#which jira version am i using

[maxwell-grant]

The pulp origins of Godzilla

I am incredibly pleased to announce that, amidst my quest to find pulp characters across the world and the history of pulp across changing nations and time periods and audiences, I discovered that one of the biggest icons had actually been one of my favorite characters of all time ever and in plain sight all along: Godzilla.

Yup, you heard me right, Godzilla is a pulp character. And no, this isn’t me stretching the barely-existent definition of pulp hero to encompass a character I like and want to talk about, as I usually do. No, this time I stumbled onto a piece of information that lets me make this claim with veracity. 

Meet the first version of Godzilla ever created: The Godzilla of the 1954 pulp novel Gojira, by Shigeru Kayama, one of Japan’s most prominent pulp writers at the time. Published about a month before the film, and the first version of Godzilla ever officially released to the public. 

The following excerpts are taken from the Project Kayama website, where you can find the novel available for reading

In the 1950s, Kayama was one of Japan’s preeminent science-fiction authors. 

In 1952, Kayama published a particularly bizarre and horrific tale: a story in which a large, lizard-like monster that stands upright on two legs wrecks terrifying havoc on the residents of a pacific island. The story’s name was Jira Monster, and both its name and plot foreshadowed the cinematic beast that was to come. 

It was his talents that Toho producer Tomoyuki Tanaka sought out after deciding to pursue the creation of a giant monster film. 

A mere 11 days after accepting the assignment, Kayama had completed his 50-page outline. The manuscript – stamped as CONFIDENTIAL and titled G-Sakuhin Kentoyo Daihan (G-Production Script for Examination) was submitted to Toho before the end of May.

As many G-fans know, much was changed from Kayama’s original concept. By the time Godzilla went before cameras, the monster itself had evolved from a vague, reptilian beast with flappy ears and a hunger for cattle into an allegorical destroyer whose lack of clear motivation was its greatest terrifying strength. Dr. Yamane, originally conceived as a mysterious, cloak-wearing weirdo living in a gothic mansion, had transformed into the distinguished and kindly Takashi Shimura.

Despite the changes that Ishiro Honda and writer Takeo Murata would make to the tale, the basic structure and flow of the plot remained the same. It was Kayama who envisioned Japanese fishing ships sinking amidst radioactive fire, an island where a giant beast-god is worshipped by fearful villagers, the deadly fire that spews forth from Godzilla’s mighty maw, and a terrifying new super weapon whose use against the monster leads to the heroic suicide of a war-scarred scientist.

Upon its release, Godzilla became a smash hit. But a little over a week before Japanese audiences got their first cinematic look at the monster, the story was already available to the public in the form of a full novelization.

First published via Iwatani on October 25, 1954, Kaiju Gojira (Monster Godzilla) was penned by Shigeru Kayama, but retained little of his original vision for the story. This adaptation of the original Godzilla drew from two different sources: Honda and Murata’s initial script for the film, and Toshi Tatsuno’s serialized radio-drama adaptation of the same script.

August Ragone, writer of EIJI TSUBURAYA: MASTER OF MONSTERS, additionally writes

Actually, there is literally tons of concrete evidence of the Japanese equivalent of American pulps. These have been chronicled in books on the history of Bokura magazine (and other such nostalgic retrospectives), as well as books on the Post War period and children's toys and hobbies of the Post War (1950-1970).

As soon as the war ended, a number of Japanese editions of American publications, such as Amazing Stories began to flood the market -- as well as Japanese-penned stories (Japanese children were especially fascinated by tales of the American Wild West, Science Fiction and Jungle Adventures)

During and after the war, there were numerous cheaply-printed, garish periodicals aimed at children -- not to be confused with manga (comic books), which contained exciting illustrated stories. These continued into the 1960s, but slowly absorbed as features of larger weekly or monthly manga anthologies, mostly containing serialized comics (the size of phone books), and were largely phased out by the 1980s.

In fact let’s look at the whole process behind Godzilla’s debut on pop culture again: Started off with an idea, that then became a novel, partially based on a radio drama, and then made a big hit as a film. That is exactly the kind of trajectory most of the pulp heroes took when getting adaptations outside of their original material. It’s the same trajectory that The Shadow followed, from book to radio to film. Vastly different circumstances that led to them getting there, sure, and Godzilla’s obviously grown into something much more vast and influential than his origins, like other pulp-influenced properties that broke big into the mainstream, but the fact remains that Godzilla began life, first made his debut in pop culture, as a pulp character, by the most exact definition possible.

Not that I actually ever needed an excuse to talk about Godzilla, my other favorite character of all time, and of course I have a “Shadow meets Godzilla” post on the pipeline because of this, but this really was a revelation that threw a lot of things into context for me. 

Actually, not just Godzilla. Turns out, my other other favorite character of all time, Mothra, also had a start in magazines. As a serialized novel written in 1961 called The Luminous Fairies and Mothra, that eventually got adapted and turned into a feature film. Which only makes sense especially considering Mothra has an incredibly similar story to King Kong, which is commonly put side by side with pulp characters, and the kaiju’s connection to Kong has reemerged time and time again.

And you can bet I have a lot of further things to say about this, but that’s for a different post. I’m just sitting here unreasonably happy that I finally found a reason to put The Shadow and Godzilla in the same room (not that I needed one).

[theguidedpath]

Top 5 DevOps Tools to quickly Jumpstart your DevOps Career

As companies are being digitized, the need for DevOps has increased at a tremendous rate. The future of IT companies is now dependent on the DevOps approach, making it the most demanding job at this time. The market has grown from 40–45 percent within the last five years, increasing the DevOps demand.

If you are believing that you have effectively missed the DevOps flight and presently no chance exist for new applicants, I am glad to let you know that you still have time and also a lot of scope to make a rewarding career into the DevOps domain.

Here I reveal Top Five tools that you need to ace to pursue a DevOps engineer career.

These are the five tools that you will be using daily, and you need to have the knowledge on how to work on them, which includes both hands-on knowledge and also theoretical knowledge. But mostly having hands-on experience is very important.

So, whenever you get the job, you can sit and work on these tools to prove yourself.

The very first tool I would say would be.

DevOps tool #1: Jira

Jira is commonly used by businesses and companies all around the world.

It is a complete Project Management tool in which you can distribute your workflows and workloads within projects and within teams.

Also, in Jira you can have different kinds of tickets, issues, epics stories and different tasks that are assigned to different team members and different teams regarding their own specific projects. It is a simple and easy to learn tool.

So, I would say, for a DevOps Engineer position you should know how to use Jira.

Now the second tool on this list would be

 

#2: Git or GitHub

GitHub is a commonly known repository tool, many companies use it for the repositories to store and version control their code.

In GitHub you have an option to either make your repositories public, or you can keep them private.  It totally depends on your company’s policies. If your organization decides to make the repository public, the code stays on cloud. Otherwise for private repositories, GitHub Enterprise needs to be setup by the organization on one of their data centers.

I would say GitHub is a really good tool that you should know how to use. Especially you need to know,

How To

Create New Repository

Store code in the repository

Clone the code on your local machine

Make changes in your local copy

Create Pull Requests and push the code to the remote repository after code reviews.

You also need to know all the basic Git commands like

Git status

Git add

Git commit

Git Push

Git Pull

Git Fetch

So, these are some basic git commands that you need to know.

For example,

Scenario 1: If you want to fetch a repository from GitHub to your local machine how would you

do that?

Scenario 2: If you want to push your local code to remote GitHub repository, how would you do that?

Apart from these, there are other important things in GitHub that are worth practicing like Web Hooks etc.,

These kind of basic activities in GitHub and ability to nonchalantly run the git commands on the terminal would be must for you to survive in a DevOps Engineer role.

So, moving on to the third tool in this list.

#3: Any Cloud Platform

It can be MS Azure or AWS or GCP or RedHat Open Shift etc.,

You have a variety of cloud platforms to choose from. But you should completely focus on one. Simply

start gaining hands-on experience on it.

Personally, I have learned AWS. I also have AWS certification as an Associate Solution Architect in AWS. The certification itself demands hands-on experience on AWS and that will be thoroughly tested in the certification exam.

Also, my current position as a DevOps engineer. I have mostly worked on AWS, along with Containerization, Orchestration, Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD). Also having hands-on experience on Storage and database is a must.

Having experience and thorough knowledge on at least one cloud provider is a must for a DevOps Engineer currently. Although, I personally recommend AWS, you can choose any provider that you can get your hands on.

Moving on to the fourth one, which is Jenkins.

#4: Jenkins

Jenkins is a CI tool which is Continuous Integration tool.

You can integrate it with AWS (or any cloud platform), GitHub, and many other tools to achieve CI/CD pipeline. Therefore, as a DevOps Engineer you need to at least know

How to use Jenkins

How to create jobs in Jenkins

How to create builds on Jenkins

How to integrate it with AWS or even GitHub

So, with Jenkins you can create Continuous Integration Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines

for your business. So, once the developer pushes the code to GitHub repository, the pipeline job is automatically trigger through Jenkins and it updates your application.

Jenkins is a great tool to learn. Although, it is easy to learn and master Jenkins, it is a very critical tool for any organization to practice DevOps. Therefore, you should dedicate a major amount of time and effort in learning and mastering this tool.

Now, the fifth tool on this list would be any Containerization tool which can be Docker in conjunction with Kubernetes.

#5: Docker and Kubernetes

As you might already know containerization is growing rapidly throughout the cloud platform and DevOps world.

Docker makes it easy to deploy your app or Microservice on Cloud.

Kubernetes makes it easier to deploy your app on hundreds of servers.

Besides Docker, if there is another tool or technology which has caught software developers’ attention in recent times then it must be Kubernetes.

Docker also helps with DevOps because it simplifies deployment and scaling, and that’s why Every DevOps engineer should learn Docker.

Kubernetes is a portable, extensible, open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services, that facilitates both declarative configuration and automation.

So that is it, get to know these tools, have your hands on them, get your hands wet, run into issues, resolve those issues and master these tools to land into your DevOps Engineer job.

For a complete guide on starting your career as a DevOps Engineer. Click here and enter your name and email to download the eBook ‘Guided path to DevOps career’.

[askagamedev]

Hey, although I have worked on a few solo projects before, I am now starting a team project with a couple of friends on Unity. Unfortunately, we don't really know how to approach the collaboration aspect of game development. I was hoping you could shine some light on how a development team should be working together and properly managing/updating a game throughout the whole game development process. Is there a standard to how we should be doing things to keep the process organized. Thank you!

What you really need for organization is a way to keep all of the project files in order so that you don’t accidentally break the project by accident, and then you need a way to keep all of the future work you need to do so you don’t accidentally waste time or forget to do something important. 

The first thing you really need is a revision control system. It’s a piece of software that manages and stores different versions of relevant files in the project. This way you have backups of each file that you can revert back to if something breaks. It also means that the team members can look at the differences between files to see what changes were made by whom over time, in case the project was working yesterday and became broken today. Keeping everything stable and everyone working from a common set of file versions is imperative for managing a project. One of the more common and inexpensive options is Github - it allows people to share code and assets over the internet. They even have a Unity plugin and setup for Unity projects.

The second thing you need is a task management system. This is a way of visibly splitting work up into discrete tasks and subtasks, tracking task progress, prioritizing tasks, and letting your team see who is responsible for which task. For example, if you wanted to add a Level Up system to your game, you’d need to break it into different parts. There’s the UI elements to display relevant information when you level up, a system that manages how much XP each character has, the formula that determines how much experience is needed to level, the defined rewards you get at each level up, and so on. Not all of these tasks need to be completed by the same person; if you have multiple developers, it is very possible to divvy the tasks up between them so that they can work concurrently. Creating, tracking, marking, and verifying tasks is an important organizational aspect of any project - so much so that we have an entire career path in the industry dedicated to doing it for teams. We usually call them producers. Many studios use software solutions like JIRA for handling this sort of work, but you can also use a spreadsheet or even a text document. 

Since we can’t read each others’ minds, much of project management is making communication between team members easier and assisting team members with remembering what they need to know. Most teams need this help for their files and for their tasks. These kind of tasks require a significant amount of time spent to keep on top of them but it is far better to spend the time planning than fixing a broken project, dealing with wasted work, or realizing that the work that has been done can’t be used.

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The FANTa Project is being rebooted. [What is the FANTa project?]

Got a burning question you want answered?

Short questions: Ask a Game Dev on Twitter

Long questions: Ask a Game Dev on Tumblr

Frequent Questions: The FAQ

[anuta-taylor-blog]

Should you build or buy a network automation solution?

As networks grow in complexity, the demand for automation is ever increasing. Every network architect is looking for ways to eliminate tedious, error-prone manual operations and embrace automation to free time for more value-added activity. From onboarding multi-vendor,  multi-domain devices to monitoring, troubleshooting, and remediating network issues – automation has the capability to revolutionize networking.

When do you require network automation?

Are you excited about an entirely self-driven autonomous smart car?  Probably not. However, you probably appreciate automatic transmission as well as cruise control and other features that facilitate easy driving.  Much like smart cars, the journey towards network automation will be gradual. Are network architects and network administrators ready for a  self-driving network? Possibly, but most architects want some level of control in steering network operations and are unwilling to take the back seat. However, solutions that can automate mundane tasks are overwhelmingly welcomed. In a network world of multi-vendor infrastructure and devices, on-boarding, maintaining configuration, and detecting and remediating compliance violations becomes a daunting task. It is nearly impossible to monitor and troubleshoot a vast network manually or draw any insights given the lack of scalability. Automation tools have been trying to solve this challenge and have been successful in providing some value to the administrators. Tools such as Ansible help you push configuration changes to devices automatically. Netbox,  Github, and others help track configuration drifts, and Python is used to add intelligence into the automation framework. Collected network data can also be stored in open source time-series databases like  Prometheus and Influx, which when integrated with Grafana help provide visibility and insights into the network. While you can get started quickly with these tools and achieve some level of automation, what is required in the long run is a more robust and comprehensive automation solution.

What constitutes a comprehensive network automation solution?

Network administrators and architects have been test-driving various in-house,  open-sourced and commercial automation solutions for quite some time.  While some solutions are low code and easy to deploy, many lack the capacity and scalability for long term needs. On the other end of the spectrum, there are robust offerings equipped with shock absorbing and disaster recovery features, but they require a large footprint and have limited compatibility with only a small subset of vendors. A comprehensive network automation solution automates the complete end-to-end device and service lifecycle. Moreover, it can scale to support a large number of vendors as well as provision devices, collect specific network information, and provide analytics distinct to particular use cases. An easily scalable solution with a small footprint, allows network operators to start small and grow with automation confidence. Constant monitoring of all devices anticipates possible configuration, compliance or other network issues and automatically remediates issues with known solutions. The solution also integrates with ServiceNow, Jira, and other ticketing and billing systems to provide you a complete end to end closed-loop automation platform.

Look before you leap

The first instinct towards automating your network is the confidence that it can be done in-house with standard tools or custom scripting. Some common pitfalls include: Let’s try it ourselves. There is a ton of free automation tools. Many companies have done it internally. We have already automated a part of our network so why should we waste money by buying a packaged solution? While a homegrown automation solution might appear plausible initially, it may be wiser to ask the following questions:

How many automation tools can we learn and handle?  Each tool is specialized in its area – such as Ansible for configuration, Netbox for IPAM, Prometheus for database, and Python for intelligence. Comprehending and maintaining every tool can become cumbersome.

