Just like how hours work globally because we all take our cues from the World Clock, teams need to base their decisions using the same benchmarks to unlock the true value of story points and team velocity. This can be accomplished by using reference stories.

In this blog series, we are sharing some of our guiding principles and processes for remote work, in the hope that others can use them to make a difference in their organizations.

Building and keeping trust among web users is paramount to publishers and content creators alike, and many people feel betrayed when their web activity and private data are acquired by third-parties without consent. With the release of ITP 2.1, now on beta releases of iOS 12.2 and Safari 12.1 on macOS High Sierra and Mojave, both third-party and first-party cookies are affected.

There’s a saying that people invariably attribute to wherever they live: if you don’t like the weather in [PLACE] wait five minutes. That said, more often than not, the opposite is true. Whether for a sprint, or for the real world, a great way to predict tomorrow’s weather is to look at yesterday’s. You won’t always be right (and likely never exactly right), but you will be close enough to not die from exposure to the elements – or misread your velocity.

One of the many joys of working from home is avoiding rush hour headaches. But commutes to work have a purpose — they are cues that your work day is beginning or ending, and provide a clear separation between home and the office. How can you recreate this when working remotely?

TLDR; an unpatched Slack API behavior allows single or multi-channel guests to query your entire Slack Workspace directory including names, titles, emails, phone numbers, administration status, inactive/deleted accounts, custom profile fields, and even other single-channel guests from different channels.

So you’ve made the decision to start working with agile. Great choice! You’ve decided to use Scrum to get yourself and your team into peak performance mode, and now you are really rolling. But wait a minute — you start doing your homework, and you read in Jeff and J.J. Sutherland’s Scrum book that this framework was created “as a faster, more reliable, more effective way to create software.” If you are like me, your next thought is, “Uh oh, I’m not a developer. I guess this isn’t for me…”. However, don’t put down that Scrum book just yet.

We’re creating an Alexa voice skill that will simulate exploring an exhibition at the Cooper Hewitt museum in-person.

At Alley, working as a distributed team while solving complex challenges for large-scale digital publishers has required us to scale our company practices accordingly — and embrace the opportunities created for continual positive change.