Compilation of tools of interest to any agile practitioner who works under scrum
I will start by making a confession: while I was drafting this article in my head, I realized that this could very well have been a TikTok or an X thread (I still call it Twitter). If at this moment you decide not to continue reading, I will understand you perfectly. But if you are interested, I have been working on compiling tools and prompts that facilitate the daily work of those who operate in an agile environment (and some bonus tracks).
It is no less important to mention that none of the tools that I shared below really replace the real interaction with the team: the expertise and sensitivity of the people who make up an agile cell is a factor that AI will never be able to replace. What I share is aimed at having tools that allow versatility and room for movement for teams in agile, remote work contexts, etc.
Daily
Let’s start with something simple. If there is an iconic ceremony in scrum – but it is not always well carried out – that is the daily standup: a meeting that usually becomes the contact point of the team and – if properly guided – is vital to understand the status of the sprint, as well as to raise points of interest and limit risks early. If we add remote work into this, daily sessions -over time- tend to become routine. That’s why our friend GeekBot (https://geekbot.com/) arrives, a simple tool that integrates with Teams or Slack and allows you to automate daily sessions, surveys and works really well in English and Spanish. For the daily ceremonies, it is basically a robot that asks you the formalities of the standup and shares the outputs through the defined channel (slack channel, team group, email, etc.). It’s ideal for project management with teams segregated in different time zones, since the tool automates reports after carrying out the daily with all team members.
Sprint Plannings
This is a tool that I recommend under very particular contexts, such as when there is a lot of uncertainty or when adequate profiling for a product has not been achieved. It receives a general description as input , and ends up making visible epics and tasks that can give clarity to those who are starting out on how to approach the first iterations of a project. Taskade (https://www.taskade.com/) is capable of shaping a sprint practically from scratch.
The big con here is that, if good input is not given, it can result in tasks that have little or no meaning. However, if an important job of detailing the objective and meaning of the product we seek to develop is done, we will surely find a good starting point. It’s especially important to be responsible in the use of this tool (as with any AI tool) and thoroughly review the output generated and complement those results with our global understanding of the project.
Meetings
Like it or not, the agile life (whatever role you play) is full of meetings, so any help that allows us to get quick interpretations and coherently record the results of the meetings is welcome. Several tools are now available, and I want to highlight the capabilities of Otter (https://otter.ai/) which, beyond its restrictions to interpret languages other than English, is a tool that has a lot of potential when it comes to making detailed meeting records and makes it easier to share conclusions. It enables us to underscore comments and connects natively to both Teams and Google calendar.
Another very interesting tool is Fireflies (https://fireflies.ai/), whose best feature could be the search function which allows you to review hour-long calls in just a few minutes. It can also identify and allow you to find action items and other important highlights. It comes with a Chrome extension that allows you to record directly from the browser.
I think the expression “this meeting could have been an email” is more common than we would like, such as in situations in which we must discuss a particular feature, add comments and allow us to do async meetings that could take a long time. We can use Loom, a tool that makes work meetings more efficient by allowing the creation of short and clear videos to communicate ideas, updates and feedback. And if you want to include AI, Loom IA is a powerful plugin that will allow you to quickly report bugs in JIRA to transform videos into documents with a list of tasks or documentation.
Some other helpful prompts
Now, if it’s about the challenge, there is a generally accepted consensus that retrospectives are the most demanding ceremonies to carry out. A good retro results in important advances and team performance. And although no tool is capable of managing retros, there are reliable prompts that help us not lose sight of elements that will help us structure more fruitful retrospective sessions.
And well, the prompts for retros are just an example of the entire battery of tools that the friends of Age Of Product have shared, truly really useful prompts for any purpose.
Let’s show off the skills we have for creating prompts. In our case we could start with something like:
“I want you to act as an experienced Scrum Master. Please [insert task here.]”
Where the tasks could be something like:
- Design a Retrospective.
- Design a Retrospective with stakeholders from [Stakeholder departments.]
- Recommend activities to make Sprint Retrospectives engaging and productive.
From now on, the sky’s the limit; you could try asking how ChatGPT would ask itself (playing the role of SM) how to set up a retrospective, for example. In short, they are all ways to extricate any moment of blockage in situations of uncertain retrospectives.
Bonus for devs…
At this point we already have some tools that would serve as a support point in case we are stuck with a situation or need to oxygenate the team or decompress daily tasks. Now, I’m going to allow myself to go a little outside the agile tasks to recommend something that my developer friends might find interesting: Google has developed an IDE for development, whose main feature is that it is a 100% online IDE. Therefore, all processing capacity is outside the computer with which we are working. It’s IDX (https://idx.dev/) and among its great advantages is the easy setting of projects, it takes collaborative work to another level (it is like building a .doc in Drive, but with development projects) and -since it is a Google product- complete integration with Gemini could not be missing.
In short, integrating AI and automation tools into scrum can transform the way agile teams operate, increasing efficiency and improving collaboration, especially in remote environments. Although these tools do not replace human interaction or the experience of team members, they are an interesting support when it comes to optimizing processes and freeing up time for more strategic and creative work. We know well that agile is largely about knowing how to adapt, the key is to use these tools wisely, complementing human strengths and fostering a culture of continuous improvement.
Curious to see how this can apply to your projects? Contact us for an insightful conversation at hello@arionkoder.com