How much integration support do we get?  For a complete closed loop automation integration with ticketing/billing/OSS/BSS are the fundamental underlying requirements.  If the tools do not comprehend these capabilities, is the support readily available or will it have to be built?

How do I develop automation scripts? Developing an automation framework itself becomes a project on its own.  Significant resources will have to be allocated in order to plan for software versioning, maintenance, and upgrades of automation scripts.

How do we handle scripting issues? You have to worry not only about your network but also your script bugs that can adversely impact your automation system. You will have to learn low-level OS integrations to optimally scale scripts.

How many resources can I dedicate towards automation? A project of significant size and scope requires dedicated resources to create and maintain various automation scripts.

How much risk am I willing to take? A  project of this scale may take years to complete. Even then, it may not meet intent or expectations of the lines of businesses that are supported. Are you willing to risk failure?

Will my network get locked to a single vendor?  It’s easy to automate when there is uniformity. If all scripts are tailored towards a particular single vendor, it could become exceedingly difficult to move to other vendors that might bring a best of breed approach for a particular workflow or set of applications.

What happens if key team members leave? This is perhaps one of the most challenging questions to answer. If your key team members that designed and developed the automation system leave  the organization, how could it impact ongoing network operations?

When should you consider deploying a packaged automation solution?

Smaller networks might lend themselves to an internally developed automation solution, but maintenance and future scalability are still risk points.  On the other hand, larger, more extensive multi-vendor and multi-domain networks will benefit greatly from a packaged, microservices based automation solution. The following checklist might provide insight into determining the fit of a packaged solution:

Is there a need to automate more than 500 devices on a given network?

Are there more than 2 vendors in a given network?

Do network operations need to be tied to business operations? I.e. integration of network workflows with ServiceNow/Jira, etc.

Is a single pane of glass desired to manage a given network, or can it be managed with multiple, distributed interfaces?

Is efficient provisioning required to effectively scale an automation framework as a network grows?

Is network enhancement and future proofing a long term objective?

If the answer is yes to any of these questions, consider Anuta Networks ATOM for your network automation needs. Wantto learn more? Visit

www.anutanetworks.com

.

[itsbenedict]

Rendering the Incomprehensible Comprehensible

I am confused by the state of the art of psychiatric medicine.

Now, I'm not a psychiatrist. I'm a guy what makes computers is be do videogames, and I haven't taken a chemistry class since freshman year of college or a biology class since high school. Pretty much the extent of my knowledge of the field is that I read Slate Star Codex a lot. So, the questions I'm asking here are ones I have to assume actual professionals in the area have answers to.

That question being... why is it made of drugs?

I don't mean in an “oh, these are social problems and we must solve society and overthrow [racism/capitalism/millenialism/makesworldwrong] instead of medicating our free spirits” way. I mean in a... how do drugs work at all, kind of way? It makes sense they work for killing pathogens- all you have to do is come up with a poison that works on what you're trying to kill but not on the host. But for fixing the brain? What?

My model of drug discovery works something like this: 

- Scientists poke around at the brain and see a ton of hyper-complicated chemical processes happening in there, and make some educated guesses about what they're doing, based on measurements of levels of certain chemicals in certain places during certain mental states. They've got some vague ideas about what these chemicals are doing, but these are mostly statistical inferences and not detailed causal models. They look at these brain chemicals and how they move around, and infer that if they make some other chemicals that are shaped in specific ways, those chemicals will interfere with these other chemicals and make there be more or less of them under certain conditions. - Armed with these guesses, they go to the lab and synthesize these chemicals, and then spend billions of dollars running gigantic clinical trials to see if, maybe, putting a bunch of these new chemicals in the bloodstream will actually have anything like the desired effect. - Most of the time they don't, because these were just educated guesses based on simplified models, but with enough billions poured into running more trials, they'll eventually find a chemical they can p-hack into looking like it does something, and then exploit FDA regulations to get doctors to prescribe it for a thousand dollars a pill. Sometimes, if they're extremely lucky, they'll find something that has a positive effect that they don't need to statistically mutilate to show, and then we have a groundbreaking discovery.

I may just be super underinformed, but as I understand it... this process weirds me the hell out.

In my current job, I spend a lot of time fixing bugs in old websites. These websites are sometimes large and labyrinthine, full of old uncommented code some contractor wrote years ago before dropping off the face of the earth. This is, ignoring for a moment a completely unignorable difference in degree of complexity, kind of like trying to fix problems with the brain.

When I go in to fix a bug in a website, there's a lot of things I can do. I can look at the page's elements in the browser's dev tools. I can run the debugger and step through the code, looking at all the data and its values at any given point in time. I can go to the git repo and look back through previous versions of the code, to see what changes were made and when, in conjunction with Jira tickets describing what issue those changes were made to fix. And once I've figured out what's happening, I can go into the code, make changes, and see what effect they had.

Now, I can try to imagine what my job would be like if I had to do things like psychopharmacologists did.

First off, no making changes to the code. The code is compiled and minified and obfuscated and still three billion lines long. Even if I did figure out how to make desirable changes, that would be "digital eugenics" and I'd get fired.

Second, commit history only goes like three or four commits back, if I'm lucky. Previous commits have been deleted, since they're set to auto-recycle after a while and nobody knows how to turn that off.

Thirdly, no dev tools. I only have the rendered webpage itself, and when something goes wrong I have to kind of guess at whether it's a styling issue or a data issue or a connectivity issue or what.

What can I do, exactly? Well, I actually do have access to one of the dev tools, kind of: the Network tab. I can see the requests being made to the back-end API. Unfortunately, there is no API documentation, and the requests are just as obfuscated as the code. But I've also got Postman, and what I can kind of do is make my own requests to the API, to see what the output is and how it affects the system.

So, uh... hm, okay, I see a request being made to https://serotonin.presynapticneurone.neural.net. The data payload is gibberish, but I notice that when there's a lot of these requests happening, the webpage renders a little faster, and when there's not as many, it slows down. Maybe if I just copy the gibberish data and fake a bunch of my own requests, it'll go faster? ...Hm, okay, that kind of works on some pages but not others. Still, better than nothing- we have some users complaining about the site being slow, so let's just tell them to-

Oh, shit, wait, users don't know how computers work, I can't just tell them to spam Postman requests to the API endpoint. Um, okay, I'll write a little phone app that automatically spams the requests, and release that to users. Except- oh, for fuck's sake, I need to wait for FDApple to approve it for the app store, and they want us to prove that it works and doesn't contain malware. Except even I don't know if that works, so... okay, it's fine, we'll hire a bunch of testers and do a study that shows that overall it speeds things up, and doesn't kill anyone's machines. Good thing I work for a huge company that can afford to do that.

Aaaaaand here come the results, and- oh, god damn it, the study didn't achieve significance. Let me go get Steve, he can probably fudge the numbers here so the damn app store will let us release the fucking thing, we spent millions on those tests (and the tests of all the other interventions that turned out to do nothing because we didn't have enough information and guessed wrong), and we need to recoup our investment.

Sigh.

So... I'm hearing that the ROI on drug discovery is dropping, and that drug companies have pretty much given up on trying to fix things and have started repackaging the handful of blind hacky API spam tricks that miraculously have a consistent effect. This isn't surprising to me. I would not be surprised if, like, after decades of people banging their heads against a massively overcomplicated system, hitting it with differently-shaped hammers in hopes of getting anything to work... they've found most of the differently-shaped hammers that do anything.

At some point, someone has to invent developer tools, right? Find some way to actually figure out what the hell they're doing?

The big question: given the blatant inadequacy of the existing paradigm, why is the industry still trying to wring blood out of this dried-out stone? At some point, we're going to have to actually figure out what the brain is doing, but it seems like cognitive neuroscience is still in its infancy. "We don't know how this thing works" seems like the big obstacle to getting anything done, but most of the effort in this area still seems to be focused on finding new drugs to throw at the thing-we-don't-know-how-it-works. 

I know I’m not the first person to ask this question. I’m sure everyone who’s ever had to grapple with psychiatry in any detail is lamenting the same issue, and I’m sure there are people who are working very hard to try and solve the problem. It just... doesn’t seem like those people are getting very much done. The most I hear about is pop science articles claiming that Science Has Discovered The Part Of The Brain That Makes You Love Kittens, which inevitably turn out to be irresponsible reporting of extremely modest correlational findings. 

(Maybe AI will help? Maybe the brain is just too complicated to be reduced to something humans can understand on an engineering/problem-solving level, and we need something with a higher understanding-capacity? Except... most of the recent advances in AI are with neural nets that explicitly don't actually understand anything, nor do the researchers growing them.)

Where are we at with this? Are we getting anywhere? Is there encouraging progress in the field of learning-things-about-the-brain? Is the second derivative of that curve non-zero? Metacognitive revolution when?

[rollicomp]

Yourkit java profiler 8.0

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Open source and free Java logging framework designed to help developers make use of fast asynchron.

#Yourkit java profiler 8.0 generator#

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Before you do a fresh install of Minecraft 1.6 on your Mac it’s, very important that you backup your saved games folder otherwise you’ll lose any worlds you’ve created.

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Here’s how to install Minecraft 1.6 for Mac: How To Install Minecraft 1.6 For Mac. What's new in JD-GUI 1.6.6: Minor update on configuration parsing Update JD-Core to 1.1.3: Addition of a part of the test protocol described in this research paper: The Strengths and Behavioral Quirks of Java Bytecode Decompilers. Instructions are available in HT5559 Apple KB. Or Manually re-enable the Apple-provided Java SE 6 applet plug-in.

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This SK is relevant for: Mac OS X Lion v10.7 or later Mac OS X Mountain Lion v10.8 or later Download the latest version of the Java applet plug-in from Oracle, available here. java java11 java8 netbeans-java-se yourkit-java-profiler eclipse-java font-noto-sans-javanese java-beta java6 netbeans-java-ee. For more information see Java for OS X 2012-006 KB. This app can help you easily load YourKit profiler agent into a running Jira and collect performance or memory snapshot - without Jira restart. I'm using Yourkit 2015 build 15052.Java API Documentation Updater Tool repairs-in-place Java API Documentation created with javadoc versions included with JDK 5u45, 6u45, 7u21 and earlier. YourKit is an advanced Java profiler that can help you identify CPU bottlenecks and memory leaks, and dissect a snapshot of the process memory and CPU profiles to find performance problems. As you can see on the screenshot those are all marked as. And I have configured my sampling to do wall times for all methods. I go to "Method list" -> My Method->Merged CalleesĪs you can see getConnection() is only 1% of the total time of my method. So I know for sure that this method spends most of its "WALL TIME" in getConnection() which goes down to Object.wait(long)īut then I want to see what is the exact percentage​ of WALL TIME spent in getConnection() within com.sum.$Proxy10.uploadWaiting(). But I replicated my problem with a tiny application where I have a thread that executes one method that is mostly waiting as expected.Īs you can see I'm specifically interested in pool-1-thread-2 executing method "com.sum.$Proxy10.uploadWaiting()" The initial problem I'm trying to solve is to see the wall times of all subcalls of a method across many threads.

[dailyaudiobible]

06/19/2022 DAB Transcript

1 Kings 20:1-21:29, Acts 12:24-13:15, Ps 137:1-9, Pr 17:16

Today is the 19th day of June welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it’s great to be here with you today. It's always a special day when we come to the threshold of a brand-new shiny sparkly week out in front of us and just kinda inside remind ourselves yet again His mercies are new every morning. It's a fresh start. It's a brand-new week and even though last week may have been filled with any number of chaos’s that happened then. Maybe some of that spills forward, but how we deal with it...well…we’re at the threshold. It's a new week. It's a new story to tell. And, so, we just exhale and inhale and keep doing that because that's what we need to do to stay alive. And another thing that we need to do to stay alive is take the next step forward together in the Scriptures, allowing them to feed us, to feed our Spirit. And, so, we will certainly do what we do every day which is pick up where we left off. We’ll read from the New International Version this week. First Kings chapter 20 and 21.

Prayer:

Father, we love You and we adore You and that is where we begin as we begin this week. We love You. We adore You. Our loyalty is Yours. You have rescued us, and we don't deserve anything. You have been loyal to us when we were as far away from that as possible, and You have saved our lives and so we honor You. Our hearts gratitude is to You. And we thank You for Your word, this beautiful gift that brings us together each day. And we thank You for the community here. We love one another as we move step-by-step day by day through the Scriptures. And, so, Holy Spirit come into this week. Lead and guide us in each of our individual stories. We are utterly dependent upon You, and we trust You. Lead us by the power of Your Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hi DAB family this is Simone calling in from Houston…Simone calling from Houston and calling for the gentleman that called at the end of the broadcast on June 14th asking for prayers for Stephen, Leland, Emy. Oh, I heard your heart, and your call just broke my heart and I just…I want to pray for you. Father God on today we lift up our brother in Christ Lord God. Lord God, we thank You that he even had the courage enough to call in and ask for prayers. Father God, I ask right now in the mighty and matchless name of Jesus that You will pour out Your Holy Spirit on this gentleman Lord God, pour out Your spirit on him Lord God. I thank You right now as I make intercession for this gentleman and as we hold him up and undergird him in prayers in community Lord God, that You'll make every crooked path straight in his life Lord God. I thank You Lord God that right now supernaturally Father supernaturally You are opening doors and windows and You are making financial provision for this gentleman to do everything that's court ordered, required, and necessary to do and be the father he needs to be. Lord God, we thank You for provisions because You are Jehovah You are Jehovah Rapha You are Jehovah Rapha, and You are our provider. You are Jehovah Jira, and You provide, You heal, You…You give us everything that we need so we touch and agree because Your word says where two or three are gathered in His name there He is also. So, I touch and agree with this gentleman that all provisions are being made and that You are making every path straight Lord God and that he is covered, and I ask that You would keep his mind in perfect peace as he continues to lean on You and be stayed on You. It's in Jesus’ mighty name. Praying…

Hello my DAB family I love you so much and appreciate you and this is Chicago Peg and I wanna pray for our some of our fellow DABbers. And Patty previously from Florida now in Tennessee. Dear sweet sister at the time of your prayer request your grandson Noah was only two days old and born with a blood infection. He possibly had a seizure. And I am…I’m sorry he's in the NICU. And I’m also well familiar with us with my nephew having been in the NICU but by God's grace has come out of this. And my whole heart as a fellow mom grandma, etc. I'm praying together with you Patty in the healing merciful name of Jesus, praying for complete healing for Noah. Oh, our hearts go up to you Patty. And I'm also praying for Prairie Sky for your depression. You said you have trouble making friends and even looking for a lease and for living. Oh, precious lady I pray that the Lord our God our very present help in time of need. Oh, just call on the name of the Lord. Find your peace and your strength in Him. We are praying for you. Your fellow DABbers are praying for you Prairie Sky and we love you so much. I pray that He will strengthen you in Jesus’ name. Amen, Amen and Amen. Fellow DABbers I love you so much, praying for you. Chicago Peg signing off, breathing in His grace breathing out His praise.

