Build Trust Across Your Teams With Agile Project Management

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. And, Jira project management tools make organizing a Kanban team really simple.

Kanban originates from Lean principles and focuses on eliminating waste and evaluating processes throughout the entire project lifecycle rather than just at the end. The key fundamentals of Lean are purpose, process, and people. Sounds pretty agile, doesn't it?

Jira project management tools help you get off to a great start with Kanban. You can use the default Jira boards or go crazy with customizations. It’s up to you and your team.

If you're not sure whether Kanban or Scrum is right for your company, keep reading. We'll give you some information to help you decide. We'll also share some tips on how to use Jira project management tools to keep your work organized and your team productive.

Which is best: Scrum or Kanban?

Both. Or, neither. Scrum and Kanban are both effective methodologies for developing software. Which is best for your organization is a better way to ask the question. The answer depends on the kind of work or project types assigned to your team.

Scrum is generally recommended when:

• Your project is relatively stable, meaning you can go a few weeks without a major change in requirements, features, or general product direction.
• The majority of your team's work items are complex features or significant product updates rather than small tweaks, bug fixes, or reactionary work from external feedback.
• You can plan your work a few weeks in advance, generally without significant changes in scope or requirements.
• You have a cross-functional team, willing and able to tackle work as a team rather than individually.

If the following sounds more like your software development team, you should consider Kanban:

• Your work is dynamic with frequent changes in priority.
• You're normally working on small updates, bug fixes, or responding to customer demands.
• Your team resources are shared across multiple projects or products.
• Most of your team members work independently because you generally don't need to collaborate.

Finally, you should consider Waterfall 😲 if:

• Your work is predictable or repetitious (annual updates or regularly scheduled upgrades).
• You're 100% familiar with the work, the technology, and the desired outcome.
• There's little chance of scope or requirement changes.
• There is an absolute path from start to finish required by legal or regulatory compliance standards.

Look, we love agile as much as anyone. But we don't let our passion for Scrum and Kanban get in the way of creating the best possible work environment for our teams. The best software methodology and process is the one that best suits your team.

How to get started with a Kanban project in Jira

Atlassian created a great platform to help Jira users manage Kanban teams. Step 1 is choosing the Kanban template when you create your new project. Easy peasy. 🤓

Next, you'll want to set up your Kanban workflow. Jira creates a default workflow for you: Backlog, Selected for Development, In Progress, and Done. The default works great for a lot of teams, but if you want to customize it, click the dot menu in the upper right corner and click “Board Settings.”

The board settings let you go nuts customizing:

• Columns and quick filters
• Swimlanes and card colors
• Card and issue detail views
• Prioritization ranks
• Working days
• Integrating the board with a roadmap.

One of the goals of Kanban is to help isolate areas in your process in real-time that are slowing down the delivery of work. Keep this in mind as you think about each step in your process and decide which steps need a column in the workflow.

To keep from having 20 columns on your board, consider combining related steps or grouping sequential steps that typically happen very quickly.

Let’s talk about WIP limits

Now that you have built your Kanban board, it’s time to set WIP limits. (That's work-in-progress for the novices.) WIP limits restrict you from overloading a stage in the workflow with too much work.

Let's talk about the purpose of a WIP limit. WIP limits help your team stay focused on a single task at a time so they can complete it, deploy it, and move on to the next task.

A lot of items in progress tend to distract people. They work on one task for a little while, then switch to another task, finishing neither and deploying nothing. 😕 That's called context-switching, and it'll suck the life out of your productivity.

WIP limits also show you bottlenecks in your process. Depending on your workflow, you may see work stacking up in In Progress for a particular team member but nothing is moving to Done. You need to figure out why.

If your workflow is more specific, you may see a work overload for the database team while nothing is In Progress for your front-end developer.

WIP limits won’t solve these problems, but they do let you know when you have a problem so you can dig in and figure out a solution.

Tips for using card colors and swimlanes

Agile project management for a Kanban team is all about keeping the team productive without getting in their way, reporting on overall status, anticipating issues, and problem-solving. Card colors and swimlanes give project managers at-a-glance insight into key team metrics.

Card colors and swimlanes represent specific issue attributes or they can represent query results or assignees. We like to think of the card colors as more detailed issue-tracking data, while swimlanes give us a higher-level picture of the whole body of work.

