How do you use software to manage agile projects?

To use software to manage agile projects, you can follow these steps: Choose an agile project management tool that suits your team’s needs. Create a project in the tool. Define your project’s goals and objectives. Create a product backlog. Prioritize the items in your product backlog. Plan your sprints. Hold daily stand-up meetings. Track your progress using burndown charts or other metrics. Review your progress at the end of each sprint. Adjust your plans as needed.

It's important to remember that tools are meant to improve the efficiency by which the people on the team do their work. If the team members are lacking the core principles of success then the best tools in the world will be ineffective. That said, every team will need to assess what works best for them. I believe Kanban serves most teams well as it limits the number of "items in flight" helping to enforce completion of the most important items. Again, if there is a lack of accountability, communication, and ownership nothing will fix it.

Don't rush this part. Writing good user stories that are descriptive and actionable will help the team understand what's being asked by the customer and why it's important. It will also help the development team size each story accurately. Development teams should also know what makes up a good user story so they can help guide others when they encounter stories that are not descriptive enough or are overly verbose. I've found teams struggle with this the most as it is frequently overlooked as a critical step in the planning process. Not doing this can lead to setting the wrong expectations and extending sprints.

Setting up of the project is critical. Most often there is a huge disconnect between the different members of the team in terms of what the actual goals are, what the product under development does or is meant to do, what the boundaries are for the different roles, and how success is measured. Bring people to a common understanding of these areas allows everyone to offer opinions and operate effectively because they are all working from the same playbook. It is also a good idea to work with the business/PO to identify Minimal Viable Product(MVP). This helps the team make design decisions and setup Sprint Cadence that best serves the delivery expectations.

Here is where accountability is key. EVERYDAY the story under development should be updated with time worked and time remaining - some teams would rather work with "effort remaining" depending on the readiness of the work being executed. I believe in the concept of "definition of ready" which defines for the business and engineers what information is required BEFORE a story will be moved into a "in development" state. That said, sometimes exploring the work reveals additional complications which need to be surfaced immediately. Depending on the nature of the complication, either the PO or the Technical Architect to decide what path forward is best. Ultimately any upward impact to the original estimate needs to be approved by the PO.

I only partially agree here. The software is a means by which to capture and relay information statically and historically. Depending on the nature of the communication, often picking up the phone or starting a zoom meeting is the best way to explore and collaborate during the development of work item or newly discovered hurdle. As we started with, software is meant to improve the efficiency by which we work. Sometimes efficiency is best handled the old fashioned way. In terms of "constantly learning", documenting the key points from a retrospective meeting and reviewing those items from sprint to sprint is important to verify the level of improvement. Ultimately it is the team who holds each other accountable for constant improvement

I think communication inside the team is very important to identify topics for improvement. Retrospective meeting is really helpful technique to do it.

I will be the first to say "Celebrate the small wins as they come along much more frequently than the big ones". Motivation can be positive or negative and honestly having celebrations of the small wins along the way help build momentum for when the challenges come up. If the only time the team gets called together outside of normal ceremony is to "Explain themselves" or "explain why something didn't work" then morale will suffer greatly and subsequently the velocity of the team delivery. Keep it positive whenever possible.

Any side stories enhancements identified along the way to be put on the backlog or prioritise for further discussions. Also bugs identified along the way on existing module or depending ones to prioritise for further discussions.