It's June 15th and I just heard a gentleman who called in and he was stating that the last two years nearly killed him and he's just struggling to hang on and to finish the race is how he put it. I just want to let him know and pray for him that God would let him know that all he needs to do is to hang on to Jesus, that all he needs to do is to look up because His redemption is there is right there. I just pray that he could see that. I pray that Lord that You would bring someone close to him that would help show him You in the flesh. Lord my heart is just so burdened for him to finish the race and Lord I believe he will because I believe that You're a powerful God that can oversee this whole situation for this gentleman and help him to be able to see You and know that You are going to care for him, You are going to take care of whatever it is that’s standing in his way, to feel redemptive, and to feel saved, and to feel that You are there Lord God. I just lift him totally up to You and put him in Your hands Lord God, to give him the peace and the strength and the courage that he needs to finish the race and to finish it strongly and that his life would be just a testimony of You there in his presence. I praise You and I thank You for what You're going to do for this gentleman Lord. I love You all and I love this gentleman too knowing that God is going to be there for him. Amen.

Hi this is Michelle from Boston I'm calling for the final caller on June 15th. You didn't leave your name but you're struggling with salvation and the thoughts of salvation at the end, and have you done enough do you feel enough. And I hope to encourage you today because I used to worry about this as well. I used to worry if I had enough faith at the moment that I pass away, is that when I would make it? What if I have faith now and not then? I think after talking with my sister and reading the Bible one thing that stands out to me is that I have no role in my salvation besides surrendering to God. I used to think that I had to have faith and like I had to feel saved in order to be saved. And that is not the case because faith is a gift from God. Faith is something that I used to think that I had to like, you know, scrunch really hard and try and produce more faith and squeeze it out of me, but faith itself is this gift from God. We cannot contribute to one iota to our own salvation.

Hello DAB fan this is Joyce from Virginia today is June 15th and the very last prayer request played on today's reading was from a young man who is really struggling and says that people are telling him that if he doesn't hold on that he will not be able to finish well and basically won't be saved. And just wanted to read you a couple of verses from John 10 my friend because we don't have to hold on to Jesus. Jesus is holding on to us. So, Jesus says in verse 27, “my sheep hear my voice and I know them. They follow me. I give them life that lasts forever. They will never be punished.” And here's the key part. “No one is able to take them out of my hand. My father who is greater than all gave them to me. No one is able to take them out of my Father's hand. My father and I are one. So, friend, be encouraged. The Lord will get you through this hard time and Ge is holding you in his hands. Bye-bye.

[lateral-sprint]

Tools

One of the core aspects that I want to have going forward with Game Dev is transparency, and that starts with my tooling, what I use and why I use it. 

So let’s get into it. 

Game Engine - Unity 

A 3D and 2D platform that allows people to create games, videos and other assistive technology. It’s a powerful and resilient little engine that can handle a shockingly large amount of input from the developer. 

It has both free and premium versions.

Art Tools - Blender

Lateral Sprint is made in 3D. As in everything is 3D. The assets are made and posed in 3D and then using an orthographic camera it is rendered our into a flat 2D image. Using a variety of filters, shaders and resolution changes it creates a pseudo pixel art feel which I am after in this game. 

It is 100% free. 

Tracking and management - Jira

Jira is my digital notebook that allows me to track the project, issues, objectives and my milestones. It’s a frighteningly complex software on the surface but get’s easier and more friendly through time. A feature that I am using it for is the Sprints which allow me to set deadlines and goals to hit within a given time. Very useful to prevent scope-creep that I suffer from so dearly. 

It has both free and premium versions. 

Comping and video previews - Premiere Pro

I use Premiere Pro as a way to comp all of my animations for both previews, and to make quick adjustments to before committing to them in say Blender or Unity. 

It is a premium software and requires a subscription to use (Boo!) 

[mysmartsolutions]

NetEdge Computing Solutions walk-in for Software Test Engineer

Company :NetEdge Computing Solutions

Website :www.netedgecomputing.com

Job Role :Software Test Engineer

Eligibility :Any Graduate

Experience :3 – 5 Years

Job Location :Noida

Walk-In Date :03 July – 06 July 2019

Walk-In Time :11:00 AM Onwards

Job Description:

The person must have experience in:

§  Analyzing Business requirements & Developing Test Plans & Use cases.

§  Creating Test Cases for various Modules & Test Execution.

§  Reporting bugs with severity & priority according to customer Requirement & project.

Venue Details:

§  NetEdge Tower C – 56/39,  Sector – 62, Noida – 201 301.

Contact Details:

Neetu Minhas:78388-37993

 Siemens hiring for Software Developer – Gas Turbine

Company :Siemens

Website :www.siemens.com

Job Role :Software Developer – Gas Turbine

Eligibility :Bachelor’s/Master’s Degree

Experience :3 – 8 Years

Job Location :Gurgaon

Job Description:

§  This position is in Simeens Gas Turbine, Reaserach & Development department which is responsible for development of design tools that are used by the product design engineers. Duties will include all stages of the software development process including requirements, design, development, testing, and implementation.

§  This position uses cutting edge computing tools and technologies to design power generation components.

§  This position includes numerous opportunities for career growth within our global engineering community.

§  This position provides collaboration and communication with design engineers in R&D, engineers throughout the Siemens engineering community, senior management, external technical partners, and universities throughout our many locations in the US, Europe, India, China, Russia, and more.

§  This is position offers a possibility to work with the development of tools that are used by the sales force, and are the shop window through which our potential customers meet our products the first time

Qualification Details:

§  Bachelor or Master Degree in Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering or Aerospace Engineering.

§  3 to 8 Years of experience in computing tool development in the areas of Gas Turbine, Steam – Turbine, and/or Generator Mechanical Design. Experience with SQL database development and / or development of tools for thermodynamics calculations.

§  Development of software tools for engineering design applications.

§  Experience of development using APEX.

§  Experience in Thermodynamics methods, GT-performance.

§  Knowldege/Experience with Java scripting.

§  Knowledge/ Experience with HTML scripting.

§  Demonstrated ability to successfully manage software development projects to satisfy technical, budget, and schedule requirements.

§  Computer languages (e.g. Python, Java, FORTRAN, C/C++).

§  Operating systems (e.g. Linux, MS Windows).

§  Software Development Process.

§  Strong personal skill i.e. Process-oriented, Quality mindset, Fast leaner, Innovative, Strong – customer focus, Good communication skills – both verbal and written, A good team player, Intercultural experience etc.

 Gadgeon Smart Systems walk-in for Test Engineer

Company :Gadgeon Smart Systems

Website :www.gadgeon.com

Job Role :Test Engineer

Eligibility :Bachelor’s Degree

Experience :2 – 5 Years

Job Location :Kochi

Walk-In Date :06 July 2019

Walk-In Time :10:00 AM Onwards

Job Description:

§  Experience with Embedded System / Cloud application testing.

§  Familiarity with process and better understanding in SDLC, STLC, Agile-Scrum.

§  Experience with version control systems like GIT.

§  Experience with Test Management & Issue Tracker systems like TestRail / Testopia /Jira.

§  Experience in Python / Java.

§  Understanding on Test Automation Frameworks like Selenium/Appium.

§  Good Analytical Skills.

Venue Details:

§  GadgEon Smart Systems Pvt Ltd., Unit O203, 2nd Floor, Building SCK-01,  Block -A, Smartcity, Kochi – 682030.

Contact Details:HR:0484-2903000

 IXIA Solutions walk-in for Testing Engineer

Company :IXIA Solutions

Website :www.ixiasolutions.com

Job Role :Testing Engineer

Eligibility :Any Graduate

Salary :Rs: 1,75,000 – 5,50,000 P.A.

Experience :2 – 4 Years

Job Location :Mumbai

Walk-In Date: 03 July – 05 July 2019

Walk-In Time: 10:00 AM Onwards

Job Description:

§  Must exhibit a highly organized approach to work.

§  Must have 2+ years of software-testing experience.

§  Experience in Web services and Functional testing.

§  Excellent verbal and written communication skills.

§  Work collaboratively with others to resolve issues and defects.

§  Experience in customer interaction.

§  Experience in any of the Test management tool like TFS, JIRA etc.

§  Experience in creation and Execution of test cases for UI, functional,regression and end to end test cases.

§  Experience in database testing.

§  Experience with full product lifecycle.

§  Manage and communicate defect status and updates with stakeholders.

§  Experience working in high-velocity, fast paced Agile team.

§  Knowledge of Selenium is must.

Venue Details:

§  IXIA Solutions LLP, Unit No 3, Second Floor, IT Bldg 06,  “I” Rise, Loma IT park, Park, Gen 4/1,  MIDC TTC Industrial Area, Ghansoli, Navi Mumbai – 400710.

Contact Details:Mandeep:02239848430

 QuisLex walk-in for QA Analyst

Company :QuisLex

Website :www.quislex.com

Job Role :QA Analyst (Contract to Hire)

Eligibility :Any Graduate

Experience :4 – 6 Years

Job Location :Hyderabad

Walk-In Date :03 July – 05 July 2019

Walk-In Time :12:30 PM – 02:30 PM

Job Description:

§  QA analyst should have strong software applications testing background.

§  The candidate must be strong in Manual testing with good hands on Automation testing, preferably web-based testing, and be able to write and test requirements, develop and execute test cases.

Responsibilities:

§  Ability to understand business/technical requirement and write use cases.

§  Develop system test plans, prepare test scenarios, test cases and test scripts.

§  Understanding of Quality measures and metrics for Software applications.

§  Extensive experience in web applications and faceless applications testing.

§  Troubleshoot system/Application issues by rectifying the bugs/errors.

§  Preferred to have experience in Automation testing and selenium.

§  Ability to work with end users to strategize and enable execution of UAT.

§  Should be a team player and ability to perform with minimal supervision.

§  Ability to adapt quickly to an existing, complex environment.

§  Should be self-motivated, independent, detail oriented, responsible team player.

Desired Profile:

§  4-6 year of strong experience in applications testing (Manual Testing).

§  Bachelors Degree in Computers is preferable.

§  Strong verbal and written communication skills.

§  Strong interpersonal skills.

§  Possess Good written and verbal communication skills.

§  Ability to quickly learn new software technologies.

§  Analysis and problem solving skills.

Venue Details:

§  QuisLex, Inc 2nd Floor,  DHFLVC Silicon Towers, Beside Minerva Grand Hotel, Kondapur, Hyderabad.

Contact Details:HR:040 – 40221111

  Boson Webtech walk-in for Software Developer

Company :Boson Webtech Pvt. Ltd.

Website :www.bosonwebtech.com

Job Role :Software Developer

Eligibility :Any Graduate

Experience :4 – 8 Years

Salary :Rs: 3,50,000 – 7,00,000 P.A.

Job Location :Indore (M.P.)

Walk-In Date :Monday – Friday

Walk-In Time :02:00 PM – 08:00 PM

Job Description:

§  Minimum 4 years experience in .NET/Visual Studio (ASP.Net & C#) SQL Server, Web Services, WCF ,HTML5.Net Framework 4.0/4.5.

§  Develop new applications, tools and programs.

Desired Profile:

§  Excellent written & verbal communication skills.

§  Ability to work effectively in a team.

§  Experience in Agile methodology and Sprints preferable.

§  Ability to interact with Business Team and understand requirements.

§  Mentor or lead junior team members.

Venue Details:

§  Boson Webtech Pvt. Ltd., 3rd floor , 302, Aru Plaza, 582 MG Road, Opp. Indraprastha Tower, Above John Players Showroom, Indore (M.P.).

Contact Details:HR:0731-2974288

 Hiring B.tech/ MCA/ M.tech CS /IT Freshers for Software Testing

Company:Crestech Software Systems

Experience:0 – 1 yrs

Location:Noida, Gurgaon

Job Description:

§  Possess good analytical, logical and communication skills.

§  Should be interested to pursue career in Software Testing field.

§  Must have completed their B.Tech/M.Tech/MCA. On the job training will given to those who are not trained in Testing.

Job Location- Noida

§  Service Agreement- 2 years

Salary Growth Structure-

§  1st Year-> Rs. 211526 (Milestone 1: 1st to 12th Month)

§  Next 6 Months-> Rs. 280796 (Milestone 2: 13th to 18th Month)

§  Next 6 Months-> Rs. 358528(Max) (Milestone 3: 19th to 24th Month)

§  3rd Year Onward- >Rs. 400745(Max) (Milestone 4: 25th Month Onwards)

§  P.S- Candidates having any backlog will not be entertained.

§  Male candidates preferred for these positions

Salary: Best in the Industry

Industry:IT-Software, Software Services

Functional Area:IT Software – QA & Testing

Role Category:Programming & Design

Role:Testing Engineer

Employment Type: Permanent Job, Full Time

Other Keyskills:

§  software testing

§  manual testing

§  automation testing

§  testing

§  java

§  core

§  java Fresher

View Contact Details:

Recruiter Name:Shivani Gaur

Contact Company:Crestech Software Systems

Website:http://www.crestechglobal.com

Reference Id:TESSTS01

Apply

 Urgent Hiring for Quality Analyst

Company:EBC Publishing Pvt. Ltd.

Experience:2 – 5 yrs

Location:Lucknow

Job Description:

§  Execute test cases (manual or automated) and analyze results

§  Experience with test automation frameworks/suites

§  Report bugs and errors to development teams

§  Understand the requirements thoroughly and write test cases.

§  Should have worked on (Android/IOS) mobile devices.

§  Proven interpersonal, verbal and written communication skills, including technical documentations skills.

§  Ability to work effectively under pressure in a dynamic environment.

§  Carry out regression testing every time when changes are made to the code to fix defects

§  Ability to work independently on tasks / modules assigned or testing

§  Responsible for creating test data and testing interfaces and configuration

§  Very good time management and organizational skills with the ability to manage detailed, concurrent tasks.

§  Ability to work independently with little direction but also works well with Teams

Salary: INR 3,00,000 – 6,00,000 PA. No bar for right candidate

Industry:Publishing

Functional Area:IT Software – Application Programming , Maintenance

Role Category:Programming & Design

Role:System Analyst

Employment Type: Permanent Job, Full Time

Other Keyskills:

§  software testing

§  software quality

§  analyst Automation Testing

§  manual testing

Desired Candidate Profile:

Key skill requirements:

§  Execute test cases, analyze and provide detailed test reports as well as detailed test results analysis.

§  Participate actively in functional, system, stress and regression testing activities. Perform various testing for web and mobile applications: Functionality, Usability, Load, Stress, Performance, Content and Navigation.

§  Should have used Testing tools like QTP, Jmeter, and Selenium etc. Work closely with the development team to analyze, debug and resolve any issues.

§  Participate in project functional reviews, test specifications, code and documentation reviews.

§  Manual and Black Box Testing for web applications, mobile applications.

Education-

UG: B.Tech/B.E. – Any Specialization, Computers

PG:M.Tech – Any Specialization, Computers, MCA – Computers

View Contact Details:

Recruiter Name:Nancy Srivastava

Contact Company:EBC Publishing Pvt. Ltd.

