According to a survey performed by KPMG and Forrester only 34% of decision-makers say they feel confident in their data …

A sad state of affairs.

Fortunately for the 66% of decision-makers who cannot rely upon their data, there is an answer *drum roll please* . . . the Enlightenment . . . of data.✨

Who would’ve known a school of thought that revolutionized the 17th and 18th centuries could be harvested to optimize our present-day data management?

“The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centered on the sovereignty of reason.” Dorinda Outram, Panorama of the Enlightenment

Governed by a philosophy of rationality the Age of Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Reason) made decisions based upon a single source of power or primary source of knowledge. The source of truth and knowledge in this instance was determined by the senses.

Single Source of Truth or SSOT, the focus of this Process Street blog post, also takes the sovereign approach.

However, rather than the senses, the sovereign power for SSOT is a reliance on un-replicated, autonomous, self-contained, and enhanced data.

To find out more about SSOT and how it can enlighten your data processes, keep reading.

Alternatively, to jump to a specific section of the post, click the appropriate link below.

• The path to Data Enlightenment
• ‎What is Single Source of Truth
• The role of data for Single Source of Truth
• ‎How to obtain a Single Source of Truth
• ‎Single Source of Truth in practice
• ‎Single Source of Truth is Data Enlightenment

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From sprints to cycles, and from product backlogs to …well…no backlog at all. These are just a couple of examples of the differences between Shape Up and agile approaches such as Scrum.

But, what exactly is Shape Up? How does it, when put into practice, differ from Scrum?

Our development team here at Process Street recently made the move from Scrum to Shape Up and I asked them how the two compare. This post outlines the key takeaways from the team and takes a closer look at what Shape Up is as a whole.

To jump to a specific section, click the appropriate link below:

• A re-cap on the Scrum workflow
• What is Shape Up?
• How does Shape Up work?
• Scrum vs Shape Up
• Shape Up at Process Street
• Key takeaways: From Scrum to Shape Up

Alternatively, to read the whole post – just keep on scrolling. 🚀
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This is a guest post written by Ashley Ferro, a freelance content writer & copywriter specializing in SEO content marketing.

There’s nothing more frustrating to a project manager than witnessing the slow, painful death of a healthy project to the beast known as scope creep. When last minute changes transform their straightforward, A-to-B project plan into a sprawling mess of up-ended sprint plans and gold-plated feature requests, branching out in all directions with no concern for time or resources.

In one extreme example, the head contractor for the extension of a city library ended up actually suing their client in a scope-creep induced rage, claiming that their almost 55-week delay was a direct result of the large number of last minute changes.

In order for a project to be successfully completed on time, the project manager and their team need to agree on a clearly defined project scope before getting started.

However, life isn’t so straight forward and changes to the project will inevitably need to happen.

But additional problems can arise if the changes aren’t dealt with properly.

Scope creep can quietly sneak its way into your project and set your team down an unproductive and self-destructive path, wasting your company’s resources, missing deadlines, weakening team communication and, ultimately, ruining any chance of your project’s success.

So what can you do to avoid this fate, and overcome scope creep once and for all?

In this Process Street article, we’ll be covering everything you need to know scope creep–from what (and who) causes it, to how to manage it, even in an agile environment where change is embraced.

We’ll be covering:

• What is scope creep?
• How different stakeholders can contribute to scope creep
• What are some common causes of scope creep?
• Most effective ways to manage scope creep
• What we can learn from Agile to prevent scope creep?
• Using Process Street to avoid scope creep
• Additional project management resources

If, however, you’re struggling with planning your own projects and want a quick solution, grab our free Project Request Form Template below!

So, let’s get started with the basics!

507 blog posts.

That’s how many items our team has created, edited, and published since implementing Scrumban.

Before we set up our system, we were mostly scrabbling to get items together from week-to-week, without knowing what we’d be working on next.

Now, we’re always 3 weeks ahead of our publishing calendar, have built our blog to over 130,000 subscribers, and have expanded our team by over 300%.

That’s why we here at Process Street will take you through this (practically new) method for managing your team and projects.

We’ll cover:

• The basics of Scrumban
• The pros and cons of Scrumban
• How to implement Scrumban

If you want a sneak preview of how we’ve deployed Scrumban, I’ll give you a hint. It’s got something to do with the Sprint Planning checklist below (which you can grab for free!)…

Let’s get started!
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You’ve heard of the moonwalk. But have you heard of the Gemba Walk?

From a business standpoint, the Gemba Walk is infinitely more useful (though the moonwalk is pretty cool).

Specifically, the Gemba Walk allows businesses to continuously improve how they do things by remedying their processes, procedures, and workflows for recurring tasks. The continual process improvements that Gemba Walking brings helps businesses exponentially – 1 in 4 improvements save time, and 1 in 10 improvements save money.

And this is all achieved by simply stepping back, rather than blindly pushing forward.

Want to know more?

I thought so.

In this post, I’ll tell you what Gemba Walk means, the origins of it, its benefits, and how Process Street can help both remote and physical businesses do the Gemba Walk.

Just read through the following sections to get clued up:

• What is a Gemba Walk?
• The origin of Gemba Walks
• The 3 elements of a Gemba Walk
• The benefits of Gemba Walks (& lean management)
• Undergoing process improvement with Process Street!

Now, let’s sprint through the rest of the post! 🏃‍♂️

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“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped.” – Eric Moody, British Airways Captain, Business Insider

The words no one wants to hear when they’re tightly strapped into an aluminum tube, flying at 900kph, 35,000 feet up in the air.

One in three Americans either feels anxious or scared to fly and 73% are fearful of mechanical problems during flight.