Regardless of how you like to organize your work, consider the flexibility with assigning queries to your swimlanes or card colors. Following are some ideas to query by:

• Type of work: UX, design, front-end, database, etc.
• Label: Create team- or project-specific labels.
• Components: Divide your project into sections and assign each section a component.
• Effort and time-tracking: Anticipate throughput by at-a-glance efforts by work item.
• Business value or reporter: Get organized by stakeholder or business unit.
• Custom fields: View user segment or another custom field that is meaningful to your company.

Kanban and Jira boards can support various project management processes, from project plan to workflow management to stakeholder communications. You just have to explore what's available and get creative with your Jira customizations.

Get organized with Jira project management tools

Regardless of your agile methodology preference, effective project organization and oversight are almost impossible without some kind of project management software. But let's be honest — the last thing your team or organization needs is another tool.

Your software developers love using Jira software. 🤟 You can configure Jira workflows and customizations to meet even the pickiest project management needs with just a little effort. You'll save time and the hassle of integrating an external product or worse - manually pulling project data together for your reporting and stakeholder communications.

The Atlassian Marketplace is a great source to find add-ons for even more functionality to handle your task management and project team needs. Easy Agile created two apps specifically to help project managers: Easy Agile TeamRhythm and Easy Agile Programs.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm helps scrum and kanban teams plan and manage their work with the context that a user story map format provides. Team retrospective functionality helps your team focus on continuous improvement.

View team swimlanes, track cross-team dependencies, and keep your focus at the program level with Epic- and Feature-only views with our Programs app.

Whether you're supporting a Kanban or Scrum team, building roadmaps, version planning, and planning program increments in Jira just got easier!

There's a lot in common between a Product Manager and the executive president of a professional sports club. Don't buy it? Well, you should 😋, and here's why.

• Both are experts in their businesses.
• They both know what it takes to win. 🏆
• They're great leaders of their teams.

Stay tuned because this article will give you a grasp of how unique the product management role is. You'll learn what their responsibilities are and more.

And if you landed a job opportunity as Product Manager, we'll give you a hand with mastering your craft. 🥇

But first things first: defining the role. And once you know this, we’ll move on to exploring their tasks, unique characteristics, and the challenges they face.

What's a product manager?

For context, let's start with product management’s role in PI (Product Increment) Planning.

According to our Guide to PI Planning, the Product Manager must understand the customer needs and validate solutions against those needs. That’s the starting point and foundation for their role. But that's still generic. 🤔

The Product Manager is THE product expert. That makes them the best-equipped team member to make strategic decisions about the product. These decisions affect the work of a lot of people in a company.

The Product Manager is a product visionary and strategist. They monitor and analyze the market competition. That's how they define a unique product vision and product strategy. Their ultimate goal is to add unique value to the market based on customer needs.

The Product Manager decides what products or product features to build and in what order. This means they prioritize new products or new features in an existing product. Defining a product vision and a product strategy is intimately related to prioritization. They must do their best effort to maximize both customer value and business value. Not an easy challenge!

The Product Manager leads the teams responsible for developing a new product or improving an existing one. They usually work across cross-functional teams, so leading them demands a great deal of organization from the Product Manager. Plus, they need the ability to bridge, communicate with, and supervise engineering, marketing, sales, and customer support staff.

The Product Manager participates in all stages of product development, from planning and conception to launch or release. But what tasks do they do?

The product manager's tasks

You already know some of the product management tasks. But here's a comprehensive list of product management tasks:

• Understand, identify, and, if necessary, represent customer pain points and business challenges.
• Manage the process of generating new ideas for products or features, and decide which ideas to move forward with.
• Describe a product vision, and align all teams with that vision, especially in large companies.
• Create and maintain the product roadmap.
• Design a strategy for product development.
• Limit the project scope.
• Rank features against the product strategy, business goals, customer value, and customer or user feedback.
• Specify the requirements for each feature.
• Define the launch or release process, which comprises phases and milestones.
• Manage dependencies within and between phases.
• Identify the deliverables and corresponding due dates for the cross-functional teams.
• Coordinate the activities of each team from product development until launching the product into the market.
• Validate product design and implementation.
• Ensure the successful launch or release of the product.

