Today, with the help of rapidly evolving technology, businesses are moving faster than ever to reach their global audiences. Behind the scenes, what makes this possible is the development teams that are rapidly deploying code to enable companies to take their products, features, improvements, and languages to market at record-breaking speeds.
A prime example is Facebook’s commitment to “ship early [and] twice as often,” which has the tech giant pushing code out twice a day. An even faster example? Etsy, which pushes code out a whopping 25 times per day. So, what does this mean for all other global companies? It’s time to evaluate exactly how often you are shipping new code and whether you have a proper process in place that won’t slow you down in this new rapid deployment era.
Here at Transifex, after over a decade of taking software companies global, we’ve seen all the ins and outs of what it takes to truly be the localization platform that moves as quickly as your technology does. In this post, we break down three of the best practices that agile localization teams have in place to ensure success when going global.
1. Prioritize & Plan for Speed
To build strong products and adaptable features, there must be a process in place. And just as with a product or feature build, putting this process into place requires careful planning, deliberate strategy, and ongoing iterations to make sure your team has exactly what it needs to accomplish its goals best. Robust localization hubs, like Transifex and popular project management tools, offer transparency and facilitate all the stages of this process.
The most effective agile teams know this and dedicate the time, energy, and resources to lay a process foundation that helps them properly plan for speedy deployment and localization. In doing so, they can make localization a part of every build cycle and minimize those costly errors and costs resulting from improper planning.
For a more detailed look at exactly how you can best prioritize and plan for speed, check out our latest 2020 Localization Guide for Agile Teams.
2. Build & Integrate a Continuous Localization Process
To keep up with today’s rapid development processes, most agile teams recognize the need for a modern approach to localization that’s in sync with how their development teams work today. In practice, this means utilizing a continuous localization process that aligns with their continuous deployment. A properly set up continuous localization process will enable the product to respond and adapt to the speed at which changes are made, and updates are delivered.
Aside from the structural benefits, there are quite a few other advantages that continuous localization offers teams over traditional localization workflows. For example, continuous localization easily enables: translations to take place daily and be delivered as soon as possible, deep integration with developer build systems, increased flexibility, faster launches, increased focus, and significant savings. For a more detailed look at all the benefits of continuous localization and how to seamlessly integrate it, download our latest 2020 Localization Guide for Agile Teams.
3. Communicate & Overcommunicate
Last but not least, a universal best practice that applies to successful teamwork and process execution on development teams and beyond is communication. Communication – and we would argue overcommunication – is especially vital for localization teams because of all the moving parts (and languages!) of localization. Communication is the key that unlocks visibility across teams, and visibility is important for rapid team coordination and deployment.
Effective communication takes place across all channels and platforms. It becomes easier when you use localization software like Transifex, which has built-in integrations (from Slack and LexiQA to GitHub and KantanMT) that allow for easier collaboration and more transparent project status visibility across teams.
For even more best practices for agile teams, download our Complete 2020 Localization Guide for Agile Teams.
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