Digital tools in my job
I work as a Development Manager and the tools I use in my job are:
- Teams
- Teams has almost replaced e-mail nowadays. All the conversations are done through Teams and that is also a good tool to share documents for groups. You can have there many groups and have notifications of those groups that you want. The negative side of Teams is that there is no good way to search from all of those conversations and groups. Also I feel using Teams has increased multi-tasking feeling, because you easily react right away to a message coming from Teams.
- Jira
- Jira is used to many things in my job now when we use SAFe and scrum methods. All tasks, testing and communication with system providers and the progress of the development is done using Jira. Also all that needs to be ordered like a new laptop, is handeled as a ticket in Jira.
- Confluence
- Confluence is used in the SAFe releated processes, in Confluence is stored all the documentation of the Epics and Features.
- Bizz
- Bizz is a tool what I use to draw process diagrams. It took a while to get use to it after Visio, but now when I have used it, it is actually really goog, propably the best tool that I have used for process diagrams.
- Figma
- I don’t create UI pictures by myself in Figma, but I look, review and comment UI pictures created by designers.
- Office tools
- I use Outlook, Power Point, Excel and Word on a daily basis.
New digital tools to try
I have been pretty used to using only those tools at work that are commonly used there. I could try some new tools and maybe some of those could be “accepted” to wider use.
- Monday.com
- This could be used in a projects were many people are involved and see visually what is the status for each task. This could also be used when planning a project or Feature, to gather all task in a vieal way even if people are working remotely.
- Mural
- During covid time when we working remotely all the time the thing I struggled was that workshops and meetings were not that effective as they used to be face-to-face. One thing is that we didin’t propably have the best tools to use and the knowledge to use thos. This Mural seems like it could be a nice way to manage for example a workshop.
- Todoist
- This could be a possible choice for managing my own tasks. This looks very simple and it should be possible to connect to your calendar. Currently I haven’t got the best solution for my own to-do-lists and I use post-it notes and calendar for my own tasks.
- Open Badgets
- I have been a lazy user of Linkedin, but those Open Badges were a totally new to me and I could share there gadgets to show my skills or accomblishments.
- Miro
- I hadn’t heard about Miro before I started studies in Savonia. Now we have used it in our innovation studies and that is a really good tool when you want to do something together online from different places and still be able to involve everyone in the meeting.
Social Media’s pros and cons
There are a lot of positive as well as negative aspects towards Social Media. I am not even sure if I feel is social media more better or worce in my opinion, it actually depends on a day whitch way I feel. Because social media is here to stay, the most important thing is every person to figure out themselves and decide what is your own need for social media and what you get or loose for using it. Your feelings for social media can be different in times when you are depressed and in times when you are happy and want to celebrate your achievements with others.
Pros
+ For lonely people social media can be a place to connect to others and find friends that are like yourself
+ You can find new ideas, hobbies or events in the social media
+ You can contact people easily if you want
+Social media can also be supportive and you can get peer support from there
+ You can wider your aspects and learn from the different people and situations
Cons
– People don’t always remember that what you see in the social media is not the truth. For example I heard that a young child took a picture of an ice-cream and posted it to Instragram saying “Summer’s first ice-cream, life couldn’t be better” and the situation was that the child was with a social worker who had taken her out of her home because of the domestic violance.
– People can photoshop and finetune their pictures and people can think those are real and have a struggle with their own looks.
– People can be cruel in social media. It is easier to be cruel when you are not infront of the people.
– You can live your life in social media and forget the real and important things for you
– You are not able to be focused when you get all the alerts from the social media
Successful use of digital application
Succesful use on digital applications in my opinion is the same as if you would use some service face-face. You have to have a need to use it, something to accomplish. And that is the key to the whole customer experience and the goal for the application. If customer wants to send a message to a friend, that is what she/he should be able to do. Nothing less or nothing more. By accomplishing that you have succesfully used an application. If you at the same time send messages to other people or if you are not sure if the message went to your friend, it hasn’t been succesful. Also I consider successful use of an application if it is so simple that I, my son and my parent all can use it without any questions.
Self-reflection
I had just found Miro as a really nice and online tool to work with your team and now I found out that Mural is also an option for that use. These are tools that I want to use in my work in the future. I have been thinking about my feelings towards social media and now I clearer for me that I don’t have to use social media all the time or not to use at all, I can use it when I feel I can get something positive out of it and stop using if I feel it doesn’t make me feel good anymore.