Now, are you working with Scrum? If so, you might be wondering about the differences between the Product Manager and the Product Owner.

Product managers vs. product owners

Although they may interchange tasks, they're distinct roles. In short, the latter works towards realizing the product vision and the product strategy that the first defines.

The Product Owner works more closely with the software development team. On the other hand, the Product Manager interfaces directly with customers, users, and partners.

Sometimes, when there's no Product Manager, the Product Owner steps into this role. However, in that case, there's little time to coordinate the work of all teams around the same product vision.

But regardless of whether there’s an existing Product Owner, there are key ingredients that make good and great Product Managers. Let's discuss that next.

What makes a great product manager?

The characteristics of a great Product Manager consist of technical skills and personality traits. So, besides technical skills, they should have a high EQ (emotional coefficient). This means:

• Showing customers and users empathy during any communication with them
• Developing trustworthy relationships with internal teams and external stakeholders
• Inspiring and motivating team members
• Discretely persuading people to take the necessary steps to achieve a common goal, which starts with listening to them
• Avoiding bias in the preference for solutions by being user-centric and ensuring that solutions answer user needs
• Managing stress and performing well under pressure
• Demonstrating the urgency of task completion without causing panic
• Knowing how to ask the best questions to the right people at the right time
• Delegating the power of decision-making by giving teams a methodology and criteria for escalating if needed
• Daring to confidently make strong statements about priorities, advocating for any of their decisions
• Having the courage to choose whom to favor with a decision, whether it’s engineering, marketing, or sales
• Not being afraid of changes such as defining a new product strategy for business growth
• Reading the emotions of customers, users, and internal team members, and capturing their concerns

If they tick all or most of the above, the Product Manager is on the way to being emotionally intelligent.

Typical results from an outstanding product manager

If the Product Manager has a high EQ, they'll be the best at:

• Growing teams to become high-performing
• Negotiating with customers, users, partners, and people from different departments
• Resolving conflicts that might get in the way of cross-functional teams that make successful products
• Getting more funds, top talent, and other kinds of support or resources
• Prioritizing according to customer pain points
• Making sure the development team knows users actually need the changes they're implementing
• Obtaining the best trade-offs between the different individuals and teams involved and interested in a product's development

Ultimately, customers will trust the Product Manager to fix problems with the product. Plus, engineers will accept going the extra mile to incorporate a microfeature on short notice. And if the Product Manager is always calm and cool, management will trust their work.

At this point, you know how personality matters to the success of the product management role. Next, discover how the type of product and its users also affect their work.

The right measure of technicality

The more complex a technical product is, the more experience the Product Manager should have with building similar products.

On the other hand, for a less complex technical product, experience with launching products and supporting customers is enough.

Summing up, the Product Manager knows how to talk with the users of a product and the customer. Additionally, they have at least a basic technical understanding of the product.

But wait! That's not all. Product Managers also do some magic when interacting with engineers and top management.

Connecting with engineers and top management is key

The Product Manager should establish, maintain, and manage a relationship with the engineering team and top management.

Relating to the engineers

The relationship between the Product Manager and the engineering team depends on the company's view of the product development process. And it can be done in three different ways:

1. The Product Manager hands the product requirements to the engineering team, which transforms them into technical requirements.
2. Engineers develop the product, which the Product Manager validates and sometimes monetizes.
3. The Product Manager and the engineering team collaborate closely to develop the product.

❌ The first approach is not that agile or quick. In fact, it resembles a waterfall approach to product development that takes ages to get to a viable product. Also, engineers focus on coding and might lose focus on UX (user experience).

❌ The second alternative might innovate by creating new customer and user needs. Nevertheless, user feedback might come in too late to align the product with user needs without costing more.

✔️ Last, in the third option, the Product Manager and the engineering team gather requirements and make decisions together. The first doesn't tell the latter how to code, and the latter doesn't tell the first how to prioritize. The result is better UX, faster product development, and better product quality. And everyone's happy! 🎉

Relating to top management

The Product Manager should work closely not only with the engineering team but also with top management. The involvement of top management in the product development process is crucial to product success and the success of the product management role.

The more top management is involved in product development, the more the Product Manager is in a support role. And that's truer for young companies.

In a startup environment, the Product Manager often doesn’t lead the idea generation process. Another downside of young companies for those professionals is that they have less influence on the product vision.

