Delivering high-quality software is complex

Within software development, business demands can often change quickly. This can make it challenging for organizations to keep up, especially since the development of high-quality software is becoming increasingly complex. Requirements must be malleable, even with stakeholders providing constant input. The increasing business and technical complexities greatly complicate matters, even more so when teams are large and globally distributed.

These challenges have prompted forward-thinking organizations to adopt Agile development practices. For some companies and specifically large-scale enterprises, this transition can be daunting. Although many companies find quick success in implementing Agile within small teams, they struggle to mature their Agile practices across the enterprise.

Bottom line, business success requires teams to deliver better software faster. Many CIOs have made it happen, even though it is not easy. How? The key is employing the right collaboration tools – leaving behind the inefficiencies of email and focusing on real-time communication.

That’s why as a part of the newest release of Storyteller we felt it was necessary to add webhooks to increase automation and collaboration throughout the SDLC. The benefit of adding webhooks to Storyteller is that it makes it easier for stakeholders to detect and respond to events or changes.

Robust Collaboration Matters and Email Doesn’t Cut It

Effective and efficient collaboration connects teams to ensure they can deliver exactly what the business needs.  But in today’s world of distributed teams and remote workers, robust collaboration is difficult – and more important than ever.

Email alone simply doesn’t cut it anymore, because:

Email is a productivity killer

Inboxes are flooded with emails from a variety of sources. Searching through a long list of emails to get to a desired communication is anything but efficient. To be most productive, people need to be able to cut through “the noise” and get to “the signal” as quickly as possible.

Email isn’t instant

To be truly Agile, teams need real-time exchange of information. But email is asynchronous unless all parties are sitting in front of their computers instantly responding. While email works for some types of communication, it does not truly support a robust collaboration.

Not everyone “lives” in email

Business stakeholders and managers may spend much of their day in email, but business analysts, developers and testers have their own daily tools that help them write code, manage requirements and execute tests. To be most productive, everyone involved needs to be able to collaborate easily and seamlessly from the tools they use the most.

Mastering Collaboration to Create Real Business Value via Webhooks

With Storyteller’s webhooks feature, your business partners, product owners, business analysts, and development teams can easily receive notifications and collaborate from within their everyday tools – increasing understanding, productivity, and efficiency.

Blueprint Enhances Collaboration for Agile Teams

Collaborative teams are a bi-product of successful Agile processes. Blueprint recognizes that robust collaboration is key to success. While we believe email alone will no longer cut it in modern Agile 2.0 development processes, we recognize that it is still the most heavily used communication tool across most organizations.

Knowing this, we recognized the need for a clear connection between Storyteller, Microsoft Outlook, and Slack. By integrating a webhook for a popular email service and team collaboration tool, Storyteller is increasing transparency and bridging the communication gap for product owners, business analysts, and development teams.

Outlook Webhook

The Outlook webhook is triggered by activities that take place within Storyteller. Users are notified via Outlook which cues them to take the next steps. Receiving notifications within Outlook enhances collaboration because information is relevant, up-to-date, and stored within Storyteller. Users can easily determine which task the notification is related to and take the appropriate actions to follow-up. Users easily collaborate with one another in a precise and accurate format.

Learn More: Collaboration in Storyteller

Slack Webhook

Similar to the Outlook webhook, Storyteller’s Slack integration notifies users when actions are taken that trigger the webhook. Storyteller then sends a notification directly to your Slack channel to enhance team collaboration and transparency. Following the Agile Manifesto, Storyteller uses technology (e.g. Slack webhook) to improve communication within each phase of the Application Lifecycle. The information delivered to your channel is tailored to you and your team, removing any friction or redundancies.

The Limit Does Not Exist

Storyteller webhooks provide you and your team with the ability to automatically pass real-time information about events happening within your Agile toolchain across many systems and applications at once. Webhooks enhance Storyteller’s workflow capabilities when triggered by user actions.

The business value is clear. Webhooks help teams to automate work and be more productive by:

• Breaking down silos and facilitating real-time collaboration between business and development teams through technology
• Making teams more productive by turning out the noise and allowing them to work from their own tools of comfort
• Leveraging your organization’s current DevOps toolchain investments.

For more information on Blueprint and Storyteller, please contact us today.

Originally posted on April 5, 2016 – Blog has since been updated for accuracy