This is the first in a series of interviews we are publishing with users of the beta product. Interested in being a part of a user interview? Comment below or email us.

Bertrand Vidal, Software Engineer at LTU Technologies

Please introduce yourself, your team, and what you’re working on.

LTU provides cutting-edge image recognition technologies and services to global companies and organizations such as Adidas, Kantar Media and Ipsos. LTU’s solutions are available on-demand with LTU Cloud or on an on-premise basis with LTU Enterprise Software. These patented image recognition solutions enable LTU’s clients to effectively manage their visual assets – internally and externally – and innovate by bringing their end-users truly innovative visual experiences. In an image-centric world, LTU’s expertise runs the image recognition gamut from visual search, visual data management, investigations and media monitoring, to e-commerce, brand intelligence, and mobile applications.

Our technical teams use KANBAN and continuous integration to maintain the high quality standard LTU is known for, and to avail of our small size to quickly react to change. The 7 developers and 2 product owners are spread across 3 differents cities in 2 time zones: Paris, Lyon, and New York.

How does your team use AgileZen, and why?

Each product has its own board and each board has its own workflow (different WIP limit, different phases, …). When a new cycle starts for one of our products and the content has been decided, the team and the product owner gather to split the cycle into Stories. We try to make them as small as possible and as precise as possible so anyone can start working. Then each team member is assigned a Story and from there the developer can customize the Story as needed. Some use Tasks, some others use Tags, we even allow to break them into smaller Stories if need be.

Since our development team is spread over 3 locations and 2 timezones, we needed an online board so everyone would know what was going on in the current cycle. Our CTO needed a tool to follow the evolution of the team’s work and AgileZen offers just that (e.g. Throughput, Lead Time, and so on). We also wanted to be able to move Stories around easily – to export data into other tools. Using the AgileZen API made that painless. The API and a lot of git aliases allowed us to make our work smoother and simpler. We can now create a new git branch and specify the id of a Story; this will move the card to the “Working” column and automatically assign the Story.

What challenges does your team face around collaboration?

Being spread over 2 timezones is probably the biggest issue since it sometimes slows down our work flow. Other challenges around collaboration have been answered by appropriate tools, including AgileZen.

How has your experience been with the beta version?

The team has been using the original product for almost 3 years now. Those of us who have been testing the beta version have only positive feedback. The 2 biggest improvements for us are the ability to better manage the Stories in the backlog, and the right Focus Panel describing a Story when selected. The backlog should now be considered as a seperate board made just for planning and the distinction between backlog and the board was very important to us. This makes the Story selecting and sorting process faster. The right side Focus Panel allows fast access to the Story details without leaving the board, making the Story management even smoother.

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