Website:https://www.ebctechnologies.in/

Telephone:0522-4059623

Apply

 QA ENGINEER

Experience:3 – 5 Years

Location:Bengaluru

Job Description:

Responsibilities:

§  Manage testing process end to end for multiple projects Follow best practice testing strategy and use and develop current Technical Test Framework(s) with existing and new Products

§  This position involves testing activities of all phases of software implementation life cycle and the development of automated tests for end-to-end testing of the application. The successful candidate will be working closely in a team environment with product implementation engineers and development engineers to create automated acceptance, functional, smoke tests and performance tests.

§  Ownership of the entire test cycle for an test and test automation approach, test plans and objective creation, testing.

§  Maintaining test suites and test tools, test environment setup, defect management, test execution and test reporting.

§  Work on improving Best Practices in Test Management and Quality Assurance Process. Technical test preparation, analysis and execution following agreed requirements and acceptance criteria.

§  Analyze and Report Test Results to the Team / Business on a daily basis and raise/report any Defects accordingly

§  Work in a dynamic environment, managing multiple priorities, commitments, and projects with minimal supervision

§  Work with development team to implement new features for product improvement. Continually analyze testing processes, internal tools, documentation, and technology to improve efficiencies and create a stable and error-free environment.

§  Write new test cases as and when required for Automated testing Other responsibilities may be allocated by the line manager to ensure the effectiveness of the team

§  Qualifications including education:

§  Bachelors Degree in computer related subject

§  3-5 years of experience in a professional testing role

§  Technical development background (preferred)

§  Exposure to both Automated and Manual test techniques

§  Working knowledge of AGILE framework using SCRUM methodology

§  Experience with Selenium/WebDriver

§  Experience of implementing, developing and maintaining Automated Test Frameworks

§  Good knowledge of SQL and relational database such as Oracle, MS SQL Server, and MySQL.

§  Some knowledge of programming/scripting languages/environments such as XML, JavaScript, Perl, PL/SQL and Unix/Linux Shell, Python.

§  Coding/scripting experience in Java/Python

§  Experience with performance testing tools: JMeter, Gatling etc.

§  Understanding of core business logic, algorithms, datasets and able to perform low level System and Data Analysis

§  Experience of building strong working relationships with project stakeholders, and key business users

§  Any Software Testing Certification

§  Confident, takes ownership, willingness to do what it takes to get the job done with proven – experience leading complex testing activities and projects to successful completion.

§  Experience with tools such as Selenium strongly desired.

§  Strong written and oral communication skills with experience providing project status to line and executive management

§  Participation as Tester in one or more medium to large systems implementation projects

§  Ability to interpret test results and make improvement recommendations or raise clear defects

Qualifications:

Bachelor Degree in Computer Science, or equivalent experience.

Salary: Not Disclosed by Recruiter

Industry:IT-Software / Software Services

Functional Area:IT Software – Application Programming, Maintenance

Role Category:Programming & Design

Role:Testing Engineer

Employment Type:Permanent Job, Full Time

Keyskills:

§  Test Cases

§  Test Preparation

§  Automation Testing

§  Test Execution

§  Manual Testing

§  Test Reporting

§  Selenium Webdriver

§  Software Testing

§  Quality Assurance Engineering

§  Defect Management

Desired Candidate Profile:

Please refer to the Job description above

Education-

UG:B.Tech/B.E. – Computers, B.Sc – Any Specialization

PG:MS/M.Sc(Science) – Any Specialization, MCA – Computers, M.Tech – Computers

Doctorate:Doctorate Not Required

Recruiter Name:EDWARD FRANCIS P

Contact Company:E2open Software India Private Limited

Apply

 Urgent Opening – Software Tester – Mumbai (vikroli)

Company:FUTURISM TECHNOLOGIES PVT LTD

Experience:1 – 5 yrs

Location:Mumbai(Vikhroli)

Job Description:

§  Location: Mumbai (Vikroli)

§  Notice Period: Immediate To 15Days Max

§  Experience: 1+Years

§  Mode of interview : Only F2F (On Weekdays)

§  Define Test Strategy, Test Plan, Test Methodologies for Digital Cockpits including Stand alone fully Digital Clusters as well as Integrated Systems (supporting Infotainment, ADAS, HUDs along with Cluster functionalities)

§  Interview will be F2F

Salary: Not Disclosed by Recruiter

Industry:IT-Software, Software Services

Functional Area:IT Software – Application Programming , Maintenance

Role Category:Programming & Design

Role:Testing Engineer

Employment Type: Permanent Job, Full Time

Other Keyskills:

§  Software Testing

§  manual testing

§  automation testing

View Contact Details:

Recruiter Name:komal

Contact Company:FUTURISM TECHNOLOGIES PVT LTD

Apply

 QA Engineer/ Test Engineer/ Senior Test Engineer

Company:Magic Software Pvt. Ltd.

Experience:1 – 6 yrs

Location:Delhi NCR

Job Description:

§  Proven working experience in software quality assurance

§  Strong knowledge of software QA methodologies, tools, and processes

§  Experience in writing clear, concise and comprehensive test cases

§  Arranging Test Environment to execute the test cases.

§  Analyzing and executing Test Cases and track defects or bugs.

§  Hands-on experience with black box testing.

§  Hands-on experience with mobile testing

§  Experience working in an Agile/Scrum(good to have)

§  Experience with API Testing tools and Automation is a plus

Salary: Not Disclosed by Recruiter

Industry:IT-Software, Software Services

Functional Area:IT Software – QA & Testing

Role Category:Programming & Design

Role:Testing Engineer

Employment Type: Permanent Job, Full Time

Other Keyskills:

§  quality assurance engineering

§  test engineering

§  software qa

§  test cases

§  mobile testing

§  test case execution

§  software quality assurance

§  testing tools

§  Automation Testing

§  manual testing

§  software testing

§  test engineer

§  software test engineer

View Contact Details:

Contact Company:Magic Software Pvt Ltd

Apply

 Senior Software Test Engineer

Company:Comfyi Solution

Experience:2 – 7 yrs

Location:Chennai

Job Description:

§  Responsible to Identify Test Data, Execute Test Conditions, Resolve errors, Raise Software Error

§  candidates with 2 year real time exp only need to apply.

§  Walk-in immediately for an interview if match with the criteria to the below venue with your CV.

Salary: INR 2,00,000 – 7,00,000 PA.

Industry:IT-Software, Software Services

Functional Area:IT Software – QA & Testing

Role Category:Programming & Design

Role:Testing Engineer

Employment Type: Permanent Job, Full Time

Other Keyskills:

§  Manual Testing

§  Test Engineering

§  Manual

§  Automation

§  Test lead

§  Team lead

§  qtp

§  selenium

§  software Tester

§  quality

§  testing

Desired Candidate Profile:

To work in manual testing & to associate with the team.Leadership skills with problem solving Required

Experience in testing Techniques in manual for a minimum of 2 years real time

knowledge or Experience with automation tools could also apply

View Contact Details:

Recruiter Name:Mr Gopinath

Contact Company:Comfyi Solution

Email Address:comfyisolution@gmail.com

Telephone:91-9381278999

Apply

 Quality Assurance Tester – Manual/automation Testing

Company:SKS Enterpprises

Experience:2 – 7 yrs

Location:Mumbai

Job Description:

§  We are looking for a QA Automation Test Engineer to assess software quality through manual and automated testing for our Virar, Maharashtra office to test mobile applications. The QA Automation tester will be responsible for working closely with the development team and other QA team members to create automated test scripts. The QA Automation test engineer will also perform manual testing, and provide documentation on all completed tests.

Responsibilities :

§  Design, Write and Execute detailed Test Cases across iOS & Android applications.

§  Test Mobile application on iOS and Android platforms.

§  Plan Test Executions.

§  Build internal scripts to automate QA processes.

§  Generating and Sharing timely comprehensive Test Reports.

§  Create and maintain the Test Case repository.

§  Provide feedback to Developers.

§  Complete tasks in a timely manner.

§  Passion for keeping the product quality high.

Salary: Not Disclosed by Recruiter

Industry:IT-Software, Software Services

Functional Area:IT Software – QA & Testing

Role Category:Programming & Design

Role:Testing Engineer

Employment Type: Permanent Job, Full Time

Other Keyskills:

§  Selenium

§  TestNG

§  Jmeter

§  Loader.

§  Git

§  Subversion

§  Object Oriented Programming

§  Load Testing

§  Appium

Desired Candidate Profile:

Qualifications: – Must have a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science or equivalent.

§  2+ years of experience in QA (Automation) role for complex web/mobile applications.

§  Hands on Experience in Mobile Application end to end, functional, & UI testing.

§  Experience working in Agile methodology.

§  Self-Directed – Ability to detect and solve problems on own.

§  Strong interpersonal and communication skills.

§  Tools Knowledge – Selenium, Appium, knowledge of Katalon Studio will be an advantage.

§  Must have experience working with Selenium, TestNG

§  Experience in Load Testing using Jmeter / Loader.io will be an advantage.

§  Knowledge of Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery.

§  Should have decent knowledge in Java or any scripting programming language. – Should have knowledge of Object Oriented Programming.

§  Version Control Experience of using Git / Subversion.

§  Experience using defect management tools like JIRA / Bugzilla.

If this sounds like a role tailor made for you then, forward us your updated profile with details like Current CTC, Expected CTC and Notice Period.

Education-

UG: Any Graduate – Any Specialization

PG:Any Postgraduate – Any Specialization

Doctorate:Doctorate Not Required

Apply

 Mobile and Tablet Applications Testing

Company:Accenture

Experience:4 – 5 yrs

Location:Mumbai

Job Description:

Role :Test Lead

§  Role Description :Lead the testing effort and/ or team to plan, construct and execute release tests. Apply testing methodologies, principles and processes to define and implement key metrics to manage and assess the testing process including test execution and defect resolution. Apply business and functional knowledge to meet the teamsoverall test objectives. Coach and advice testers as required.

§  Must Have Skills :Mobile and Tablet Applications Testing

§  Good To Have Skills :No Technology Specialty

Job Requirements :

§  Key Responsibilities : A: Responsible for communication with the Developers and with all key stakeholders Creating a Test Plan and Strategies Prepare and report test results and statistics  B: Create a weekly plan and weekly reports Creative problem solving with the ability to assist team members in solving their own problems

§  Technical Experience : A: Must have 4- 5 years of OTT Testing Experience and worked on Mobile automation testing using Appium and able to establish an automation framework Worked on Manual Testing and other Testing Techniques Good to have experience in automation testing using a tool Selenium Knowledge of Application Testing Methodology and QA Processes Must have knowledge on DevOps B: Expertise in the design and execution of Test cases and reporting defects Defect tracking activities include defect Identification

§  Professional Attributes : A: Should have Handled testing team of 4 to 6 team members Good verbal written communication skills to connect with customers at varying levels of the organization  B: Strong active listening, multitasking, interpersonal and organizational skills Must be self- motivated, disciplined, and takes respo

§  Educational Qualification : Bachelor of Engineering or Equivalent

Salary: Not Disclosed by Recruiter

Industry:IT-Software, Software Services

Functional Area:IT Software – QA & Testing

Role Category:Programming & Design

Role:Testing Engineer

Employment Type: Permanent Job, Full Time

Other Keyskills:

§  Manual testing

§  Selenium

§  Test cases

§  Test planning

§  automation framework

§  Outsourcing

§  Test execution

§  Defect tracking

§  Operations

§  Testing

View Contact Details:

Recruiter Name:HR

Reference Id:205837

Apply

[daveschumaker]

Say yes to Markdown, no to MS Word

What on earth are you talking about? What’s wrong with our beloved and old companion Microsoft Word?

What is Markdown?

Markdown is a syntax language aiming for easy reading and writing of structured text. There are multiple implementations of the language (such as Github flavored Markdown) and each of these implementations have some own improvements and features that are not necessarily compatible with each other. Still each implementation bases on the same default syntax and when done right Markdown files are cross-compatible between different implementations.

Markdown is easy to learn and it only requires text editor to create your first document. The original Markdown syntax supports the following features:

Paragraphs and line breaks

Headers

Blockquotes

Lists

Code blocks

Horizontal rules

Links

Emphasis

Images

By using just these features you can write out almost any document you could with Word. Markdown also supports inline HTML that can be used to create content that the syntax doesn’t support.

Why would you use it?

There are lots of things that speak for Markdown and why it’s superior over .docx or .doc files. Here to list few of them:

Version control. If you have a Word document that you are editing together with some other people, it is almost impossible to merge the changes together on version control such as git or svn. With Markdown this is quite straight forward as it works like any other text file merge. And yes I am aware of Office product having collaboration systems but still I see them a bit overburden for simple documentation process.

Edit with any platform. One of the best things is that you can edit Markdown files on any platform with the editor of your choice. As a hardcore Linux fan this is one of the heavy arguments of using Markdown. Of course there are LibreOffice and other tools to handle Word documents on Linux but sometimes they mess up the formatting or are missing some functionality.

Not only Word. Markdown is not only for writing text documents as there are tools you can create also presentable slide sets (like PowerPoint) from Markdown files. More about tools for this can be found from the last chapter.

Limited features. This actually is a double-barreled handgun. With Word you have tens or even hundreds of buttons to do different kinds of formatting. With Markdown it’s much easier as it only supports limited features and you can easily learn the syntax in less than an hour. Limited features also means, most of the time, more readable and structured output.

File size. Not a big matter now-a-days but single text file can store many times more information than a word document.

Exportability. Everyone knows that exporting Word documents to pdf, html and other formats is possible. But so is the case with Markdown. There are multiple open-source tools available for this job which I will cover in the last chapter.

For these reasons I would suggest you at least try it out. There are online editors available for Markdown such as Dillinger or StackEdit. These editors also show you the rendered output in real time and are the fastest way to get to know Markdown. For actual documentation I suggest that you use some local editor such as Vim — especially if you are working on business sensitive documents.

What about other markup languages?

There are MANY other markup languages for example Textile (used for example in JIRA). I don’t see any problem with any of those as long as they can actually do the same things as Markdown does and provide the same advantages. Just try them and find out which suits you the best.

Task for you

If you are new to Markdown and actually tried it out I would love to hear your opinions how it would fit for your daily work! In case you are already using Markdown or any other markup language for your daily work, please let me know of good tools and practices using it. Especially automating documentation process (file conversions, online documentation etc.) is really something I would love to hear more about.

Also please share this story if you find this interesting way of doing documentation.

Tools

Here is a list of tools that might help you on the way:

http://markdownpad.com/ — Markdown editor for Windows

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/markdown-editor/ekdcaddpmiodcipjfmffhhefijpdckaf — Markdown editor for Google Chrome

https://github.com/plasticboy/vim-markdown — Markdown editor plugin for Vim

https://github.com/alanshaw/markdown-pdf — Markdown pdf converter

https://github.com/gnab/remark — Markdown slideshow tool

About me

I am Heikki Hellgren, Software developer and technology enthusiast working at Elektrobit Automotive. My interests are in software construction, tools, automatic testing and all the new and cool stuff like AI and autonomous driving. You can follow me on Medium and Twitter. Also you can check out my website for more information.

Say yes to Markdown, no to MS Word was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

from Hacker Noon https://ift.tt/2GyPny9 via IFTTT

[standardstate-blog]

I don't use Jira anymore, and that's not unfortunate in any way.