It's time to consider how a company’s maturity impacts the product management role.

How company maturity influences the product manager

The company's maturity influences the Product Manager's performance and success. In a startup, this role should be more versatile. On the other hand, the role is narrower and has clearer boundaries in a mature company.

So, in a startup, the Product Manager might be responsible for market research, pricing, and customer support. That's because startups are growing companies that often have a tight staffing budget.

But despite being highly dynamic environments, young companies represent a land of opportunities for Product Managers. They might influence the business strategy more as the company grows. And they might also have a say when it comes to using or assigning company resources.

Finally, what the Product Manager lacks in a startup, they have in abundance in a mature company. An established customer portfolio is an example of that.

Product managers are the product’s backbone

The product management role is an essential element of any technology company. Perhaps their major responsibility is to define the product strategy and play a key role in Sprint Planning or PI Planning. But they also prioritize the planned features for the increment beforehand. And they coordinate the work of teams from different departments.

At a higher level, the Product Manager must communicate with those teams. The goal is to make sure everyone is on the same page. And ultimately, they're strong leaders who trigger the development of useful and profitable products.

If you're a Product Manager looking for more tools to help manage your product, check out Easy Agile's tools. Our roadmapping tool for Jira might help you sequence features for delivery to your customers. And Easy Agile's PI Planning solution for Jira might help you visualize program dependencies and milestones, plus do cross-team planning.

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?

It might be time to find a tool to help you whip your Jira issues into shape. And the best way to keep things in shape is to visualize the work in one place.

Read on for tips and to see how Easy Agile TeamRhythm helps you prioritize work effectively.

Visual task management

Put simply, when you can see something clearly, it’s easier to understand and manage. Enter: visual task management.

Visual task management uses boards to display and track work, which can give you a view of complex project tasks that makes it easier to comprehend.

For those of us who work in Jira, well yes we can see our epics, stories and tasks on the screen, but it isn’t always clear how they relate to each other.

That’s where a tool like a User Story Map, such as the one in Easy Agile TeamRhythm, offers so much value.

Get to the benefits

Giving yourself the ability to visualize your work comes with a long list of benefits. When your whole team can see the work laid out before them, communication is easier and teamwork can improve.

1. Consistent communication

Local and remote teams can see the same view of work from any location. Epics across the backbone with linked issues lined up beneath. When work is added or changed, you still have a central source of truth that is shared by everyone, no matter where they’re located.

2. A time-saving tool

Sprint or version planning is quick and easy when team members have all the information they need in a single view. Planning is much easier when initiatives, epics, user stories and subtasks along with story points and goals, can all be seen in one place.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm provides this all-in-one view, along with the ability to create and estimate new issues on the story map, and sequence them with drag and drop. Easy.

3. Avoid unexpected roadblocks

Ever had a release derailed by an unexpected dependency? For a smooth and dependable release, you need visibility of issues that are dependent on others.

We’ve made it easy to visualize the dependencies between issues on the TeamRhythm User Story Map, so you can avoid unexpected delays and keep delivering value to your customers.

You can choose to see dependencies between issues that are on the same board (internal dependencies), and where one issue is on another board (external dependencies). This gives you a clear picture of how work should be prioritized so that you avoid roadblocks and manage delays before they become a problem.

Read more: Dependency lines on the TeamRhythm User Story Map >>

4. Productivity increases

Working life is better when you can see how your contribution makes a difference. When everyone in the team can see how their work is important, and ideas for how to do things better start to flow, that’s when you start smashing your goals.

We’ve designed Easy Agile TeamRhythm to help teams focus on continuous improvement. That is something for everyone to get excited about because the team leads with their ideas for how they can make their working life better. Turn those ideas into Jira issues in just a few clicks so you can put things into action in the very next sprint.

TeamRhythm helps you see what to do first

Laid out clearly in a User Story Map format, with the ability to overlay a map of dependency lines, TeamRhythm makes it really clear which issues need to be tackled first to make sure that you can keep delivering for your customers.

Everyone in the team has an instant view of their priorities. Communication is streamlined. Collaboration is simplified and productivity increases. Doesn’t that sound great?!

Watch a demo, learn about pricing, and try for yourself in our sandbox. Visit the Easy Agile TeamRhythm Features and Pricing page for more.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm

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