• People gesturing in front of a computer in a meeting that matters

    Getting to implementation in an ideas world: Making your meetings matter

    Technology is changing rapidly and penetrating every aspect of our life. Everything is new, and every idea seems possible. “You could change the world,” technology whispers to us, “if only you choose the right idea.” Many of these ideas start in a meeting room. So how do you, as an implementer, stop yourself from going insane in meetings and keep your coworkers from killing you for squashing their ideas?

  • What airplane design and digital news design have in common

    At Elevate! in Chicago, CEO Austin discussed Alley’s recent design work for The Dallas Morning News with Mike Orren, their Chief Product Officer. Learn about their conversation, through the lens of a metaphor that he often uses to discuss how to make tough choices about page speed while designing a news website: Airplanes.

  • Using design thinking to navigate a “Lift and Shift” enterprise WordPress project

    A “lift and shift” project involves moving functionality wholesale from one platform to another. It’s a common request, and it can work well under the right circumstances — but creating conditions for success in pure migration projects requires careful consideration of the tradeoffs and paradoxically, a clear commitment to design thinking.

  • Remote work: Teamwork at a distance

    As you might imagine, working remotely changes how you relate to and work with your colleagues. This starts at the very beginning with hiring, but carries through to every day we spend working as a team. Here are some of the most important parts of the process.

  • Remote work communication: Let’s talk

    Although it’s vitally important in all workplaces, communication can be especially challenging in a remote environment. It’s something that’s generally easy to do in person, but becomes more difficult when everyone is in different places. Here are some ways we’ve focused on communication and increased its value to everyone involved.

  • Remote work tools: What we use and how we choose them

    Sign into LinkedIn or run a quick Google search, and you’ll see that the ecosystem of business tools is becoming increasingly crowded. Especially when you work remotely, like us, you are very reliant on finding the right tools for the job. How do you find the ones that help you succeed?

  • Reference stories: A fair way to get up to par

    Just like how hours work globally because we all take our cues from the World Clock, teams need to base their decisions using the same benchmarks to unlock the true value of story points and team velocity. This can be accomplished by using reference stories.

  • You down with ITP?

    Building and keeping trust among web users is paramount to publishers and content creators alike, and many people feel betrayed when their web activity and private data are acquired by third-parties without consent. With the release of ITP 2.1, now on beta releases of iOS 12.2 and Safari 12.1 on macOS High Sierra and Mojave, both third-party and first-party cookies are affected.