Yep, that's right, I don't use Jira anymore and that's a sad thing. Don't get me wrong, I loved Jira but I can't really live with it anymore. Actually, correct that, I can't deal with the people that use Jira anymore. Yep, that's a far better way to put it.

The reason is simple, at least to me. It's terribly bloated. I love vanilla Jira, it was absolutely fine the way it was when it was as bare and simple as it can be. When you really are agile in an agile setting with agile minded people, vanilla Jira does exactly what you need it to do period. Those were wonderful times.

Now, well it's not like that. If I want to report a but, I have 97 fields to fill in, 146 labels to choose from, I need to name the part of the system that is affected but all those tags are outdated, then I have the ZenDesk ticket and then the epic it relates to it seems and then a release and a version and lord knows what other abominations I need to enter to finally be able to submit that bug. 99% of the time, I send a chat to the developer that is the best candidate to fix it. If the bug is complex or intermittent or that it touches several parts of the system, then I got through the pain of creating a Jira ticket for it.

I miss the happy Jira, the one in which the data you saw in the reports made some sense. The one in which you could plan a sprint and even though I hate story points, it was somewhat fun to set those up and see how much work you could get done for the next two weeks. Then you had a simple burn down chart and off you go to get some dev done. I was happy in those days. I wanted to use Jira and I could get value and insight out of it. It was simple to get a backlog going and have the product people work their part of the magic and prioritize the refined stories. I even heard of a scrum master that was 6 sprints ahead of the current one. Wow.

I can understand Atlassian for wanting to integrate all their tools with all the other tools in existence. And the problem is not there actually. It's with humans. People have a way to improvise development processes that still to this day, after 15+ years in the trenches, boggles the mind. It even hurts it sometimes. And all those genius process engineers all use Jira. With 567 fields now one knows what to do with, even the deluded moron that put it there for some reason. At that moment a couple of months ago it made sense in that spectrum of reality and now he is not sure why but we'll keep it there just in case.

Sad. Now I don't want to use Jira. Not because of Jira, but because of the people that use it and more specifically the way they use it. I am now far better off with a whiteboard that I take pictures of and manually create my charts. Ain't that some shit ?

I am now a lost soul in the internets looking for a tool of good quality that nobody uses. Or keep the whiteboard. I can draw dicks on the whiteboard.

Apparently, I should be trying something called Wrike .. I saw a post on Reddit that was referring to it as the very best thing since Jira is just about useless now. I have been hearing about Asana as well in the last couple of years, and just recently from an colleague that told  me they had very impressive results with it while he was employed elsewhere. Recently I was introduced to Notion, and from the first couple of hours playing around with it, it does look like it is worth looking into.

[anthonykrierion]

Tips for Effective SEO Project Management

Project management and SEO, what do they have to do with each other? Isn’t SEO just about some geeky technical magic that will get your site more traffic? 

SEO is a relatively young field, which has grown significantly in the last 5-6 years. Most of the people I know who are not very familiar with the industry, just refer to it as “that SEO thing” and how can I blame them? Therefore, project management might not be seen as a main element when thinking about SEO. In reality, whoever works in SEO will know that project management is actually a large and crucial part of our daily job. 

This post comprises a series of tips and suggestions for effective SEO project management, with a stronger perspective on the agency side of things, based on our long experience in the digital marketing space.

Don’t miss the downloadable project kick-off checklist to help you get started on an SEO project with one of your clients! A comprehensive guide that covers a spectrum of SEO (and non-SEO) questions, which we find extremely useful when starting on a project.

Let’s get to it with some simple FAQs.

What is SEO Project Management?

It is simply, project management that involves any SEO work. We refer to it as any day-to-day practice that involves planning, executing, monitoring, and finalising the work of our SEO team to accomplish a specific goal within a specific timeframe. 

Why does Project Management matter in SEO?

Without project management, it would be impossible to develop a functional relationship with clients. Effective project management provides a series of invaluable benefits for your SEO team, from a stress and health perspective, to a communication and expectation management point of view. Furthermore, it creates a deeper relationship with your clients.

What is the difference between SEO Account Management and Project Management?

Differently from project management, SEO Account Management focuses on the overall success of a certain SEO account, rather than just a specific project. While the outcome of project management is determined by a defined target, successful account management relates to a successful relationship with the client.

In reality, there is a very fine line between the two and this post covers some elements of account management as well. At the end of the day, we like to think that project management is about getting things done.

What skills are needed for Project Management?

It boils down to three core skills:

Communication skills: Having the ability to communicate clearly and concisely with team members and clients is key to successful project management. 

Organizational skills: Organization is at the centre of every project management activity: planning and monitoring tasks, while coordinating people.

Time Management skills: Every project has a timeframe: working within that time frame is crucial for a project to be successful. 

#1 Project management is an SEO skill

The success of an SEO strategy is not limited to your ability to execute tactics. It's also dictated by your ability to manage projects, people, clients, and external factors. As your strategies become more complex, learning how to manage a project is invaluable. A successful project manager handles expectations (internal and external), puts out fires and work to get buy-in on ideas.

#2 Have a plan

SEO strategies can be very complicated and involve a lot of stakeholders, between team members, clients and other third parties. Here at Distilled, we do our best to evaluate what a project looks like, before getting to it: it all boils down to having a clear plan of action. 

This process can normally be broken down into the following components.

Project Kickoff

This is the initial face-to-face or call with the client. This is the meeting that “kick-starts” the project (or relationship as a whole) and aims to cover an exhaustive list of topics in order to have a much better understanding of what should be delivered and how value can be provided.

Goals and expectations are discussed and often defined here, followed up by a series of emails to confirm what agreed upon. 

It is helpful to have a clear list of points and questions you want to cover in a kickoff meeting: I always prefer to come prepared, so I put together a list of questions that we tend to cover for all our projects.

Keen to see what that looks like? 

Our project management template contains an extremely comprehensive list of SEO and Digital Marketing questions we normally ask during a kick-off meeting, which help us get an exhaustive picture on a project / client.

Pro tip: use a collaborative document to keep track of meeting/call notes, from the very first kick-off; it will come handy when you need it to trace back what was discussed in the past. This could be internal (shared among your team only) or external (shared with the client) depending on the relationship and objectives.

Regular catch-ups: internal and external

Depending on what works for you, regular catch-ups can be weekly, fortnightly or monthly.

The formula that works for me, as an SEO consultant, is to have a mix of monthly and weekly catch ups - this would look something like this: 

During the first week of the month, I would have an internal catch up with the team to discuss briefs, potential challenges and define internal deadlines;

The above is followed by a weekly catch up, either a team meeting or individual meetings to discuss recent work, obstacles and share a general update on everyone’s schedules and progress;

Once a week, I would arrange a client call / face-to-face meeting to share a general update, discuss the status of our work and discuss any questions they might have come up in between calls;

Once every quarter, I would arrange a face-to-face meeting to recap what was done in that quarter, discuss strategy and future of the account.

At the end of the project, I would organise a slide deck to present to the client (and any involved third-parties) which looks back at work delivered and breaks down the main findings and actions.

This is an iterative process that allows a project to be adapted to changing demands. It would be nice to walk into a project with a complete and accurate set of requirements for a project, but that rarely ever happens. 

Regular catch-ups allow you to have a good understanding of the overall picture, no matter what changes or delays affect your project, so to react accordingly.

#3 Use the Right Tools for the Job 

Having the right tools to manage your project is key, but there is no need for a complicated system. Before providing a list of tools and suggestions, it is important to clarify something: proposing change and effective ways of working is part of our job, but ultimately it is worth considering the tools that your client is comfortable with/already uses.

They will see you as an extension of their business, and it will be easier to impact change.

These are some of the tools we use at Distilled to manage projects.

Tracking time

We use a custom-built internal software; however, other great tools to track time are the following: Toggl, Hour, Harvest-  they all have a free version with their own limitations.

Sharing documents & files

Google Drive is extremely effective (and free!) to do the job - most of our work is now just on the drive: from Google Docs to Sheets, its offering makes it very easy to share any piece of work with others.

What are the main alternatives to Google Drive we recommend? Dropbox is an excellent tool, and extremely easy to use with its desktop application; OneDrive by Microsoft is not bad either, in case you prefer to work with the Office package.

Pro tip: Due to some client limitations to access any of the major tools above, I recently came across Airtable which can work like a spreadsheet but gives you the power of a database to organise any projects you might be working on.

Communication 

For internal communications, Slack has really revolutionized the market: its highly organised structure makes internal communications so efficient that you will never want to use anything else. Forget your messy inbox, conversations in Slack happen in dedicated spaces called channels.

For external communications, Google’s offering is still very powerful: Gmail & Google Hangouts constitute a great option. As for video conference tools, Zoom seems to have separated itself from the competition, even if a lot of our clients still use Skype.

Should you go back to your client and propose a new communication tool? Maybe - what works for me is to normally prioritize whatever ways of working / platforms the client is more comfortable with, and then potentially suggest alternatives if there is a need / opportunity.

Pro tip: We also use Slack as an external communications tool with some clients, as it has replaced emails in many ways.

Project management platform

I am a bit biased: Trello’s clean and simple interface is a no brainer (my colleague Chris talks about Trello in his post here). Its system of boards, lists and cards allow individuals and teams to monitor a project and collaborate in an effective manner.

I like to use boards for different work areas - this could look like the below, where I separate my technical SEO projects from content, analytics or CRO tasks.

There are hundreds of alternatives to Trello, I personally recommend checking out the following: Monday.com, TeamWork, ProofHub.

What about when working with developers? 

It is part of our job to effectively communicate with devs and help them “get things done”. Jira is a major project management tool, used by a lot of our clients. Basecamp, Asana & Youtrack are some other popular software I came across over the last few years.

#4 Teamwork is key

The outcome of a project highly depends on teamwork: learning how to work successfully in a team is no joke. Every project is different, so is every team.

From briefing to quality assurance, even tasks that seem simple can vary broadly depending on the people you work with. Learning how to work with your colleague determines how likely your project is to be successful.

It may take a while, but leveraging individuals’ strengths and weaknesses will make the difference. Balancing talent is something every project manager should work towards.

How to assess team members' strengths & weaknesses

Let’s be clear: there is no magical way to get this right straight away, it takes time to develop team chemistry and assess an individual's skillsets.

Some useful ways I came across over the years are the following:

Ask for feedback from others: you can get an idea by checking in from people who they have worked with before;

Frameworks can help: models such as the t-shaped model can be very valuable when evaluating people’s know-how;

Listen, observe and simply ask: getting people to work on something that they are genuinely interested in / good at is likely to impact the quality of the final output.

Appreciate your team members’ work

We try our best to create a culture of feedback: this allows our team members to work and progress in a much peaceful environment and in a faster manner.

Part of this philosophy includes being very vocal about work appreciation: taking the time to appreciate someone’s job, either privately or publicly, is something that goes a long way. A tool that comes really handy for this purpose is 15Five: it is a “continuous performance management suite that allows you to coach your employees as fast as you sprint.”

Managees spend about 15 minutes a week answering a series of questions which focus on personal productivity and team-wide morale. On the other hand managers spend circa 5 minutes to go through all responses, which trigger real conversations that translate into improved comms and overall ways of working. It is a great way to evaluate weekly performance reviews and get a sense of the company’s morale. Furthermore, the tool can be integrated with Slack, using a dedicated channel for public praises:

#5 Knowledge sharing within the team

I am a big advocate of knowledge sharing: both internal and external. For all my projects, I encourage my team to share findings, deliverables and news regularly in order to maximise the team potential and optimise our work.

Creating a culture of knowledge sharing is something that goes beyond project management per se, but it can really help daily work and different challenges, whatever they might be. One of the most beneficial tactics we use is a centralised location for our deliverables - we take advantage of Google Drive to create folders where to store documents, broken down by topic.

What about knowledge sharing with the client? 

That is important too! I like to update my clients with digital marketing news which I think could be relevant for the project we are working on, even if they are not strictly-SEO related.

#6  Offer value to the client

There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else."

Sam Walton, Founder of Walmart

 As SEOs, we set high standards and KPIs for our clients - these can sometimes be quite ambitious when starting to manage a project.

As a project manager, my job is to make sure the client is satisfied with our work, while doing my best to achieve the predefined SEO goals. This means sometimes I have to do things that aren’t optimal.

Transparency on your projects goes a long way. Trying really hard to sell clients on things they do not need, or simply saying yes to everything they ask for might not be the right strategy when looking to deliver the optimal value on a project.

#7 Know Your Tactics & Resources

Before you can come up with your tasks, you need to know the tactics required to meet project objectives and the resources you have available. SEO resources may include time, money, bandwidth, and talent.

Having a clear plan of the resources and tactics needed will make the difference. There is often a degree of estimation, as it is hard to exactly predict what obstacles your team will come across the way. The more experience in the field, the better your skills will be when finalising your plan.

Here at Distilled, we use a flexible approach for resource and tactics allocation, which can slightly vary from consultant to consultant.

Personally, I like to lean on the following:

Personal experience, based on similar projects - pretty self-explanatory. For instance: if I am planning a backlink audit for a site, I check how much time and the level of experience it was required to perform such an audit for a site of similar size and complexity.

Ask internally - if you need help, chances are someone in your team might have worked on a similar task at some point in their career. Ask for feedback, and gather as much info as you need to help you make a decision.

Check your knowledge-sharing database - having a centralized location where SEO deliverables are saved is very helpful, especially when you need to plan a task that was at some point done for another client / by another team. I like to use Google Drive for this purpose! Learn from your team members and apply the feedback.

Always allow a few hours extra - briefing and QAing are two very crucial parts of every task. Make sure to plan enough time to brief a task properly, and to review any last minute changes before you ship a piece of work. It's better for you to spend a couple extra hours reviewing something than your client having to spend time spotting errors, which is a waste of their time.

This is a screenshot of how our Google Drive folder looks like:

Conclusion

Project management is a vital skill for today's SEOs, despite how technical our industry might look from the outside. Hopefully, our tips can inspire a few tweaks in your daily work or at least start a conversation on some of the above subjects.

Here at Distilled, we are always curious to hear other people’s opinions on the topic, so please get in touch with us on Twitter to share your views!

If you interested in downloading our project kick-off Checklist, do it here

Tips for Effective SEO Project Management was originally posted by Video And Blog Marketing

[dillenwaeraa]

Tips for Effective SEO Project Management

Project management and SEO, what do they have to do with each other? Isn’t SEO just about some geeky technical magic that will get your site more traffic? 

SEO is a relatively young field, which has grown significantly in the last 5-6 years. Most of the people I know who are not very familiar with the industry, just refer to it as “that SEO thing” and how can I blame them? Therefore, project management might not be seen as a main element when thinking about SEO. In reality, whoever works in SEO will know that project management is actually a large and crucial part of our daily job. 

This post comprises a series of tips and suggestions for effective SEO project management, with a stronger perspective on the agency side of things, based on our long experience in the digital marketing space.

Don’t miss the downloadable project kick-off checklist to help you get started on an SEO project with one of your clients! A comprehensive guide that covers a spectrum of SEO (and non-SEO) questions, which we find extremely useful when starting on a project.

Let’s get to it with some simple FAQs.

What is SEO Project Management?