“On a flight from Kiev to Toronto, several screws fell out of the ceiling onto my lap…When air started sucking out of a loose seam around my window, I really started to panic.” – Nate Drescher, The Travel

But air travel in the United States is the safest in the world. The odds of dying in a car accident are about one in 5,000. The odds of dying in a plane crash are about one in 11,000,000.

So, putting our fears aside for a second, why is flying the safest way to travel?

Well, partly because of the advances in aircraft design, technology, and engineering, but mostly because of Aerospace Standard (AS) 9100. The International Quality Management System standard for the Aviation, Space, and Defense industry.

“A person would have to fly on average once a day every day for 22,000 years before they would die in a U.S. commercial airplane accident” – Dr. Arnold Barnett, FlyFright

Whether you’re an avid flyer, an aviation expert, or an aerospace supplier, join me as we fly through the following AS9100 topics:

• What is AS9100 and where on earth did it come from?
• The 5 orbital differences between AS9100 and ISO 9001
• AS9100 certification, it’s not rocket science
• AS9100 and Process Street: The sky’s the limit

Fix your seat in an upright position, fasten your seatbelt, and prepare for take-off…

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Bread. Beer. Bacon. *Homer Simpson voice* Mmm, bacon…

No matter what tasty food product your business is creating (or helping to create), a robust food safety management system is essential.

Why?

Because without one, you could be exposing your food to risks and hazards that are both life-threatening for your consumers (420,000 people die each year due to contaminated foods), and business-destroying for you. Plus, by not having a food safety management system in place, you’ll lose pivotal trade opportunities with others in the food industry.

To ensure you have a food safety management system in place – and that it’s up to scratch – there’s FSSC 22000.

In this post, you’ll discover what FSSC 22000 actually is, why it’s so important, how a GFSI recognized certification will benefit you, and how Process Street can help with it all.

Make your way through the following sections to get clued up:

• What is FSSC 22000?
• What’s the difference?: FSSC 22000 vs ISO 22000
• What a GFSI recognized certification means for you
• The additional positives of FSSC 22000 certification
• Achieve FSSC 22000 certification with Process Street!

Now, it’s time to taco about FSSC 22000 and food safety! 🌮

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Implementing a quality management system (QMS) is an important investment companies cannot overlook.

One Harvard Business Review study found that companies with an ISO 9001 certification have much higher rates of “corporate survival, sales, employment growth, and wage increases than a matched group of non-adopters.”

For instance, 65% of companies save $25,000 or more in costs within their first year of implementing a QMS.

Adopting a QMS software can also boost efficiency and consistency of work, increase customer satisfaction, raise product value, and reduce unnecessary costs and overall risks.

A good quality management system is all about achieving a quality-driven culture within your company, and as a result, making your product better and marketing it faster. But in order to access these benefits, it’s important that you choose the right QMS solution for you and your company.

In this Process Street article, we’ll be going over the foundation of everything you need to know before choosing your quality management system software.

We’ll be covering:

• What is a quality management system (QMS)?
• Agile QMS
• Best QMS software
• Build your agile QMS with Process Street

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ISO 9001; you may have heard of it. You may be somewhat afraid of it. And, if you’re reading this article, chances are you’re probably at least somewhat confused about how to actually implement it.

It’s possible you even Googled something like “what is ISO 9001?”. Perhaps you felt you knew at one point, but the important bits never really stuck.

Well, with the 2015 updates to a whole range of ISO standards, it’s a lot less scary.

Before now, if you wanted to implement any ISO standard, you’d have to undertake a lengthy process involving unwieldy paper manuals and cumbersome bureaucratic procedure.

In short, ISO 9001 was hardly agile.

Now, you have far more flexibility to implement ISO 9001 the way that works for you best; with BPM software like Process Street to make things streamlined and simple.

This is why we’re presenting you with this handy overview of ISO 9001, including all of the essentials you need to get started.

We’ll cover how to combine structured compliance with the rapid process improvement of a startup, including:

• Free ISO 9001 Templates
• What is ISO 9001? The most popular QMS standard
• Benefits of implementing ISO 9001
• Quality management with ISO 9001: Key principles
• ISO 9001 certification: Is it necessary?
• Agile ISO 9001 in 5 simple steps
• More ISO resources

Before we dive in, here’s some free templates to help you hit the ground running!
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You’ll often hear the question: “Which is better? Kanban or Scrum?” or variations of this eternal deathmatch between two of the most well-established agile methodologies.

People are wasting energy fighting over which methodology trumps another. If you’re an agile organization, you should be placing principle above practice.

It makes a lot of sense to ask questions like “why might I want to use Kanban over Scrum?”, or even “Kanban and Scrum” as opposed to “Kanban vs Scrum”. There are a lot of differences between the two, but fundamentally, they are both agile methodologies, and the principle behind why you might want to use both can be in alignment.

You may even find they can work well together, as part of a unified strategy referred to as Scrumban. You need to consider what approach will work best for your team.

My aim with this article is to approach the question of “Kanban vs Scrum” by clearly presenting both approaches in terms of when, how, and why you might choose to use either of them.

I’ll also talk about the capacity for overlapping Kanban and Scrum approaches, and how some additional tools like Process Street can factor into that equation.

Here’s a breakdown of how we’ll approach comparing “Kanban vs Scrum”:

• What makes a team agile?
• What is Kanban?
• What is Scrum?
• Kanban vs Scrum: Differences
• Kanban vs Scrum: Similarities
• What is Kanban good for?
• When to use Kanban
• Kanban process
• What is Scrum good for?
• When to use Scrum
• Scrum process
• Using BPM for agility

Let’s start with a basic primer on what it means to be agile. Continue Reading