We are just one step away from our mega release.

Yes, we have made the final push to make the Zapier Integration available for our users.We’ve been working hard to offer the best service possible, and have been very lucky to have such great customers who have been so supportive.We’ve got some new updates coming your way!

And each of these updates is to make Orangescrum more convenient and bring more simplicity to your project.Zapier integration is the most awaited and on-demand feature that has been our development pipeline for the least period of time.Before we make the final release, here we are sharing the beneficial usage of Zapier.What Is ZapierZapier is a simple automation app that connects thousands of apps, so you can automate your business without writing a single line of code.With Zapier, you can connect over 1,300 business tools without having to have any coding knowledge.

In just a few clicks, you can integrate two applications that work together.With the help of this versatile, flexible, and easy-to-use software, you can boost the efficiency of your business in no time!Why To Use ZapierHow would you like to cut your manual work in half or completely eliminate it?

That’s what an automated workflow can do for you.Zapier is an application that integrates with thousands of other apps.

So, you can easily connect your favourite tools to your Orangescrum account!Automation means your business is going to run so much more smoothly.

Hello Orangescrummers we’re pleased to announce Orangescrum community edition is now available on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Marketplace bringing the open source project management solution to global AWS customers.

AWS enables scalable, flexible, and cost-effective cloud based infrastructure for global enterprises.

Community users can now find Orangescrum on AWS marketplace to easily install and quickly access Orangescrum for their project management needs.

Freedom from installation hassles and quick access to collaboration and productivity.

Quickly Launch the Orangescrum Community Edition for effective project & task management.

You can have the community edition up and running within minutes which makes it easier for you to try it out with your team members and offer them a smoother onboarding experience.

Orangescrum helps teams of all sizes to

• Collaborate effectively from a single platform
• Robust task management with custom task types
• Unlimited projects, users and tasks
• Project breakdown into milestones and tasks
• Quick access to all project related files and documentation
• Monitor project & task progress in real time
• Absolute transparency with resource allocation and task assignment

 You can follow the below steps to launch Orangescrum on AWS.

Read the full article at Orangescrum Blog

Digital Marketing & SEO is an integral part of each company’s strategy to reach out to their customers.More than 60% of the marketing efforts are spent on digital outreach across social media platforms, agency and product listing sites, SEO, content publishing and website optimization.It surely is a time consuming affair and needs diligent planning & execution.

Marketing teams need to plan at least a month in advance to maintain consistency in terms of their messaging, frequency and publishing across the right mediums.This also brings to focus on the need of extreme collaboration and synchronization among the product engineering, sales, customer success and marketing teams.In this blog we will explore how Andolasoft Inc. successfully used Orangescrum project management tool to optimize their digital marketing efforts for better results.Andolasoft Inc. is a California based product and development agency with specialization in IT Consulting, Enterprise Software Solutions, web and mobile app development across a very broad technology spectrum.Chaos and Growth sound almost synonymous when companies are on a growth path.

When there is growth it is across the spectrum: business, customer base, expansion in new geographies, hiring, product development with more customer queries & increased support.Simply put, you get into a fire fighting mode and there is only so much fire you can put out.

Being judicious in dousing the right fires is crucial.

Read the full article at Orangescrum Blog

Organizations are dependent more than ever on IT now to run their business.

And it is upon the IT teams globally to enable value based outcomes for their respective companies.

Without a doubt this makes successful IT Project Management the need of the hour.Businesses are driven by an overly digital economy and getting out there first to your customers is the primary objective.

It is all about a flawless user experience, optimal performance and excellent customer support & service.Implementing the various IT initiatives successfully requires a productivity and collaboration project management software that brings your people, process and business objectives together.An enterprise project management tool is more of an enabler and keeps the various project elements in sync and helps drive and build a culture, provided there is one.On the other hand there are various aspects of successful project management that are out of the tool’s purview and need to be addressed accordingly.Let us review five key aspects of IT project management that are critical to its success.Read the full article at Orangescrum Blog

Tracking time is like tracking calories.

Prioritizing your consumption brings jaw-dropping results, be it food or time.

At times, even 24 hours aren’t enough for completing tasks and having fun.

