To claim that the agile approach drives better performance and efficiency is a sound argument.
A survey by McKinsey shows that 93% of all business units that adopted an agile approach before Covid-19 did better than those that didn’t. Additionally, the Harvard Business Review found that agile CEOs were able to spend more time on strategy (up to 4x more) and less time on operations, which maximizes their value-add to the company.
While adopting an agile approach is not a miracle cure-all for whatever inefficiencies are plaguing your company, it is a credible method that has been proven to help businesses work more productively. Since collaboration is a core principle in the Agile manifesto, you need to look at tools and strategies that can facilitate collaboration to build successful agile teams.
If your teams utilize Microsoft 365 software or Atlassian’s Confluence, then you know that there are definitely areas across the platforms that could help your agile teams thrive and collaborate effectively.
Below are five must-have collaboration tools for your agile teams!
1. SharePoint Connector for Confluence
If your company is using both SharePoint and Confluence, you’ve probably run into these issues before. With no synchronicity between both platforms, your team members waste precious time searching for multiple documents and files located across the two. Since new document versions are also not tracked automatically between both platforms, cross-collaboration is also negatively affected.
For example, you made a last-minute change to a press release in SharePoint, but the older version located on Confluence was released by your company before you could update it. In this case, you should check out this app that links them both and enables you to leverage both of their strengths.
SharePoint Connector for Confluence at work
Features
- Instantly embed, share and edit SharePoint documents in your wiki
- Upload files to SharePoint directly from within your Confluence page
- Simply embed a list or document library from SharePoint and browse the files from within a Confluence page
- Easily embed Confluence Cloud pages in SharePoint web parts and pages with just a few clicks
Price
It starts off at a flat rate of USD 0.50 per user monthly. The price per user decreases the more users there are in your team, to a floor of USD 0.18 per user for 15000 users and above.
2. Link Spotter
According to IDC data, the knowledge worker spends about 2.5 hours per day (or roughly 30% of the workday) searching for information. That isn’t surprising given that most workers generally have trouble locating documents. It should come as no surprise then that most workers also have problems locating website links on Microsoft Teams.
Since lots of knowledge is shared into the Microsoft Teams pool every day in the form of external links, it is very disadvantageous to the company should this knowledge be lost. Never lose track of these links again with Link Spotter!
Link Spotter in action
Features
- Simply search for the author or a keyword and the app will show you all available URLs.
- Link Spotter can also gather all links that are shared within a channel in a single tab
- Directly start working with the link, copy it, or join the conversation with your team members.
Price
The first month is free, then USD 0.15 per user every month.
3. Miro
Whiteboards have been proven to facilitate collaborative efforts during virtual meetings effectively, hence the explosion in the number of digital whiteboard applications. Being able to express your ideas visually adds a different element during meetings; it improves engagement and the overall experience. Since meetings are a staple of agile teams, you should consider a digital whiteboard app like Miro to help maximize the productivity of your agile teams.
Here’s how Miro works
Features
- Whiteboarding tools like sticky notes, a pen, shapes, arrows, and smart drawing that let you easily co-create
- 200+ best-practice templates to help you easily facilitate brainstorming, agile rituals, design-thinking activities, and strategic planning
- Integrations for your favorite tools including Office 365, Azure DevOps, and OneDrive to streamline your workflows and see the big picture of your projects
Price
Miro works on a freemium model. The paid version has additional features and increased security – which starts from USD 8 per month.
4. Ant Text Email Template
With the rise of social media, email can often be seen as an afterthought or even a relic. However, the statistics paint a different picture. More people than ever are sending/receiving emails as a means of communication. Agile teams are no exception to this rule.
Studies have shown that a longer time spent on email affects productivity, which can be a result of fixing inconsistencies with the branding and voice of the company, or failing to templatize simple emails. As such, it’s crucial you consider this app to remedy these issues.
Here’s what you can do with Ant Text
Features
- Build your own email templates and share them with the rest of your organization.
- Add your own company visual identity to your appointments and schedules with professional and consistent templates.
- Create visual emails as Out Of Office messages.
Price
The basic version starts at USD 14.99 per user. The business version costs USD 18.99 per user.
5. User Profiles for Confluence
Imagine you’re on Confluence and you notice an error in a document prepared by someone working on the same project but from a different department. You need them to fix it ASAP but you don’t know how to contact them. You call the only person in that department you know – but he’s not available. You desperately call on a few others before you manage to reach the right person. Think of the amount of time you just wasted.
Since user contact details are not readily available on Confluence, it can be a hassle to reach out to them. This app will make the problem above a thing of the past!
Check out these User Profiles!
Features
- Synchronization enables you to pull pictures, email addresses, and business phone numbers directly from Microsoft 365.
- The Contact Person Macro makes it easy to display and identify the colleagues in charge of a certain topic in Confluence Cloud.
- You can start conversations directly from profile macros using links to Microsoft Teams.
- You can view recent Teams status to check your colleagues availability.
Price
It starts off at a flat rate of USD 0.50 per user monthly. The price per user decreases the more users there are in your team, till a floor of USD 0.03 per user monthly for 15000 users and above.
What’s Next For You?
Supercharge your agile teams by improving their processes and workflow. Try out the apps above now!