Stories by Easy Agile

How do you feel when someone mentions “planning”? Do you look forward to the opportunity or does the thought of making a plan send you running for the hills?

How organized are your Jira boards? On the scale of “well-thought-user-stories-beautifully-prioritized-by-customer-value” to “the-digital-equivalent-of-a-90’s-era-laminate-desk-cluttered-by-sticky-notes-and-old-coffee-cups”, where do yours sit?

Success for agile software teams revolves around collaboration, flexibility, and efficiency.

Story points can be a little confusing and are often misunderstood. Story points are an important part of user story mapping, and many agile teams use them when planning their work.

Sometimes the idea of writing user stories can seem like another "thing" on top of an already busy workload. But for software development teams who are looking to lead their own improvement and deliver software that works for their customers, writing effective user stories is the first step.

PI Planning is key to scaling agile, so we’ve developed this guide to help you run successful planning sessions, and build your confidence for your next scaled planning event.

PI planning is a powerful event that helps teams align around goals, business objectives, and customer needs. Traditionally, this quarterly gathering brought together large teams of more than 100 people, including software developers and stakeholders, to complete essential planning.

Agile is about empowering teams to take ownership, feel truly engaged, and foster a culture of collaboration.

The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversations.

“The people who plan the work do the work” is the unwritten rule of the Scaled Agile Framework.

In large, conventional organizations, multiple departments manage specific functions. Marketing, finance, HR and sales teams work in silos,

In this article, you’ll learn about the benefits SAFe can offer your enterprise and how effective organizers lead and implement SAFe. You’ll also hear about training courses that can help.

What makes a good sprint goal, and how does the sprint goal fit within the framework of a sprint? In this post, we’re going to race (or should we say sprint 😉 ) through a recap of the Scrum process, followed by a list of five critical elements of an effective sprint goal.

DevOps vs. agile—what’s the difference? These two methodologies have a lot in common, but there are also many key differences that we’ll discuss in this post.

Businesses of the future need to make smart decisions with agility, and today’s customers expect a value-driven approach that considers their needs every step of the way.

"Bottleneck" is a buzzword you don't want to hear. When it comes to your production process, maximizing your time and budget is all about keeping efficiency high.

The lean methodology is all about eliminating waste and improving efficiency to maximize and deliver consistent customer value.

SAFe gives you the framework and training that you need to make a sustainable change on a large scale. If you want to change on a small team level, department level, or across the enterprise, SAFe shows you how.

Lean principles focus on delivering greater customer value by using minimal resources. Enterprises use these lean principles to practice continuous improvement based.

At Easy Agile, we’re constantly looking for new ways to improve our products, and one of the ways we foster innovation is through Dash Days

Retrospectives help create an environment where team members can freely share their wins and challenges.

Atlassian products set a strong foundation of security and reliability and it only makes sense that the apps that clip onto these products are just as safe and secure.

There is a HUGE difference between managing a single project versus the kind of project management large organizations require for aligning multiple projects, teams, and departments.

Software security—it’s definitely not the sexiest of topics, but it’s an important one. When not prioritized, it can lead to devastating results

A strategy roadmap helps bridge this gap between vision and actions. It gives you a visual of how to execute a strategy, and it outlines key results in an appropriate time frame.

Roadmaps help agile teams produce great products. They’re iterative, visual, collaborative, and they can be created directly in Jira.

There are some things so obvious that you wonder why it hasn’t happened sooner or how you ever lived without it. This is how we feel about our just-launched integration between Easy Agile User Story Maps and Easy Agile Personas.

According to HubSpot, 96% of growing companies say that customer satisfaction is a key driver of their success.

By creating a Jira roadmap you won’t need to track down that one you created in Google Sheets or PowerPoint (or did I create it as a table in Confluence?)

In this lightning talk, recorded at Facebook, John explores story maps as a way to figure out what your agile software development team should focus on (in order to satisfy customer needs).

Transform your agile practice with customer-centric development. Learn the six core principles of customer-focused agile and how to implement them for better outcomes.

Learn how user story mapping can transform your product development process. Explore how to visualize customer journeys, prioritize features effectively, and ensure your team builds products users actually want.

Aligning agile teams around user needs results in software that resonates with users and fulfills business goals. Successful software delivery relies on continuous alignment and empathy with customer needs, so that users are satisfied with the software you deliver, and see the value offered by your organization.

Let’s take a look at 7 reasons why it’s good to have a healthy level of customer obsession in your agile teams.

Part of the SAFe framework is the concept of an agile release train (ART). If you're not familiar with ARTs, you're in the right place.

By now, you’re pretty familiar with Scrum. It’s given your team a framework they can work with to achieve internal goals so they can deliver quality software to customers.

