharkiv IT Cluster and moderator of the event, started the meeting with these words.

Any business today must be prepared for change in order to continue to operate efficiently and fulfill its core functions.

That is why Kharkiv IT Cluster and the EEN consortium have jointly created a series of webinars on digitalization.

ℹ️ Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) is the world’s largest support network for small and medium-sized companies with international ambitions, with 12 years of experience in business environments in 70 countries (Europe, USA, Asia).

The purpose of the webinar series is to open up the best practices in the IT sector to businesses and enterprises in other areas.

IT is the only industry in Ukraine that grew in 2022, so specialists from other fields have a lot to adapt and learn from their colleagues in the world of innovative technologies.

🗓 The first webinars took place on May 22 and 25, respectively.

First webinar

Speaker of the first webinar on digitalization: Maryna Altynnik, New Game Research Manager at G5 Entertainment AB, lecturer at SOURCE iT IT school.

Before getting directly acquainted with Agile methodologies, at the first webinar, the speaker immersed all those present in more basic concepts to be in the context of the topic.

Using simple examples, Maryna explained the difference between a project and a process, what to look for when working with a project, and what stages any project goes through, regardless of its scope and type.

Idea
Planning. Identification of needs, goals, and resources.
Analysis. Determination of all requirements for the final result. Technical, economic justification of what we want to do and how.
Design. This stage can only be started when there is an understanding of what end product we want to get. Defining the elements of the system and how they look like – creating a drawing, drawing, design layout, model – anything that allows you to imagine and show a reduced model of the result.
Development. Writing code, creating hardware, training staff. In simple words, the realization of what was designed.
Operation and integration. Testing with users.
Support for the daily operation of the product.
Decommissioning of the product.

«Project management has not changed since the Egyptian pyramids. Its general principles have not disappeared, only more modern tools have been added,» Marina Altynnik, a speaker at the event, quoted.

However, the speaker drew attention to the fact that there are areas where some development approaches cannot be used. For example, the field of medicine requires linear analysis, so Agile methodologies are most likely not suitable in this case. The situation is the same in the field of legislation, where there is no flexibility and all processes are extremely straightforward.

There are 3 types of approaches to the project development life cycle:

📌 Predictive approach — this approach is useful when project and product requirements can be defined, collected, and analyzed at the beginning of the project, also called the waterfall approach.
📌 Hybrid approach is a combination of adaptive and predictive approaches. This approach to development is useful when there is uncertainty or risk about requirements, when enhancements can be modular, or when there are enhancements that can be developed by different project teams.
📌 Adaptive approach is a useful approach when requirements are subject to a high level of uncertainty and may change throughout the project. A clear vision is established at the beginning of the project, and the initial known requirements are refined, detailed, modified, or replaced based on user feedback, the environment, or unexpected events.

Agile philosophy

Agile is a series of approaches to software development that focuses on the use of iterative or adaptive development, dynamic requirements generation, and ensuring their implementation.

At the first webinar, Ms. Maryna spoke about the Scrum and Kanban methodologies, their features, and the difference between them.

«Scrum is a bus that stops only at certain stops where people get off in groups. And Kanban is a minibus: a passenger wants to get off, asks the driver, and gets off where he needs to,» explains the difference between Scrum and Kanban in simple terms, as Marina Altynnik, the event speaker, explains.

Second webinar

The speaker of the second meeting was Daria Zozulya, Community & Brand Coordinator of the Kharkiv IT Cluster.
The topic of the event: Jira: 5 steps to simplify workflows in the company.

Daria shared not only the theory but also her practical experience with all those present and demonstrated how to work with their own projects using Jira.

At the event, the speaker spoke in detail about all the tools, features, and functionality of the software so that everyone could create their own project and increase their efficiency while working with it.

During the practical part of the event, all those present, in parallel with the speaker, created their own project called «Cooking Borscht,» where they analyzed the basic principles of working in Jira using the example of the stages of cooking. Thanks to clear analogies and comparisons, everyone now knows the basic components of the software: project, task types, roadmap, whiteboard, backlog, and sprint.

After the webinars, all attendees received full presentations on the topics of the meetings from the speakers and access to closed channels where they could get personalized advice from Maryna Altynnik and Daria Zozulya.

The recording of the first two webinars on digitalization is already available on the Kharkiv IT Cluster’s YouTube channel. Anyone can watch them here.

💻 First webinar: Types of development methodologies. Agile. Scrum Kanban. Reports and team interactions
💻 Second webinar: Jira: 5 steps to simplify workflows in the company

Special thanks to all Kharkiv IT Cluster’s info partners for supporting and promoting webinars on digitalization:

🤝 Happy Monday
🤝 SOURCE iT
🤝 TUCHA
🤝 IT Cluster Ivano-Frankivsk
🤝 SILab Ukraine
🤝 WiT Ukraine
🤝 HURMA