Time tracking aids in providing visibility for work estimate accuracies.The key motive of time tracking should aim at balancing our personal and professional lives.

However, stringent boundaries are essential for work-life balance.

Therefore, it’s best to allocate your precious resources in the right places.Release yourself from the clutches of unnecessary habits to transform your time tracking efforts in less than a week.Yes, this is definitely possible!Significantly improve Time tracking in 3 days1.

Time management is a crucial life skill and a key differentiator between success and failure.

It is not only about being at the right place at the right time but doing the right things with your time!

"If you want to be more productive, you need to become a master of your minutes.

"                                                                                                  _Crystal Paine_Time Management is a process of planning, controlling, and tracking your own spending hours on any specific work.

Effectively managing your time increases your efficiency allowing you to do more in less time, prevents stress, and leads to success in all spheres of life.Key Benefits of Time Management:The top Key benefits of time management include:On-time Delivery of workAchieving your goals fasterBetter quality of your deliverablesImprove your Work/Life balanceMore productivity and efficiency.Reduce stress and anxietyMore opportunities and career growthHere are a few quick tips to benefit from effective time management.

Read the full article at Orangescrum blog

Project Management is the most in-demand path in the agile environment.To overcome global challenges, it’s important to respond to pressing issues without delays.Organizations need a structured method to plan, control, organize, and manage their resources (including internal skills) to produce timely results in response to these issues.

And these outcomes should be in line with current business objectives and requirements.A Project Manager is equipped with project skills to handle different levels of work complexities.As a Project Manager, if you’re willing to start a career in a PMP profession, you need to ask yourself—why opt for Project management as a career?What is your future scope for this profession?Want to know if Project Management is a coveted career path to shape up your future?Let’s check it out!Project Management Facts & StatsIn 2017, PMI reported the demand for Project Managers in the next 10 years will see a rapid growth compared to the demand for workers in other occupations.A growing disparity exists between the demand for experienced PMPs and their supply around the world.

As a result, employers and organizations are on the lookout for PM experts.

It allows you to match your skills to their requirements.

Read the full article at Orangescrum blog

A Product Owner is an integral part of a Scrum project or team.

He/she is usually a business analyst, IT stakeholder, business stakeholder or a product manager.Product Owner(PO) presents a strong vision of the product roadmap and is the voice of the customer.

They are committed towards attaining the product goal.So why do you need a Product Owner?A Product Owner can improve your product development and project management process by:facilitating communication between the stakeholdersdriving product developmentaligning product roadmap with product goalssupporting long and short-term planninggrooming product backlog to increase project efficiencyProduct Owner in an Agile TeamProduct owner of an agile team owns the product backlog.

They prioritize the features in the backlog that the development team has to complete.The product owner is aware of the team velocity.

Thus new requirements are only added once the previous ones are done.

A product owner determines the release dates.Conclusion:The Product Owner is the voice of the customer and is responsible for end to end product delivery.As explained by the Scrum Guide -"Product owner is a scrum development role for a person who represents the business or user community and is responsible for working with the user group to determine what features will be in the product release.

As the old saying goes: ‘Time is money.’ In business, the correlation between time and earnings, or rather time wasting and loss of earnings, is crystal clear.Efficiency is a field dedicated to the idea of time management and how to get the most from your employees and from your company.Efficiency experts are often drafted into companies to take a long hard look at the personnel, their current utilization with the goal to ensure there aren’t any glaring leaks when it comes to planned vs. actual hours.If an efficiency expert is being called in, that means something has already gone wrong.

A project manager, it’s your job to know enough about this side of things to avoid needing to get to that stage.One of the most useful tools in that regard is a Time-Tracker of some sort; software that you can use to keep a tab on the work rate of your office or of certain teams on their projects.In the age of technology, there are so many options to choose from, so let’s take a look at a few now.OrangescrumOrangescrum is a popular & easy to use time tracking software.

It has many useful features such as agile project management, task management, resource management, time tracking and others.

It promises that you will be at least 30% more productive, something many users have witnessed themselves.All in all, very useful and surprisingly modern services that will help you improve your business life.