“Do or do not; there is no try.” While this is certainly Jedi Master Yoda’s most famous quote, it doesn’t exactly apply to agile development.

Agile is about being flexible and always getting better—essential for delivering great software. But when scaling agile across teams in a program, being adaptable and flexible is easier said than done.

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.

The 17th State of Agile Report shared that 93% of executives thought that their teams could do the same amount of work in half the time

You're part of an agile team. You know the drill. You have an agile mindset, you and your team members participate in the agile ceremonies, and you use agile tools like Jira.

You’ve come to the end of your sprint. Your team planned and prioritized the most important tasks and executed them as well as possible. It’s just almost time to begin planning again, and jump into the next sprint.

Backlog prioritization is a never-ending task for product owners and product managers.

If you have been running retrospectives for some time prior to 2020, you may be familiar with the follow agenda for a 1 hour session:

Estimation is a common challenge for agile software development teams. The anticipated size and complexity of a task is anything but objective; what is simple for one person may not be for another.

PI Planning is a critical event for agile teams to set a clear direction for the upcoming Program Increment or Planning Interval (SAFe 6.0).

If your team is progressing across all three of these areas, that’s a great sign that the Scrum Master is effective and that the team is learning and improving.

Many organizations, especially those in highly regulated industries, struggle to manage large-scale projects.

When I first began working as a Scrum Master, I quickly became focused on the world of metrics. I believed that for my teams to succeed, they

To compete and thrive, companies need to deliver value at speed and remove anything that gets in the way of seamless workflow.

Today’s work environment has seen companies embracing a hybrid or fully remote business model, with studies showing that only 4% of workplaces are going back into the office full-time.

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.

We are thrilled to announce that Easy Agile has successfully achieved SOC 2 Type 1 compliance, a significant milestone on our unwavering commitment to maintaining high standards of security and privacy.

Nick and I started Easy Agile after returning home to Australia from living and working in San Francisco where we witnessed the good and not-so-good sides of startups.

When working in Jira, lots of users struggle organising their data at scale and even resort to exporting it to a Google sheet, MS Excel spreadsheet or Smartsheet to make sense of it.

We’re checking the surf and haven’t talked in a while. Two sets of eyes locked on the ocean, is it worth paddling out this windy winter morning?

Easy Agile’s purpose is to find a better way to work. Back in 2018 we consciously acknowledged that what got us here👇🏼, won’t get us there 👉🏼.

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

Atlassian alumni make up a part of the Easy Agile team, with several former Atlassian staff working within the Easy Agile business.

Design Industries are obsessed with improving the productivity of their Enterprise & Government clients. They do this by optimising their clients' usage of Atlassian tools and implementing best practices while ensuring the platform and apps remain highly available through their partnerships with AWS and Ali Cloud.

Without intuitive software to guide projects, managers and team members can easily end up shaking their heads in utter confusion.

Our team has been using Jira workflows for years, and we’ve learned a thing or two along the way. Okay, we’ve learned a lot along the way. 😎

Curious about what it takes to become a Jira administrator? Want to become one yourself? Or maybe you already are a Jira admin, but you’re constantly striving to learn more about your field. Either way, you’ve come to the right place!

Any organizational change is complex, no matter how big or small. Tracking workflows can also be a huge headache without software.

In this post, we’ll focus on all of the features available for teams using Jira Software. We’ll cover what’s included and how your team can make the most of Jira Software features and add ons.

A sprint focuses on interaction and collaboration to produce working software. A team has to do a lot of work to maintain their sprint workflows in Jira.

These apps help teams successfully carry on projects and deliver on time. In this article, we’ll go over our selection of Jira gadgets for workflow management, reporting, and project administration.

A key principle of working in an agile way is flexibility. It throws away rigid plans and instead embraces an iterative process that evolves with the needs of the customer.

Scrum isn't the only agile software development methodology out there. 😲 If you're not familiar with Kanban, we promise we’re not going rogue — Kanban is agile.

It's common knowledge in the world of digital marketing and eCommerce that personalization results in higher conversion rates, more engaged users, and a better overall brand experience for your customers.

Read our list of recommended Jira tutorials, training, and certifications that will start you on the path to Jira mastery.

In this article, we'll unpack the purpose of product roadmaps and whether they’re all the same, as well as why Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira is the simplest roadmapping tool for Jira.

Anyone working in the agile environment would agree there are a million different terms to wrap your head around. As a marketer with no agile or software development experience, this is definitely true for me.

We all know writing unit tests is important but sometimes it feels like it can take up more time than the feature work itself.

I bent over my desk in frustration, suppressing the urge to scream so as not to upset the rhythmic clack-clack of my coworkers.

I fell into web development, that's how it feels without digging into the details. That does not sound like how you want to go about choosing a career but in reality, it was years of small decisions and nudges that I ended up doing work I really enjoy.