It is simply, project management that involves any SEO work. We refer to it as any day-to-day practice that involves planning, executing, monitoring, and finalising the work of our SEO team to accomplish a specific goal within a specific timeframe. 

Why does Project Management matter in SEO?

Without project management, it would be impossible to develop a functional relationship with clients. Effective project management provides a series of invaluable benefits for your SEO team, from a stress and health perspective, to a communication and expectation management point of view. Furthermore, it creates a deeper relationship with your clients.

What is the difference between SEO Account Management and Project Management?

Differently from project management, SEO Account Management focuses on the overall success of a certain SEO account, rather than just a specific project. While the outcome of project management is determined by a defined target, successful account management relates to a successful relationship with the client.

In reality, there is a very fine line between the two and this post covers some elements of account management as well. At the end of the day, we like to think that project management is about getting things done.

What skills are needed for Project Management?

It boils down to three core skills:

Communication skills: Having the ability to communicate clearly and concisely with team members and clients is key to successful project management. 

Organizational skills: Organization is at the centre of every project management activity: planning and monitoring tasks, while coordinating people.

Time Management skills: Every project has a timeframe: working within that time frame is crucial for a project to be successful. 

#1 Project management is an SEO skill

The success of an SEO strategy is not limited to your ability to execute tactics. It's also dictated by your ability to manage projects, people, clients, and external factors. As your strategies become more complex, learning how to manage a project is invaluable. A successful project manager handles expectations (internal and external), puts out fires and work to get buy-in on ideas.

#2 Have a plan

SEO strategies can be very complicated and involve a lot of stakeholders, between team members, clients and other third parties. Here at Distilled, we do our best to evaluate what a project looks like, before getting to it: it all boils down to having a clear plan of action. 

This process can normally be broken down into the following components.

Project Kickoff

This is the initial face-to-face or call with the client. This is the meeting that “kick-starts” the project (or relationship as a whole) and aims to cover an exhaustive list of topics in order to have a much better understanding of what should be delivered and how value can be provided.

Goals and expectations are discussed and often defined here, followed up by a series of emails to confirm what agreed upon. 

It is helpful to have a clear list of points and questions you want to cover in a kickoff meeting: I always prefer to come prepared, so I put together a list of questions that we tend to cover for all our projects.

Keen to see what that looks like? 

Our project management template contains an extremely comprehensive list of SEO and Digital Marketing questions we normally ask during a kick-off meeting, which help us get an exhaustive picture on a project / client.

Pro tip: use a collaborative document to keep track of meeting/call notes, from the very first kick-off; it will come handy when you need it to trace back what was discussed in the past. This could be internal (shared among your team only) or external (shared with the client) depending on the relationship and objectives.

Regular catch-ups: internal and external

Depending on what works for you, regular catch-ups can be weekly, fortnightly or monthly.

The formula that works for me, as an SEO consultant, is to have a mix of monthly and weekly catch ups - this would look something like this: 

During the first week of the month, I would have an internal catch up with the team to discuss briefs, potential challenges and define internal deadlines;

The above is followed by a weekly catch up, either a team meeting or individual meetings to discuss recent work, obstacles and share a general update on everyone’s schedules and progress;

Once a week, I would arrange a client call / face-to-face meeting to share a general update, discuss the status of our work and discuss any questions they might have come up in between calls;

Once every quarter, I would arrange a face-to-face meeting to recap what was done in that quarter, discuss strategy and future of the account.

At the end of the project, I would organise a slide deck to present to the client (and any involved third-parties) which looks back at work delivered and breaks down the main findings and actions.

This is an iterative process that allows a project to be adapted to changing demands. It would be nice to walk into a project with a complete and accurate set of requirements for a project, but that rarely ever happens. 

Regular catch-ups allow you to have a good understanding of the overall picture, no matter what changes or delays affect your project, so to react accordingly.

#3 Use the Right Tools for the Job 

Having the right tools to manage your project is key, but there is no need for a complicated system. Before providing a list of tools and suggestions, it is important to clarify something: proposing change and effective ways of working is part of our job, but ultimately it is worth considering the tools that your client is comfortable with/already uses.

They will see you as an extension of their business, and it will be easier to impact change.

These are some of the tools we use at Distilled to manage projects.

Tracking time

We use a custom-built internal software; however, other great tools to track time are the following: Toggl, Hour, Harvest-  they all have a free version with their own limitations.

Sharing documents & files

Google Drive is extremely effective (and free!) to do the job - most of our work is now just on the drive: from Google Docs to Sheets, its offering makes it very easy to share any piece of work with others.

What are the main alternatives to Google Drive we recommend? Dropbox is an excellent tool, and extremely easy to use with its desktop application; OneDrive by Microsoft is not bad either, in case you prefer to work with the Office package.

Pro tip: Due to some client limitations to access any of the major tools above, I recently came across Airtable which can work like a spreadsheet but gives you the power of a database to organise any projects you might be working on.

Communication 

For internal communications, Slack has really revolutionized the market: its highly organised structure makes internal communications so efficient that you will never want to use anything else. Forget your messy inbox, conversations in Slack happen in dedicated spaces called channels.

For external communications, Google’s offering is still very powerful: Gmail & Google Hangouts constitute a great option. As for video conference tools, Zoom seems to have separated itself from the competition, even if a lot of our clients still use Skype.

Should you go back to your client and propose a new communication tool? Maybe - what works for me is to normally prioritize whatever ways of working / platforms the client is more comfortable with, and then potentially suggest alternatives if there is a need / opportunity.

Pro tip: We also use Slack as an external communications tool with some clients, as it has replaced emails in many ways.

Project management platform

I am a bit biased: Trello’s clean and simple interface is a no brainer (my colleague Chris talks about Trello in his post here). Its system of boards, lists and cards allow individuals and teams to monitor a project and collaborate in an effective manner.

I like to use boards for different work areas - this could look like the below, where I separate my technical SEO projects from content, analytics or CRO tasks.

There are hundreds of alternatives to Trello, I personally recommend checking out the following: Monday.com, TeamWork, ProofHub.

What about when working with developers? 

It is part of our job to effectively communicate with devs and help them “get things done”. Jira is a major project management tool, used by a lot of our clients. Basecamp, Asana & Youtrack are some other popular software I came across over the last few years.

#4 Teamwork is key

The outcome of a project highly depends on teamwork: learning how to work successfully in a team is no joke. Every project is different, so is every team.

From briefing to quality assurance, even tasks that seem simple can vary broadly depending on the people you work with. Learning how to work with your colleague determines how likely your project is to be successful.

It may take a while, but leveraging individuals’ strengths and weaknesses will make the difference. Balancing talent is something every project manager should work towards.

How to assess team members' strengths & weaknesses

Let’s be clear: there is no magical way to get this right straight away, it takes time to develop team chemistry and assess an individual's skillsets.

Some useful ways I came across over the years are the following:

Ask for feedback from others: you can get an idea by checking in from people who they have worked with before;

Frameworks can help: models such as the t-shaped model can be very valuable when evaluating people’s know-how;

Listen, observe and simply ask: getting people to work on something that they are genuinely interested in / good at is likely to impact the quality of the final output.

Appreciate your team members’ work

We try our best to create a culture of feedback: this allows our team members to work and progress in a much peaceful environment and in a faster manner.

Part of this philosophy includes being very vocal about work appreciation: taking the time to appreciate someone’s job, either privately or publicly, is something that goes a long way. A tool that comes really handy for this purpose is 15Five: it is a “continuous performance management suite that allows you to coach your employees as fast as you sprint.”

Managees spend about 15 minutes a week answering a series of questions which focus on personal productivity and team-wide morale. On the other hand managers spend circa 5 minutes to go through all responses, which trigger real conversations that translate into improved comms and overall ways of working. It is a great way to evaluate weekly performance reviews and get a sense of the company’s morale. Furthermore, the tool can be integrated with Slack, using a dedicated channel for public praises:

#5 Knowledge sharing within the team

I am a big advocate of knowledge sharing: both internal and external. For all my projects, I encourage my team to share findings, deliverables and news regularly in order to maximise the team potential and optimise our work.

Creating a culture of knowledge sharing is something that goes beyond project management per se, but it can really help daily work and different challenges, whatever they might be. One of the most beneficial tactics we use is a centralised location for our deliverables - we take advantage of Google Drive to create folders where to store documents, broken down by topic.

What about knowledge sharing with the client? 

That is important too! I like to update my clients with digital marketing news which I think could be relevant for the project we are working on, even if they are not strictly-SEO related.

#6  Offer value to the client

There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else."

Sam Walton, Founder of Walmart

 As SEOs, we set high standards and KPIs for our clients - these can sometimes be quite ambitious when starting to manage a project.

As a project manager, my job is to make sure the client is satisfied with our work, while doing my best to achieve the predefined SEO goals. This means sometimes I have to do things that aren’t optimal.

Transparency on your projects goes a long way. Trying really hard to sell clients on things they do not need, or simply saying yes to everything they ask for might not be the right strategy when looking to deliver the optimal value on a project.

#7 Know Your Tactics & Resources

Before you can come up with your tasks, you need to know the tactics required to meet project objectives and the resources you have available. SEO resources may include time, money, bandwidth, and talent.

Having a clear plan of the resources and tactics needed will make the difference. There is often a degree of estimation, as it is hard to exactly predict what obstacles your team will come across the way. The more experience in the field, the better your skills will be when finalising your plan.

Here at Distilled, we use a flexible approach for resource and tactics allocation, which can slightly vary from consultant to consultant.

Personally, I like to lean on the following:

Personal experience, based on similar projects - pretty self-explanatory. For instance: if I am planning a backlink audit for a site, I check how much time and the level of experience it was required to perform such an audit for a site of similar size and complexity.

Ask internally - if you need help, chances are someone in your team might have worked on a similar task at some point in their career. Ask for feedback, and gather as much info as you need to help you make a decision.

Check your knowledge-sharing database - having a centralized location where SEO deliverables are saved is very helpful, especially when you need to plan a task that was at some point done for another client / by another team. I like to use Google Drive for this purpose! Learn from your team members and apply the feedback.

Always allow a few hours extra - briefing and QAing are two very crucial parts of every task. Make sure to plan enough time to brief a task properly, and to review any last minute changes before you ship a piece of work. It's better for you to spend a couple extra hours reviewing something than your client having to spend time spotting errors, which is a waste of their time.

This is a screenshot of how our Google Drive folder looks like:

Conclusion

Project management is a vital skill for today's SEOs, despite how technical our industry might look from the outside. Hopefully, our tips can inspire a few tweaks in your daily work or at least start a conversation on some of the above subjects.

Here at Distilled, we are always curious to hear other people’s opinions on the topic, so please get in touch with us on Twitter to share your views!

If you interested in downloading our project kick-off Checklist, do it here

from Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/project-management-for-seo/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[donnafmae]

Tips for Effective SEO Project Management

Project management and SEO, what do they have to do with each other? Isn’t SEO just about some geeky technical magic that will get your site more traffic? 

SEO is a relatively young field, which has grown significantly in the last 5-6 years. Most of the people I know who are not very familiar with the industry, just refer to it as “that SEO thing” and how can I blame them? Therefore, project management might not be seen as a main element when thinking about SEO. In reality, whoever works in SEO will know that project management is actually a large and crucial part of our daily job. 

This post comprises a series of tips and suggestions for effective SEO project management, with a stronger perspective on the agency side of things, based on our long experience in the digital marketing space.

Don’t miss the downloadable project kick-off checklist to help you get started on an SEO project with one of your clients! A comprehensive guide that covers a spectrum of SEO (and non-SEO) questions, which we find extremely useful when starting on a project.

Let’s get to it with some simple FAQs.

What is SEO Project Management?

It is simply, project management that involves any SEO work. We refer to it as any day-to-day practice that involves planning, executing, monitoring, and finalising the work of our SEO team to accomplish a specific goal within a specific timeframe. 

Why does Project Management matter in SEO?

Without project management, it would be impossible to develop a functional relationship with clients. Effective project management provides a series of invaluable benefits for your SEO team, from a stress and health perspective, to a communication and expectation management point of view. Furthermore, it creates a deeper relationship with your clients.

What is the difference between SEO Account Management and Project Management?

Differently from project management, SEO Account Management focuses on the overall success of a certain SEO account, rather than just a specific project. While the outcome of project management is determined by a defined target, successful account management relates to a successful relationship with the client.

In reality, there is a very fine line between the two and this post covers some elements of account management as well. At the end of the day, we like to think that project management is about getting things done.

What skills are needed for Project Management?

It boils down to three core skills:

Communication skills: Having the ability to communicate clearly and concisely with team members and clients is key to successful project management. 

Organizational skills: Organization is at the centre of every project management activity: planning and monitoring tasks, while coordinating people.

Time Management skills: Every project has a timeframe: working within that time frame is crucial for a project to be successful. 

#1 Project management is an SEO skill

The success of an SEO strategy is not limited to your ability to execute tactics. It's also dictated by your ability to manage projects, people, clients, and external factors. As your strategies become more complex, learning how to manage a project is invaluable. A successful project manager handles expectations (internal and external), puts out fires and work to get buy-in on ideas.

#2 Have a plan

SEO strategies can be very complicated and involve a lot of stakeholders, between team members, clients and other third parties. Here at Distilled, we do our best to evaluate what a project looks like, before getting to it: it all boils down to having a clear plan of action. 

This process can normally be broken down into the following components.

Project Kickoff

This is the initial face-to-face or call with the client. This is the meeting that “kick-starts” the project (or relationship as a whole) and aims to cover an exhaustive list of topics in order to have a much better understanding of what should be delivered and how value can be provided.

Goals and expectations are discussed and often defined here, followed up by a series of emails to confirm what agreed upon. 

It is helpful to have a clear list of points and questions you want to cover in a kickoff meeting: I always prefer to come prepared, so I put together a list of questions that we tend to cover for all our projects.

Keen to see what that looks like? 

Our project management template contains an extremely comprehensive list of SEO and Digital Marketing questions we normally ask during a kick-off meeting, which help us get an exhaustive picture on a project / client.

Pro tip: use a collaborative document to keep track of meeting/call notes, from the very first kick-off; it will come handy when you need it to trace back what was discussed in the past. This could be internal (shared among your team only) or external (shared with the client) depending on the relationship and objectives.

Regular catch-ups: internal and external

Depending on what works for you, regular catch-ups can be weekly, fortnightly or monthly.

The formula that works for me, as an SEO consultant, is to have a mix of monthly and weekly catch ups - this would look something like this: 

During the first week of the month, I would have an internal catch up with the team to discuss briefs, potential challenges and define internal deadlines;

The above is followed by a weekly catch up, either a team meeting or individual meetings to discuss recent work, obstacles and share a general update on everyone’s schedules and progress;

Once a week, I would arrange a client call / face-to-face meeting to share a general update, discuss the status of our work and discuss any questions they might have come up in between calls;

Once every quarter, I would arrange a face-to-face meeting to recap what was done in that quarter, discuss strategy and future of the account.

At the end of the project, I would organise a slide deck to present to the client (and any involved third-parties) which looks back at work delivered and breaks down the main findings and actions.

This is an iterative process that allows a project to be adapted to changing demands. It would be nice to walk into a project with a complete and accurate set of requirements for a project, but that rarely ever happens. 

