Easy Agile is now SOC 2 Type 1 certified

We are thrilled to announce that Easy Agile has successfully achieved SOC 2 Type II compliance, a significant milestone in our unwavering commitment to maintaining high standards of security and privacy.

What is SOC 2 Type II Compliance?

System and Organization Controls (SOC) 2 is a widely recognized security standard developed by the AICPA that specifies how organizations should manage customer data. A SOC 2 report is often the primary document that security departments rely on to assess a service provider's ability to maintain adequate security.

Service providers like Easy Agile voluntarily undergo a rigorous audit and assessment to ensure their security controls meet AICPA’s Trust Services Criteria, including:

• Security
• Availability
• Processing integrity
• Confidentiality

SOC 2 compliance comes in two forms: A SOC 2 Type I report describes the design of a service provider’s system controls to meet relevant trust criteria as of a specific point in time, while a SOC 2 Type II report details the operational effectiveness of those systems controls to perform as designed over a specified period. An independent auditor, Johanson Group, has reviewed and certified that our processes, procedures, and controls are properly designed to meet the SOC 2 standards.

What does this mean for you?

Our achievement of SOC 2 Type II compliance means that when you use Easy Agile's services, you can continue to do so with the confidence that we have robust controls in place to secure your data. We believe that security is a shared responsibility, and this milestone is part of our ongoing effort to provide transparent and secure practices that support your business.

We want to thank you for your trust and support in Easy Agile. Your data security and privacy are our top priorities, and we are committed to delivering services that not only meet but exceed industry standards.

When is ISO 27001 coming?

Now that we've completed our SOC 2 Type II compliance we'll be setting our sights on ISO 27001 compliance in the next 12 to 18 months.

Where can I learn more?

Visit our Trust Report to access security reports and monitoring.

For any questions or more information about our SOC 2 Type II compliance and what it means for you, please feel free to reach out to our team at security@easyagile.com.

Agile software development is like a roadmap for getting software done right. As highlighted in the agile manifesto, it prioritizes real conversations over tools, delivering working software instead of drowning in documentation, collaborating with customers rather than just negotiating contracts, and being quick to adapt to change. The manifesto emphasizes the power of collaboration within cross-functional teams, making it relevant for project management in various contexts.

Think of agile as a mindset, not just a method. It empowers project teams to give and receive feedback in a friendly, iterative environment that leads to great results. While it gained popularity in software development, agile principles can actually work wonders for any project team. Whether it’s in construction management, content marketing, or even planning weddings, agile has you covered.

Let’s dive into why agile project management is a great fit for any team. We’ll explore how its principles can seamlessly fit into your project processes. Remember, it doesn't matter which agile framework—like Scrum or Kanban—you choose, as long as it suits your team. In short:

• Agile principles are perfect for team cooperation.
• Agile workflows for project teams are conducive to continuous iteration and improvement.
• The framework you choose, Scrum or Kanban, is less important than your team mindset.
• Using agile project management across your organization increases visibility and coordination.

Agile principles in project management

The core principles of agile — collaboration, empowerment, and transparency — are ideal for project management. No matter the type of team, the goal should be continuous improvement. Teams meet this goal by working together with an iterative approach to fulfill their projects.

Agile is a mindset of adaptability, sharing progress, and learning from what worked and what didn't. You improve as you go.

Thomas Edison encapsulates the spirit of an iterative approach perfectly: “I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that don't work.” 💡It's this attitude that is the agile mindset.

Entities such as the Project Management Institute espouse the virtues of agile project management and its impact on teams’ collaboration:

• Teams are responsible for project delivery and self-organize in a way to maximize their opportunities for success.
• Agile project managers encourage discussion of frameworks and processes, but also encourage independent thinking.
• Agile values foster trust and healthy working relationships.
• As a decision-making framework, agile project management promotes accountability while driving continuous decision-making and delivery.

Agile workflows for project teams

How can a traditional project team become self-organizing enough to become more agile? Let's step through a Scrum workflow in the context of a general project.

Backlog

Development teams work from a product backlog, which is a list of prioritized features desired by a customer. But this list doesn't have to be a set of software features. It can be any set of tasks or outputs that a project team needs to complete.

Sprint planning meeting

Agile teams work in sprints, which are set periods of time (e.g., two weeks) to complete an agreed-upon amount of work. During sprint planning, the team reviews and discusses the top priorities from the backlog. They then decide what can be delivered in the sprint and commit to that work.

Let's use a marketing team working on a campaign as a non-typical example. In a traditional project management setting, the team may take a waterfall approach. They would create a months-long content calendar of social media, blog articles, videos, and other content. Under agile, they would only commit to the next two weeks of content production before deciding what comes next.

