A New Take on Project Management for the Razoyo Team

We are constantly improving our processes to be more efficient, user friendly, and accountable to our merchant partners.  We always try to take a step back to “look at ourselves in the mirror” and make sure that we are striving to be the best partner for our clients' businesses.

As we have begun to grow more and more, and our projects are becoming larger and more complex, we identified some holes in our workflow that we have been trying to sort out. Over the past several weeks, we have had many internal discussions and planning sessions on our project management workflow.

In order to improve ourselves and our process, we’ve introduced many new tools to our clients. We have also tried new systems and methodologies. This is all to meet our growing business.  Now, with Jira, we believe we have the right software. Jira allows us to tailor our process, making it more visible to our clients. Doing this also helps move things through our workflow in a more efficient manner.

The new workflow will be visible to clients in the Kanban Board on their respective Jira accounts.  Clients will begin to notice new column in the Kanban view.

The New Project Management Process

1. Icebox - This is your idea place.  When things are in the Icebox, they are not being worked on and waiting authorization. This is kind of like your wish-list, if you will.  You have the ability to prioritize all of these tasks in top to bottom order (top being the most important). Our experience has shown this list changes constantly based on your priorities.
2. Authorization - Projects/tasks that you have approved to be worked on go here. Again, top to bottom for priority. Basically, you’ve given the green light for us to begin work on this column and you have organized the list for our work order.
3. On Deck - In this phase, the project/story is assigned out to a developer and work will begin. “On deck” is just like baseball: the next batter is stepping up to the plate.
4. Awaiting Client - This column is next in the process.  It may seem odd that this is part of the process, but it covers a great deal.  Essentially, if any of your projects/stories are in this column, it needs something from you. It might be clarification, mockup proofs, stage environment testing, etc.  If you see something in there, review the ticket!
5. In Progress - Internally, this has many different stages (building, testing, Q/A, etc), but the overall meaning of this column is that it is actively being worked on by the team.
6. Delivered - Once a story has made it to delivered, that means that it has been pushed live, tested and is considered to be a finished task.

Detailed Explaination