Regular catch-ups allow you to have a good understanding of the overall picture, no matter what changes or delays affect your project, so to react accordingly.

#3 Use the Right Tools for the Job 

Having the right tools to manage your project is key, but there is no need for a complicated system. Before providing a list of tools and suggestions, it is important to clarify something: proposing change and effective ways of working is part of our job, but ultimately it is worth considering the tools that your client is comfortable with/already uses.

They will see you as an extension of their business, and it will be easier to impact change.

These are some of the tools we use at Distilled to manage projects.

Tracking time

We use a custom-built internal software; however, other great tools to track time are the following: Toggl, Hour, Harvest-  they all have a free version with their own limitations.

Sharing documents & files

Google Drive is extremely effective (and free!) to do the job - most of our work is now just on the drive: from Google Docs to Sheets, its offering makes it very easy to share any piece of work with others.

What are the main alternatives to Google Drive we recommend? Dropbox is an excellent tool, and extremely easy to use with its desktop application; OneDrive by Microsoft is not bad either, in case you prefer to work with the Office package.

Pro tip: Due to some client limitations to access any of the major tools above, I recently came across Airtable which can work like a spreadsheet but gives you the power of a database to organise any projects you might be working on.

Communication 

For internal communications, Slack has really revolutionized the market: its highly organised structure makes internal communications so efficient that you will never want to use anything else. Forget your messy inbox, conversations in Slack happen in dedicated spaces called channels.

For external communications, Google’s offering is still very powerful: Gmail & Google Hangouts constitute a great option. As for video conference tools, Zoom seems to have separated itself from the competition, even if a lot of our clients still use Skype.

Should you go back to your client and propose a new communication tool? Maybe - what works for me is to normally prioritize whatever ways of working / platforms the client is more comfortable with, and then potentially suggest alternatives if there is a need / opportunity.

Pro tip: We also use Slack as an external communications tool with some clients, as it has replaced emails in many ways.

Project management platform

I am a bit biased: Trello’s clean and simple interface is a no brainer (my colleague Chris talks about Trello in his post here). Its system of boards, lists and cards allow individuals and teams to monitor a project and collaborate in an effective manner.

I like to use boards for different work areas - this could look like the below, where I separate my technical SEO projects from content, analytics or CRO tasks.

There are hundreds of alternatives to Trello, I personally recommend checking out the following: Monday.com, TeamWork, ProofHub.

What about when working with developers? 

It is part of our job to effectively communicate with devs and help them “get things done”. Jira is a major project management tool, used by a lot of our clients. Basecamp, Asana & Youtrack are some other popular software I came across over the last few years.

#4 Teamwork is key

The outcome of a project highly depends on teamwork: learning how to work successfully in a team is no joke. Every project is different, so is every team.

From briefing to quality assurance, even tasks that seem simple can vary broadly depending on the people you work with. Learning how to work with your colleague determines how likely your project is to be successful.

It may take a while, but leveraging individuals’ strengths and weaknesses will make the difference. Balancing talent is something every project manager should work towards.

How to assess team members' strengths & weaknesses

Let’s be clear: there is no magical way to get this right straight away, it takes time to develop team chemistry and assess an individual's skillsets.

Some useful ways I came across over the years are the following:

Ask for feedback from others: you can get an idea by checking in from people who they have worked with before;

Frameworks can help: models such as the t-shaped model can be very valuable when evaluating people’s know-how;

Listen, observe and simply ask: getting people to work on something that they are genuinely interested in / good at is likely to impact the quality of the final output.

Appreciate your team members’ work

We try our best to create a culture of feedback: this allows our team members to work and progress in a much peaceful environment and in a faster manner.

Part of this philosophy includes being very vocal about work appreciation: taking the time to appreciate someone’s job, either privately or publicly, is something that goes a long way. A tool that comes really handy for this purpose is 15Five: it is a “continuous performance management suite that allows you to coach your employees as fast as you sprint.”

Managees spend about 15 minutes a week answering a series of questions which focus on personal productivity and team-wide morale. On the other hand managers spend circa 5 minutes to go through all responses, which trigger real conversations that translate into improved comms and overall ways of working. It is a great way to evaluate weekly performance reviews and get a sense of the company’s morale. Furthermore, the tool can be integrated with Slack, using a dedicated channel for public praises:

#5 Knowledge sharing within the team

I am a big advocate of knowledge sharing: both internal and external. For all my projects, I encourage my team to share findings, deliverables and news regularly in order to maximise the team potential and optimise our work.

Creating a culture of knowledge sharing is something that goes beyond project management per se, but it can really help daily work and different challenges, whatever they might be. One of the most beneficial tactics we use is a centralised location for our deliverables - we take advantage of Google Drive to create folders where to store documents, broken down by topic.

What about knowledge sharing with the client? 

That is important too! I like to update my clients with digital marketing news which I think could be relevant for the project we are working on, even if they are not strictly-SEO related.

#6  Offer value to the client

There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else."

Sam Walton, Founder of Walmart

 As SEOs, we set high standards and KPIs for our clients - these can sometimes be quite ambitious when starting to manage a project.

As a project manager, my job is to make sure the client is satisfied with our work, while doing my best to achieve the predefined SEO goals. This means sometimes I have to do things that aren’t optimal.

Transparency on your projects goes a long way. Trying really hard to sell clients on things they do not need, or simply saying yes to everything they ask for might not be the right strategy when looking to deliver the optimal value on a project.

#7 Know Your Tactics & Resources

Before you can come up with your tasks, you need to know the tactics required to meet project objectives and the resources you have available. SEO resources may include time, money, bandwidth, and talent.

Having a clear plan of the resources and tactics needed will make the difference. There is often a degree of estimation, as it is hard to exactly predict what obstacles your team will come across the way. The more experience in the field, the better your skills will be when finalising your plan.

Here at Distilled, we use a flexible approach for resource and tactics allocation, which can slightly vary from consultant to consultant.

Personally, I like to lean on the following:

Personal experience, based on similar projects - pretty self-explanatory. For instance: if I am planning a backlink audit for a site, I check how much time and the level of experience it was required to perform such an audit for a site of similar size and complexity.

Ask internally - if you need help, chances are someone in your team might have worked on a similar task at some point in their career. Ask for feedback, and gather as much info as you need to help you make a decision.

Check your knowledge-sharing database - having a centralized location where SEO deliverables are saved is very helpful, especially when you need to plan a task that was at some point done for another client / by another team. I like to use Google Drive for this purpose! Learn from your team members and apply the feedback.

Always allow a few hours extra - briefing and QAing are two very crucial parts of every task. Make sure to plan enough time to brief a task properly, and to review any last minute changes before you ship a piece of work. It's better for you to spend a couple extra hours reviewing something than your client having to spend time spotting errors, which is a waste of their time.

This is a screenshot of how our Google Drive folder looks like:

Conclusion

Project management is a vital skill for today's SEOs, despite how technical our industry might look from the outside. Hopefully, our tips can inspire a few tweaks in your daily work or at least start a conversation on some of the above subjects.

Here at Distilled, we are always curious to hear other people’s opinions on the topic, so please get in touch with us on Twitter to share your views!

If you interested in downloading our project kick-off Checklist, do it here

from Marketing https://www.distilled.net/resources/project-management-for-seo/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[heavenwheel]

Tips for Effective SEO Project Management

Project management and SEO, what do they have to do with each other? Isn’t SEO just about some geeky technical magic that will get your site more traffic? 

SEO is a relatively young field, which has grown significantly in the last 5-6 years. Most of the people I know who are not very familiar with the industry, just refer to it as “that SEO thing” and how can I blame them? Therefore, project management might not be seen as a main element when thinking about SEO. In reality, whoever works in SEO will know that project management is actually a large and crucial part of our daily job. 

This post comprises a series of tips and suggestions for effective SEO project management, with a stronger perspective on the agency side of things, based on our long experience in the digital marketing space.

Don’t miss the downloadable project kick-off checklist to help you get started on an SEO project with one of your clients! A comprehensive guide that covers a spectrum of SEO (and non-SEO) questions, which we find extremely useful when starting on a project.

Let’s get to it with some simple FAQs.

What is SEO Project Management?

It is simply, project management that involves any SEO work. We refer to it as any day-to-day practice that involves planning, executing, monitoring, and finalising the work of our SEO team to accomplish a specific goal within a specific timeframe. 

Why does Project Management matter in SEO?

Without project management, it would be impossible to develop a functional relationship with clients. Effective project management provides a series of invaluable benefits for your SEO team, from a stress and health perspective, to a communication and expectation management point of view. Furthermore, it creates a deeper relationship with your clients.

What is the difference between SEO Account Management and Project Management?

Differently from project management, SEO Account Management focuses on the overall success of a certain SEO account, rather than just a specific project. While the outcome of project management is determined by a defined target, successful account management relates to a successful relationship with the client.

In reality, there is a very fine line between the two and this post covers some elements of account management as well. At the end of the day, we like to think that project management is about getting things done.

What skills are needed for Project Management?

It boils down to three core skills:

Communication skills: Having the ability to communicate clearly and concisely with team members and clients is key to successful project management. 

Organizational skills: Organization is at the centre of every project management activity: planning and monitoring tasks, while coordinating people.

Time Management skills: Every project has a timeframe: working within that time frame is crucial for a project to be successful. 

#1 Project management is an SEO skill

The success of an SEO strategy is not limited to your ability to execute tactics. It's also dictated by your ability to manage projects, people, clients, and external factors. As your strategies become more complex, learning how to manage a project is invaluable. A successful project manager handles expectations (internal and external), puts out fires and work to get buy-in on ideas.

#2 Have a plan

SEO strategies can be very complicated and involve a lot of stakeholders, between team members, clients and other third parties. Here at Distilled, we do our best to evaluate what a project looks like, before getting to it: it all boils down to having a clear plan of action. 

This process can normally be broken down into the following components.

Project Kickoff

This is the initial face-to-face or call with the client. This is the meeting that “kick-starts” the project (or relationship as a whole) and aims to cover an exhaustive list of topics in order to have a much better understanding of what should be delivered and how value can be provided.

Goals and expectations are discussed and often defined here, followed up by a series of emails to confirm what agreed upon. 

It is helpful to have a clear list of points and questions you want to cover in a kickoff meeting: I always prefer to come prepared, so I put together a list of questions that we tend to cover for all our projects.

Keen to see what that looks like? 

Our project management template contains an extremely comprehensive list of SEO and Digital Marketing questions we normally ask during a kick-off meeting, which help us get an exhaustive picture on a project / client.

Pro tip: use a collaborative document to keep track of meeting/call notes, from the very first kick-off; it will come handy when you need it to trace back what was discussed in the past. This could be internal (shared among your team only) or external (shared with the client) depending on the relationship and objectives.

Regular catch-ups: internal and external

Depending on what works for you, regular catch-ups can be weekly, fortnightly or monthly.

The formula that works for me, as an SEO consultant, is to have a mix of monthly and weekly catch ups - this would look something like this: 

During the first week of the month, I would have an internal catch up with the team to discuss briefs, potential challenges and define internal deadlines;

The above is followed by a weekly catch up, either a team meeting or individual meetings to discuss recent work, obstacles and share a general update on everyone’s schedules and progress;

Once a week, I would arrange a client call / face-to-face meeting to share a general update, discuss the status of our work and discuss any questions they might have come up in between calls;

Once every quarter, I would arrange a face-to-face meeting to recap what was done in that quarter, discuss strategy and future of the account.

At the end of the project, I would organise a slide deck to present to the client (and any involved third-parties) which looks back at work delivered and breaks down the main findings and actions.

This is an iterative process that allows a project to be adapted to changing demands. It would be nice to walk into a project with a complete and accurate set of requirements for a project, but that rarely ever happens. 

Regular catch-ups allow you to have a good understanding of the overall picture, no matter what changes or delays affect your project, so to react accordingly.

#3 Use the Right Tools for the Job 

Having the right tools to manage your project is key, but there is no need for a complicated system. Before providing a list of tools and suggestions, it is important to clarify something: proposing change and effective ways of working is part of our job, but ultimately it is worth considering the tools that your client is comfortable with/already uses.

They will see you as an extension of their business, and it will be easier to impact change.

These are some of the tools we use at Distilled to manage projects.

Tracking time

We use a custom-built internal software; however, other great tools to track time are the following: Toggl, Hour, Harvest-  they all have a free version with their own limitations.

Sharing documents & files

Google Drive is extremely effective (and free!) to do the job - most of our work is now just on the drive: from Google Docs to Sheets, its offering makes it very easy to share any piece of work with others.

What are the main alternatives to Google Drive we recommend? Dropbox is an excellent tool, and extremely easy to use with its desktop application; OneDrive by Microsoft is not bad either, in case you prefer to work with the Office package.

Pro tip: Due to some client limitations to access any of the major tools above, I recently came across Airtable which can work like a spreadsheet but gives you the power of a database to organise any projects you might be working on.

Communication 

For internal communications, Slack has really revolutionized the market: its highly organised structure makes internal communications so efficient that you will never want to use anything else. Forget your messy inbox, conversations in Slack happen in dedicated spaces called channels.

For external communications, Google’s offering is still very powerful: Gmail & Google Hangouts constitute a great option. As for video conference tools, Zoom seems to have separated itself from the competition, even if a lot of our clients still use Skype.

Should you go back to your client and propose a new communication tool? Maybe - what works for me is to normally prioritize whatever ways of working / platforms the client is more comfortable with, and then potentially suggest alternatives if there is a need / opportunity.

Pro tip: We also use Slack as an external communications tool with some clients, as it has replaced emails in many ways.

Project management platform

I am a bit biased: Trello’s clean and simple interface is a no brainer (my colleague Chris talks about Trello in his post here). Its system of boards, lists and cards allow individuals and teams to monitor a project and collaborate in an effective manner.

I like to use boards for different work areas - this could look like the below, where I separate my technical SEO projects from content, analytics or CRO tasks.

There are hundreds of alternatives to Trello, I personally recommend checking out the following: Monday.com, TeamWork, ProofHub.

What about when working with developers? 

It is part of our job to effectively communicate with devs and help them “get things done”. Jira is a major project management tool, used by a lot of our clients. Basecamp, Asana & Youtrack are some other popular software I came across over the last few years.

#4 Teamwork is key

The outcome of a project highly depends on teamwork: learning how to work successfully in a team is no joke. Every project is different, so is every team.

From briefing to quality assurance, even tasks that seem simple can vary broadly depending on the people you work with. Learning how to work with your colleague determines how likely your project is to be successful.

It may take a while, but leveraging individuals’ strengths and weaknesses will make the difference. Balancing talent is something every project manager should work towards.

How to assess team members' strengths & weaknesses

Let’s be clear: there is no magical way to get this right straight away, it takes time to develop team chemistry and assess an individual's skillsets.

Some useful ways I came across over the years are the following:

Ask for feedback from others: you can get an idea by checking in from people who they have worked with before;

Frameworks can help: models such as the t-shaped model can be very valuable when evaluating people’s know-how;

Listen, observe and simply ask: getting people to work on something that they are genuinely interested in / good at is likely to impact the quality of the final output.

Appreciate your team members’ work

We try our best to create a culture of feedback: this allows our team members to work and progress in a much peaceful environment and in a faster manner.

