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DMM.com has been using Zenhub since 2017 and throughout that time, Zenhub has solved countless challenges for their teams. From supporting the shift to GitHub to scaling Agile project management across multiple teams, Zenhub has been a key catalyst in DMM.com’s Agile evolution for over 6 years.

Zenhub enabled project management in GitHub, improving productivity by 50%

The switch to Zenhub was initially ushered in by another change: the introduction of GitHub. “Before implementing Zenhub in 2017, we were using another project management tool built into our on-premise data center. Once we had GitHub and Zenhub available in addition to our existing environment, the DMM.com team started to adopt an Agile development methodology, which gradually spread to the rest of the team,” says Yosuke Karasawa, Zenhub admin at DMM.com.

But GitHub didn’t have any built-in project management capabilities at the time. In 2017, Zenhub was a GitHub extension (it has since become a whole platform), which turned GitHub into a fully functional Agile project management solution. This is when Zenhub first began to click for the DMM.com team. 

Kiyotaka Masaki, Team Leader at DMM.com, states that Zenhub “eliminates the trouble of re-creating Issues in GitHub,” and since “everything can be done on Zenhub, there is no need to hassle and use other tools. I think it saves about 50% of our task management time.”

Given Zenhub’s history as a GitHub extension, its best-in-class GitHub integration has continued to serve DMM.com over the years: “There are a lot of concepts inherited from GitHub, such as Issues and labels, so since most of the new members have used GitHub, it's intuitive and easy to understand,” says Shu Furuya, Team Leader at DMM.com. Easier onboarding? Yes, please!

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Zenhub enables Scrum without the overhead

Scrum critics often say that Scrum can come with too much overhead in the form of Agile events and task management. So, how does Zenhub make Scrum an efficient practice for DMM.com? 
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Sprints run automatically

For most Scrum teams, sprint planning is one aspect of Scrum that requires a lot of manual effort. With Zenhub sprints, however, teams can remove a large portion of that work thanks to smart automations: “With other tools, you would have to move Issues manually, so I think it's convenient to have it automatically move to the next sprint,” Yosuke explains. 

Sprint automations include: 

• Setting regularly occurring sprint cadence
• Enabling Zenhub to auto-generate sprints based on your team’s calculated velocity
• Automatically moving incomplete Issues from one sprint to the next
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Reports pinpoint areas of improvement

A key value of Scrum is developing a culture of continuous improvement. But how can teams improve when they aren’t sure where the problems are? Shu agrees this is the benefit of using Zenhub reports: “I think the biggest effect is that the members are more conscious of improving development efficiency,” says Shu. 

Zenhub has continued to drive a culture of continuous improvement in DMM.com. Over the years, the team has seen significant improvements in how they work: “As the team has accumulated the know-how to use Zenhub's various functions, reporting features, etc., the health condition of the team and the projects themselves has improved compared to when it [Zenhub] was first launched,” explains Shu.

Reports not only give the team a better sense of their progress–they also allow users to dig deep into their productivity to see what’s working and what’s not. For Kiyotaka, the favorite report amongst his team is sprint reports: “My team primarily uses sprint reports. The most useful thing about the sprint report is that you can add various conditions, and it analyzes productivity in more detail so that you can review them again.”

Zenhub reports can:

• Show a team’s progress towards their goals (sprint reports and release reports)
• Calculate a team’s average sprint capacity (velocity reports)
• Visualize how work flows across pipelines (cumulative flow and control charts)
• Give insights into how teams can improve processes, benchmark their performance against high-performing software teams, and provide engineering metrics (GitHub insights). 
• Reduce time spent on manual reporting with auto-generated reports that use real-time data from GitHub and Zenhub Issues. 
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Boards for collaboration and high-level visibility 

Zenhub boards are where teams collaborate and get high-level views of everything they’re working on. Boards are meant to mimic the traditional Scrum practice of using sticky notes on a whiteboard, so it’s no surprise that it felt so initiative for Shu: “I like it [Boards] because even though I'm working remotely, I can design and plan tasks with my team members in real-time, just like pasting sticky notes together.”

Boards allow teams to: 

• Visualize the whole project workflow across multiple pipelines (representing an Issue’s status) and view an Issue’s status at a glance.
• Filter Issues by assignee, Epic, repository, sprint, label, estimate, author, and milestone.

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On-premise and cloud made it easy to implement Zenhub across the organization

One thing that might surprise you about DMM.com’s use of Zenhub is that their teams use both the cloud version of Zenhub and the on-premise version. The reason for this? Teams have varying security needs at DMM.com. Luckily, Zenhub is also compatible with GitHub on-premises, allowing them to take advantage of the GitHub integration whether they use the cloud or Zenhub on-premise. 

“Users can choose depending on the business they are dealing with or the characteristics of the service, so both Zenhub versions are in demand, and both are used [at DMM.com],” says Yosuke. This versatility allows teams that don’t need the added layer of security to use the cloud and enjoy the benefits of getting new features faster, while the teams that do need heightened security can still enjoy Zenhub’s close integration with GitHub on-premise and productivity benefits. 

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Final thoughts 

After 6 years, Zenhub has not only continued to deliver on its initial promise of streamlined Agile project management in GitHub but has evolved with the DMM.com team, solving numerous business challenges along the way. 

Considering Zenhub has helped DMM.com evolve its Scrum practices to be compatible with GitHub Cloud and on-premises, seamlessly enable remote collaboration, and cut back on Scrum overhead, Shu agrees with Kiyotaka’s earlier estimates that task management has “reduced by more than 50%.” As DMM.com looks toward the future, the partnership with Zenhub is a testament to the transformative power of integrating the right tools with visionary leadership and a committed team.

Want to increase your productivity by 50%, like DMM.com? Book a demo with our team to get started. 

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