Stand-Ups

A stand-up is a daily meeting of team members. During it, each member answers three questions:

• What did you work on yesterday?
• What are you going to work on today?
• Are there any issues blocking your work from being completed?

The questions provide each person the opportunity to share their progress and to provide support in case they can unblock a teammate's work by helping to resolve their issue.

Sprint review

When the sprint is completed, teams meet to review and demo the work they just finished. In our marketing case, it can be a time for the team to get together to watch their content videos, read the comments and feedback from their social media posts, and review key metrics from all of their content.

Sprint retrospectives

Product development teams meet after each sprint to discuss how they might improve things for their next sprint. In this meeting, the team discusses:

• What went well?
• What didn't go so well?
• What can we improve going forward?

Suppose your marketing team had a post go unexpectedly viral. Why was it so effective? What can we learn from that to adjust the next two weeks of content? These are the types of questions to ask yourselves so you can continue to iterate and to learn together as a team.

Scrum or Kanban?

The workflow outlined above is a typical agile Scrum framework. However, it does not have to be the way agile practices are implemented in project management. Different types of projects may call for different frameworks. For example, in Scrum, roles are more clearly defined than in Kanban.

Scrum

A Scrum team is made of specific roles that are tasked with different responsibilities for moving the team through the development process. According to the Scrum Guide:

• Developers create a plan for each sprint iteration, define completeness of work, adapt their plan each day, and hold each other accountable.
• A product owner is responsible for managing the product backlog by communicating product goals, prioritizing items, and providing transparency into the full backlog.
• The Scrum master coaches and guides the team in its adoption of Scrum.

Kanban

Some projects may be more suited for Kanban as compared to Scrum. There are key differences between the two frameworks that may influence a team's approach to agile project management:

• Continuous workflow vs. fixed sprint iterations
• Continuous delivery vs. delivery after the completion of each sprint
• No set roles vs. defined scrum roles

Kanban teams use a Kanban board to visualize their tasks and to limit the amount of work that is in progress at a given time.

The agile framework you use, whether it is Scrum or Kanban, is less important than your team’s shared understanding of how you work together to achieve common goals. The beauty of an agile approach is its conduciveness to tweaking your framework and how you use it as you iterate and retrospect.

Agile project management for your whole organization

As software development teams continue to embrace agile processes, they can encourage other teams to join them. Using agile in other departments empowers those teams’ ability to collaborate. It also creates a shared sense of unity across your entire organization because you’re all applying the same methodology to get to each of your goals.

Try a daily stand-up for department leads to improve cross-organizational communication. Keep it short and to the point, focusing on the topics that will help the work progress.

It's a Monday morning and I’ve just pulled into the Kiama train station carpark.

It’s a short commute to the Wollongong CBD, where I am greeted by the team as I enter the office.

We start the day with a morning huddle in which each of us shares something good that’s happened during the last 24 hours, what we’re going to be working on that day and whether we’ve come up against any blockers.

The entire team then takes a walk down to local cafe, Beast, and get a coffee together. It’s a wonderful way to start the day, with a group of inspiring people.

For me, customer support is up next and I am super keen to get into helping our customers on their day’s journey with our product. My past experience in customer support has shown me just how much customers appreciate timely and helpful responses. It can really change a person’s day.

When customers have been responded to, I continue with my daily work using Easy Agile tools. I can say for sure this does make managing and working through sprints much easier.

I’ve got great team mates; if I want to discuss something, get some feedback or pair up, my colleague Matt is always there to help. Here he is:

He is genuinely an advocate for software craftsmanship and I'm totally onboard with this approach.

Around noon, we all stop for lunch. Some of us will get takeaway from the local mall, and others will bring something from home, but generally we all sit together and enjoy each other's company. On Fridays the street market draws the attention of most of us. There will usually be a session on the Switch - Mario Kart or Smash Bros the most popular choices.

It’s back into things after lunch and I have a check-in with Dave to see how things are going. We discuss my journey so far and what my ideas are for our upcoming inception week.

It's great to be able to sit down and talk about how we can make our systems better and improve the day-to-day work for our team.

There’s a few more things to get done and then it’s time to head to the station for the commute home. Matt and I chat about software architecture and almost miss the train.

When I look back over the last couple of weeks at Easy Agile, what stands out is the culture and the values of the team.

The commitment to integrity, honestly, inclusion and work philosophy is truly inspiring and uplifting. Never in my experience have I started a work day where everyone shares something positive. it really sets the tone for the following hours.

Easy Agile is an amazing company, especially when I compare it with my experiences over the last 20 years in manufacturing, customer support and software development. The team at Easy Agile practically demonstrate a holistic approach to both work and life which is equally refreshing and encouraging.