Read the full article at Orangescrum Blog

Orangescrum project management and collaboration tool has now launched the beta version of “Orangescrum Olympus” task management tool.Olympus is a major technology shift from PHP to best JS frameworks – React and Node to leverage speed, improved navigation and overall tool performance.We continue to listen and act on the feedback received from our ever growing active user base to strengthen remote work capabilities of remote teams globally.“Our teams are now more adept in remote project management with the use of Orangescrum collaboration tool throughout the COVID-19 work from home situation.

We actually saved around 7-9hours per resource per week because of Orangescrum, says Muhammad Syahmeer, Head PMO, Resonant Networks, Singapore.”Moving on, we decided to enable faster task management and time tracking with Olympus while we continue to build ore features for future releases.What’s in it for YOU?Olympus is currently free for all till we release a pricing plan and you can invite unlimited users to your account to continue to manage tasks effectively.

Our existing customers are also welcome to sign up and try it out for themselves.Olympus currently offers the following key features:Unlimited Projects, tasks and sub-tasksUnlimited Users (for a limited time)Task ManagementTime TrackingKanban@MentionsProject ManagementYou can create projects quickly with a Project Name, Short Name, Start and End dates, Priority and a project owner.Also, in the project portfolio list view you can see all projects along with all the above information and the estimated and spent hours and project status as well.Task ManagementOlympus offers robust task management capabilities with sub-tasks, time tracking and @Mention.You can also upload documents to the tasks.

You can mention your task collaborators and other team members in the task comment, description as required.The task list allows for inline edit of key columns such as assignee, status, priority and due dates.Associated features such as custom filters, order by, sort by and show/hide fields help you get directly to the key task information you are looking for.Another key benefit is that you can see the full task details right from the task list view without any additional navigation.

Thus task updates, tracking and overall task management becomes swift and efficient.Agile Project Management with Kanban BoardKanban board is another intuitive and quick way of task management.

You can promptly identify tasks in the to-do, in progress and done buckets.Also, easy drag and drop for task status updates across status columns leads to efficient status review and stand-up meetings.A notable feature in the Kanban is to directly add tasks under a relevant task status bucket for quicker status update.So whether you missed logging a task you already worked on or need to create one for your teammate do it right from the Kanban board.What’s next?Introduce your teams to the all new Orangescrum Olympus beta version for a robust task collaboration and management experience.

If small wins give you a dopamine kick, so will achieving Project Milestones!Ever observed the signboards on the sides of highways indicating your completed and upcoming milestone?

They help us keep our spirits high, assuring that we’re on the right path.

This is exactly what Project Milestones do!When it comes to team projects, the success of a project milestone largely depends on how well is a project workflow managed.According to Project Management Institute, it’s evident that 37% of projects fail due to a lack of clearly defined objectives and milestones.

This being said, by setting manageable yet productive milestones, achieving project targets becomes a piece of cake.What is a Project Milestone?Project Milestones are achievements or the completion of a major phase in a project.

They serve as checkpoints on your project timeline.

Additionally, they help you easily identify the current stage of your project plus how far you are from completion.

The very need for having a “team” or groups of employees in a company is testimony to the fact that the “I” cannot achieve what the “We” can.

Rightfully so, team collaboration is the corner stone to help you achieve and excel in a sustainable manner.As leaders, managers, project managers we focus heavily on getting the strategy right, making robust plans with no scope of error, breakdown our plan to the smallest of chunk possible and deploy the best of processes and tools to track each aspect of our project.However, the success of the plan primarily boils down to the team executing it.We all deploy the most fancy of tools and processes at our workplace but how much of it do we bae into our plans.Have you seen a project plan with any mention of the so called collaboration factor?The point being, it is an unspoken, unwritten assumption by all of us.

Because we know we cannot go far without it.The question now becomes, how effective are we in enabling collaboration at the workplace?Let us take cognizance of the contributions project management collaboration makes to the success of a project.Projects are executed by the “Project Team”To have the individual members of the project work as a team, we need to ensure they first stay as one.

"No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team."

– Reid HoffmanWhat should be some of the parameters to look for in a collaborative workplace?Easy access to InformationWe live in a world where information is power.

Imagine a project carried out by over jealous team members who hold all information for the sake of losing relevance.