Arcsolu: A Case of Project Management for Small and Mid-sized Teams

Arcsolu is an enterprise based in Paris, France, founded in 2006, which provides reliable and NF 525 certified cash register software solutions from 2017 according to the government law, Arcresto restaurant management systems, and ERP management software.

Arcsolu has a team of IT engineers, professional consultants, and marketing experts. No matter the customer's business activity, their team endeavors to provide the best point-of-sale management solution through a wide range of products.

With nearly ten years of experience, it is the most professional Chinese cash register management software in France and the only Chinese software company registered by the government. Arcsolu has mature sales channels in the market and full technical service, providing customers with professional and personalized management consulting, project implementation, system maintenance, sales training, optimization, and so on. They have provided more than 2000 customers with high-quality solutions and services that combine software products and custom development.

Mr. Wang Chang, the founder of Arcsolu, has been in Paris for over 20 years. As the Founder and Team Leader of Arcsolu, Mr. Wang Chang's main job is team management and as an R&D developer who understands product development. The main functions he uses in ZenTao are Requirements Management and Bug Management. In this article, Chang will share their company's journey with ZenTao.

"Arcsolu uses ZenTao in different roles, and each person is only responsible for a small part of ZenTao's many functions, so it is not a big problem to use. In addition, all product lines are public to everyone because their sales and customer service teams work on all product lines."

Mr. Wang Chang had previously been a big fan of Jira. However, he turned to ZenTao because of the increasing price of Jira and the cost of learning for his team. During our conversation, he presented us with his three favorite features of ZenTao: BUG Management, Stories Management, and Task Management. Chang believes that the three functions of ZenTao are simpler than Jira, and they are easier to use than Jira after proficiency.

1. Story Management

The three roles in ZenTao management software: product manager, development team, and test team, which collaborate through stories, realize the "separation of powers" in R&D management. The development team can use ZenTao for basic task-tracking management, and the testing team can use ZenTao for bug-tracking management. If you are a product manager, you can use it as your requirements management tool.

Product managers are probably used to writing requirements documents, or specifications, which define the requirements of a product in a complete word document. But in ZenTao, we advocate writing requirements in a function points manner. In simple words, every feature in the original requirement design document is extracted and recorded in ZenTao as an individual function point. If we follow the Scrum standard, we can call it a user story.

The complete user story management process is provided in the Zendo system, which includes Story Create, Story Change, Story Review, etc.

• Story Create: Add stories to the product and define the detailed features of the product.
• Story Review: Review and decide whether to adopt this story.
• Story Breakdown: In ZenTao, you can refine the stories through “User story” - “Software Requirement” to sort out more clearly and reduce implementation deviations.
• Story Change: Control over changes and visualize the scope of impact of requirement changes. Remind the person responsible for the affected task, scope of impact, bug, and use case.

2. Task Management

Once the stories are defined, we have several key elements of the project in place: the cycle time is defined, the resources are defined, and the requirements are defined. We next had to do task breakdowns for each story, generating all the tasks to complete the story.

During our conversation with Mr. Wang Chang, he clearly stated that he likes the task management feature of ZenTao. In addition to being directly linked to user stories, all tasks can be split into multiple subtasks and assigned to team members. The transactional tasks can also be assigned in batches or freely picked up by team members, which can greatly motivate the team's work. Once the tasks are decomposed, everyone knows exactly what they will do. So after the project starts, all the project team member has to do is update the progress and status of the tasks.

3. BUG Management

ZenTao is a whole lifecycle project management software with Bug Management as the core, covering all staff and all processes. It can provide complete and powerful support for project R&D and continue to manage and follow up the team's R&D projects orderly. It completely covers the core processes of R&D projects.

The main reason that many teams pay attention to ZenTao is because of its features as a Bug management tool, Bug management platform, and Bug management system. Mr. Wang Chang shared with us, " For a system like ZenTao that covers the whole lifecycle of software R&D, the Bug Management module occupies an important position, and ZenTao is capable of providing a professional Bug Management process."

In the final stages of project management, the main part of the team's work is testing. Testers and developers interact with each other through bugs to ensure the quality of the product. The following diagram shows the basic process of bug handling in ZenTao.

Mr. Wang Chang said, " The simpler the process, the more efficient it is. The process in the above diagram can almost cover our basic business. I think the test and bug management features of ZenTao are very powerful. Without exaggeration, I think every project management team should try it."

In conclusion, from the case of Mr. Wang Chang's team, we can find that for a small project management team, ZenTao can achieve controllability of the project management process through the three basic functions: story management, task management, and bug management. ZenTao can help your team reduce costs and increase efficiency by eliminating wasting time and resources.