Taiga Blog

Welcome to Taiga's latest release, Betula Nana (v.3.2.0) named after the dwarf birch, a species of birch found mainly in the tundra of the Arctic region.

For us at Taiga, 2018 looks like a very promising year. Last year was a year for us to consolidate and make sure our system works and scales even as more and more members join. And we're proud to say it was smooth sailing. No network glitches or performance problems. Robustness, security and reliability of the platform was our top priority and we think we worked diligently in the background to strengthen and improve everything "backstage".

It is really amazing the community we have all managed to gather around Taiga.io and open source in general. Highly qualified professionals that share their time and knowledge to help each other fulfill their aspirations with their projects. It is truly inspiring what we all can do when we are surrounded by a positive, productive community. That is why we are launching a series of articles that will showcase people and ideas that have been critical to Taiga.io and its journey.

Kanban has meant a breakthrough for many teams that used methodologies like Waterfall or Scrum. Their differences and similarities have been a topic of discussion for many agile project management experts and their teams. This subject has already been tackled in this blog but today it is worthwhile sharing the magnificent conference at Talks at Google by Eric Brechner.

Hack, hack, hack, that’s all you hear these days when people refer to Russia. They seem to be everywhere, just like our release’s namesake, Perovskia atriplicifolia, or as it’s more commonly known, Russian sage (not to be mistaken with the Russian President, who some also think of as a sage.) No, our tribute remains squarely rooted in biology; it is to this beautiful flowering plant with medicinal qualities that we dedicate this release. To those who say hack, hack, hack, we say, heal, heal, heal!

If you work with agile methodologies, you’ve surely heard about epics. Epics are hard to define, because there isn’t an official definition, and if you ask around you’ll see that not everyone shares a unique idea of what an epic is. But if you watch how people use epics you can get a clue about them.

Named after this amazing stellar plant that hails from the northernmost part of the  Northern Hemisphere. Stellaria takes their name from the stars in the boreal sky that they resemble.  And so it is with this, our newest, biggest-ever new Epic release: star-filled with shiny features that will make your mind glow!

Projects, software or otherwise suffer from the common problem of miscommunication. While the client expects something else, the product owner has a different understanding. Then there are developers who at times have different understanding of work to be done. With Agile, many of such concerns are addressed, thanks to daily standups and clear goals set before a sprint. Still there are some areas that are generally looked upon during the beginning of the project and are only relevant when sprints approach completion. One of those is the clear difference between done criteria and the ready criteria. Generally people use these terms interchangeably causing avoidable confusion. In this post, I will try to clear the air on the definition of done and the definition of ready.

We’re always in pursuit of the best tool or technique or methodology that we think will almost magically set us on the path to be super productive, super fast and super cool people who can fix bugs in minutes if not seconds, who can estimate stuff correct upto two decimal places and who can foresee any possible upcoming roadblocks. But, till that happens, we’ll have to make use of the current tools and techniques. Kanban vs scrum, and how to choose between them, seems like the battle these days.

So named after the magnificent king of the Taiga, the Black Bear, which the Native American Indians considered a symbol for the free spirit; surely something we can all aspire to become!