Part of this philosophy includes being very vocal about work appreciation: taking the time to appreciate someone’s job, either privately or publicly, is something that goes a long way. A tool that comes really handy for this purpose is 15Five: it is a “continuous performance management suite that allows you to coach your employees as fast as you sprint.”

Managees spend about 15 minutes a week answering a series of questions which focus on personal productivity and team-wide morale. On the other hand managers spend circa 5 minutes to go through all responses, which trigger real conversations that translate into improved comms and overall ways of working. It is a great way to evaluate weekly performance reviews and get a sense of the company’s morale. Furthermore, the tool can be integrated with Slack, using a dedicated channel for public praises:

#5 Knowledge sharing within the team

I am a big advocate of knowledge sharing: both internal and external. For all my projects, I encourage my team to share findings, deliverables and news regularly in order to maximise the team potential and optimise our work.

Creating a culture of knowledge sharing is something that goes beyond project management per se, but it can really help daily work and different challenges, whatever they might be. One of the most beneficial tactics we use is a centralised location for our deliverables - we take advantage of Google Drive to create folders where to store documents, broken down by topic.

What about knowledge sharing with the client? 

That is important too! I like to update my clients with digital marketing news which I think could be relevant for the project we are working on, even if they are not strictly-SEO related.

#6  Offer value to the client

There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else."

Sam Walton, Founder of Walmart

 As SEOs, we set high standards and KPIs for our clients - these can sometimes be quite ambitious when starting to manage a project.

As a project manager, my job is to make sure the client is satisfied with our work, while doing my best to achieve the predefined SEO goals. This means sometimes I have to do things that aren’t optimal.

Transparency on your projects goes a long way. Trying really hard to sell clients on things they do not need, or simply saying yes to everything they ask for might not be the right strategy when looking to deliver the optimal value on a project.

#7 Know Your Tactics & Resources

Before you can come up with your tasks, you need to know the tactics required to meet project objectives and the resources you have available. SEO resources may include time, money, bandwidth, and talent.

Having a clear plan of the resources and tactics needed will make the difference. There is often a degree of estimation, as it is hard to exactly predict what obstacles your team will come across the way. The more experience in the field, the better your skills will be when finalising your plan.

Here at Distilled, we use a flexible approach for resource and tactics allocation, which can slightly vary from consultant to consultant.

Personally, I like to lean on the following:

Personal experience, based on similar projects - pretty self-explanatory. For instance: if I am planning a backlink audit for a site, I check how much time and the level of experience it was required to perform such an audit for a site of similar size and complexity.

Ask internally - if you need help, chances are someone in your team might have worked on a similar task at some point in their career. Ask for feedback, and gather as much info as you need to help you make a decision.

Check your knowledge-sharing database - having a centralized location where SEO deliverables are saved is very helpful, especially when you need to plan a task that was at some point done for another client / by another team. I like to use Google Drive for this purpose! Learn from your team members and apply the feedback.

Always allow a few hours extra - briefing and QAing are two very crucial parts of every task. Make sure to plan enough time to brief a task properly, and to review any last minute changes before you ship a piece of work. It's better for you to spend a couple extra hours reviewing something than your client having to spend time spotting errors, which is a waste of their time.

This is a screenshot of how our Google Drive folder looks like:

Conclusion

Project management is a vital skill for today's SEOs, despite how technical our industry might look from the outside. Hopefully, our tips can inspire a few tweaks in your daily work or at least start a conversation on some of the above subjects.

Here at Distilled, we are always curious to hear other people’s opinions on the topic, so please get in touch with us on Twitter to share your views!

If you interested in downloading our project kick-off Checklist, do it here

from Digital https://www.distilled.net/resources/project-management-for-seo/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

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Tips for Effective SEO Project Management

Project management and SEO, what do they have to do with each other? Isn’t SEO just about some geeky technical magic that will get your site more traffic? 

SEO is a relatively young field, which has grown significantly in the last 5-6 years. Most of the people I know who are not very familiar with the industry, just refer to it as “that SEO thing” and how can I blame them? Therefore, project management might not be seen as a main element when thinking about SEO. In reality, whoever works in SEO will know that project management is actually a large and crucial part of our daily job. 

This post comprises a series of tips and suggestions for effective SEO project management, with a stronger perspective on the agency side of things, based on our long experience in the digital marketing space.

Don’t miss the downloadable project kick-off checklist to help you get started on an SEO project with one of your clients! A comprehensive guide that covers a spectrum of SEO (and non-SEO) questions, which we find extremely useful when starting on a project.

Let’s get to it with some simple FAQs.

What is SEO Project Management?

It is simply, project management that involves any SEO work. We refer to it as any day-to-day practice that involves planning, executing, monitoring, and finalising the work of our SEO team to accomplish a specific goal within a specific timeframe. 

Why does Project Management matter in SEO?

Without project management, it would be impossible to develop a functional relationship with clients. Effective project management provides a series of invaluable benefits for your SEO team, from a stress and health perspective, to a communication and expectation management point of view. Furthermore, it creates a deeper relationship with your clients.

What is the difference between SEO Account Management and Project Management?

Differently from project management, SEO Account Management focuses on the overall success of a certain SEO account, rather than just a specific project. While the outcome of project management is determined by a defined target, successful account management relates to a successful relationship with the client.

In reality, there is a very fine line between the two and this post covers some elements of account management as well. At the end of the day, we like to think that project management is about getting things done.

What skills are needed for Project Management?

It boils down to three core skills:

Communication skills: Having the ability to communicate clearly and concisely with team members and clients is key to successful project management. 

Organizational skills: Organization is at the centre of every project management activity: planning and monitoring tasks, while coordinating people.

Time Management skills: Every project has a timeframe: working within that time frame is crucial for a project to be successful. 

#1 Project management is an SEO skill

The success of an SEO strategy is not limited to your ability to execute tactics. It's also dictated by your ability to manage projects, people, clients, and external factors. As your strategies become more complex, learning how to manage a project is invaluable. A successful project manager handles expectations (internal and external), puts out fires and work to get buy-in on ideas.

#2 Have a plan

SEO strategies can be very complicated and involve a lot of stakeholders, between team members, clients and other third parties. Here at Distilled, we do our best to evaluate what a project looks like, before getting to it: it all boils down to having a clear plan of action. 

This process can normally be broken down into the following components.

Project Kickoff

This is the initial face-to-face or call with the client. This is the meeting that “kick-starts” the project (or relationship as a whole) and aims to cover an exhaustive list of topics in order to have a much better understanding of what should be delivered and how value can be provided.

Goals and expectations are discussed and often defined here, followed up by a series of emails to confirm what agreed upon. 

It is helpful to have a clear list of points and questions you want to cover in a kickoff meeting: I always prefer to come prepared, so I put together a list of questions that we tend to cover for all our projects.

Keen to see what that looks like? 

Our project management template contains an extremely comprehensive list of SEO and Digital Marketing questions we normally ask during a kick-off meeting, which help us get an exhaustive picture on a project / client.

Pro tip: use a collaborative document to keep track of meeting/call notes, from the very first kick-off; it will come handy when you need it to trace back what was discussed in the past. This could be internal (shared among your team only) or external (shared with the client) depending on the relationship and objectives.

Regular catch-ups: internal and external

Depending on what works for you, regular catch-ups can be weekly, fortnightly or monthly.

The formula that works for me, as an SEO consultant, is to have a mix of monthly and weekly catch ups - this would look something like this: 

During the first week of the month, I would have an internal catch up with the team to discuss briefs, potential challenges and define internal deadlines;

The above is followed by a weekly catch up, either a team meeting or individual meetings to discuss recent work, obstacles and share a general update on everyone’s schedules and progress;

Once a week, I would arrange a client call / face-to-face meeting to share a general update, discuss the status of our work and discuss any questions they might have come up in between calls;

Once every quarter, I would arrange a face-to-face meeting to recap what was done in that quarter, discuss strategy and future of the account.

At the end of the project, I would organise a slide deck to present to the client (and any involved third-parties) which looks back at work delivered and breaks down the main findings and actions.

This is an iterative process that allows a project to be adapted to changing demands. It would be nice to walk into a project with a complete and accurate set of requirements for a project, but that rarely ever happens. 

Regular catch-ups allow you to have a good understanding of the overall picture, no matter what changes or delays affect your project, so to react accordingly.

#3 Use the Right Tools for the Job 

Having the right tools to manage your project is key, but there is no need for a complicated system. Before providing a list of tools and suggestions, it is important to clarify something: proposing change and effective ways of working is part of our job, but ultimately it is worth considering the tools that your client is comfortable with/already uses.

They will see you as an extension of their business, and it will be easier to impact change.

These are some of the tools we use at Distilled to manage projects.

Tracking time

We use a custom-built internal software; however, other great tools to track time are the following: Toggl, Hour, Harvest-  they all have a free version with their own limitations.

Sharing documents & files

Google Drive is extremely effective (and free!) to do the job - most of our work is now just on the drive: from Google Docs to Sheets, its offering makes it very easy to share any piece of work with others.

What are the main alternatives to Google Drive we recommend? Dropbox is an excellent tool, and extremely easy to use with its desktop application; OneDrive by Microsoft is not bad either, in case you prefer to work with the Office package.

Pro tip: Due to some client limitations to access any of the major tools above, I recently came across Airtable which can work like a spreadsheet but gives you the power of a database to organise any projects you might be working on.

Communication 

For internal communications, Slack has really revolutionized the market: its highly organised structure makes internal communications so efficient that you will never want to use anything else. Forget your messy inbox, conversations in Slack happen in dedicated spaces called channels.

For external communications, Google’s offering is still very powerful: Gmail & Google Hangouts constitute a great option. As for video conference tools, Zoom seems to have separated itself from the competition, even if a lot of our clients still use Skype.

Should you go back to your client and propose a new communication tool? Maybe - what works for me is to normally prioritize whatever ways of working / platforms the client is more comfortable with, and then potentially suggest alternatives if there is a need / opportunity.

Pro tip: We also use Slack as an external communications tool with some clients, as it has replaced emails in many ways.

Project management platform

I am a bit biased: Trello’s clean and simple interface is a no brainer (my colleague Chris talks about Trello in his post here). Its system of boards, lists and cards allow individuals and teams to monitor a project and collaborate in an effective manner.

I like to use boards for different work areas - this could look like the below, where I separate my technical SEO projects from content, analytics or CRO tasks.

There are hundreds of alternatives to Trello, I personally recommend checking out the following: Monday.com, TeamWork, ProofHub.

What about when working with developers? 

It is part of our job to effectively communicate with devs and help them “get things done”. Jira is a major project management tool, used by a lot of our clients. Basecamp, Asana & Youtrack are some other popular software I came across over the last few years.

#4 Teamwork is key

The outcome of a project highly depends on teamwork: learning how to work successfully in a team is no joke. Every project is different, so is every team.

From briefing to quality assurance, even tasks that seem simple can vary broadly depending on the people you work with. Learning how to work with your colleague determines how likely your project is to be successful.

It may take a while, but leveraging individuals’ strengths and weaknesses will make the difference. Balancing talent is something every project manager should work towards.

How to assess team members' strengths & weaknesses

Let’s be clear: there is no magical way to get this right straight away, it takes time to develop team chemistry and assess an individual's skillsets.

Some useful ways I came across over the years are the following:

Ask for feedback from others: you can get an idea by checking in from people who they have worked with before;

Frameworks can help: models such as the t-shaped model can be very valuable when evaluating people’s know-how;

Listen, observe and simply ask: getting people to work on something that they are genuinely interested in / good at is likely to impact the quality of the final output.

Appreciate your team members’ work

We try our best to create a culture of feedback: this allows our team members to work and progress in a much peaceful environment and in a faster manner.

Part of this philosophy includes being very vocal about work appreciation: taking the time to appreciate someone’s job, either privately or publicly, is something that goes a long way. A tool that comes really handy for this purpose is 15Five: it is a “continuous performance management suite that allows you to coach your employees as fast as you sprint.”

Managees spend about 15 minutes a week answering a series of questions which focus on personal productivity and team-wide morale. On the other hand managers spend circa 5 minutes to go through all responses, which trigger real conversations that translate into improved comms and overall ways of working. It is a great way to evaluate weekly performance reviews and get a sense of the company’s morale. Furthermore, the tool can be integrated with Slack, using a dedicated channel for public praises:

#5 Knowledge sharing within the team

I am a big advocate of knowledge sharing: both internal and external. For all my projects, I encourage my team to share findings, deliverables and news regularly in order to maximise the team potential and optimise our work.

Creating a culture of knowledge sharing is something that goes beyond project management per se, but it can really help daily work and different challenges, whatever they might be. One of the most beneficial tactics we use is a centralised location for our deliverables - we take advantage of Google Drive to create folders where to store documents, broken down by topic.

What about knowledge sharing with the client? 

That is important too! I like to update my clients with digital marketing news which I think could be relevant for the project we are working on, even if they are not strictly-SEO related.

#6  Offer value to the client

There is only one boss: the customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else."

Sam Walton, Founder of Walmart

 As SEOs, we set high standards and KPIs for our clients - these can sometimes be quite ambitious when starting to manage a project.

As a project manager, my job is to make sure the client is satisfied with our work, while doing my best to achieve the predefined SEO goals. This means sometimes I have to do things that aren’t optimal.

Transparency on your projects goes a long way. Trying really hard to sell clients on things they do not need, or simply saying yes to everything they ask for might not be the right strategy when looking to deliver the optimal value on a project.

#7 Know Your Tactics & Resources

Before you can come up with your tasks, you need to know the tactics required to meet project objectives and the resources you have available. SEO resources may include time, money, bandwidth, and talent.

Having a clear plan of the resources and tactics needed will make the difference. There is often a degree of estimation, as it is hard to exactly predict what obstacles your team will come across the way. The more experience in the field, the better your skills will be when finalising your plan.

Here at Distilled, we use a flexible approach for resource and tactics allocation, which can slightly vary from consultant to consultant.

Personally, I like to lean on the following:

Personal experience, based on similar projects - pretty self-explanatory. For instance: if I am planning a backlink audit for a site, I check how much time and the level of experience it was required to perform such an audit for a site of similar size and complexity.

Ask internally - if you need help, chances are someone in your team might have worked on a similar task at some point in their career. Ask for feedback, and gather as much info as you need to help you make a decision.

Check your knowledge-sharing database - having a centralized location where SEO deliverables are saved is very helpful, especially when you need to plan a task that was at some point done for another client / by another team. I like to use Google Drive for this purpose! Learn from your team members and apply the feedback.

Always allow a few hours extra - briefing and QAing are two very crucial parts of every task. Make sure to plan enough time to brief a task properly, and to review any last minute changes before you ship a piece of work. It's better for you to spend a couple extra hours reviewing something than your client having to spend time spotting errors, which is a waste of their time.

This is a screenshot of how our Google Drive folder looks like:

Conclusion

Project management is a vital skill for today's SEOs, despite how technical our industry might look from the outside. Hopefully, our tips can inspire a few tweaks in your daily work or at least start a conversation on some of the above subjects.

Here at Distilled, we are always curious to hear other people’s opinions on the topic, so please get in touch with us on Twitter to share your views!

If you interested in downloading our project kick-off Checklist, do it here