Agile Teams

One of the core functions of an agile software development team is effort estimation. You can't properly prioritize a product backlog without first having an idea of the amount of work it will take to finish each of its user stories. One agile estimation technique is planning poker. Agile development is a collaborative pursuit, and planning poker is a consensus-building exercise that gets your entire team involved in the estimation process.

Software development teams use planning poker to assign effort (for example, story points or ideal days) to items in their product backlog. Sometimes also called Scrum poker, it's a gamified way to build consensus by allowing all of the Scrum team members to participate in the estimation process. Physical or digital poker cards are used to facilitate a collaborative planning session. ♠️

Here, we give you a how-to guide to planning poker. First, we'll show you how to play it in the context of a sprint planning meeting. Second, we'll look at some of its benefits as an estimation technique. Then, we'll see why planning poker can be used in product roadmap planning. It can help get your stakeholders involved in a consensus-building estimation session around your product's customer themes.

Playing planning poker — agile collaboration

One of the critical activities for agile teams during a sprint planning session is estimating the amount of effort it will take to complete each user story in the sprint. A common way to do this is to allow a single person, like the product owner or a software developer, to assign story points to each user story. Alternatively, you can use planning poker as an estimating technique to get the whole team involved.

A planning poker session is a fun and collaborative way to gamify sprint planning. After all, the Agile Manifesto highlights the value of collaboration and interactions in software development. Planning poker is a great way to adhere to those agile principles.

So, it's sprint planning day. When your team members are gathered, do the following:

1. Set the stage. If your team is new to planning poker, explain the process. They'll use playing cards to estimate the size of each user story in the next sprint iteration. The product owner or Scrum master will act as the moderator, all team members will play, and there will be plenty of room for discussion and questions throughout the session.
2. Hand out the poker cards. Give each player an identical set of numbered cards. We recommend using the Fibonacci sequence — 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, etc. (To read why this sequence is so effective for estimating, see Mike Cohn of Mountain Goat Software's explanation.) And by the way, if you can't meet in person and are planning as a distributed team, then you can try planningpoker.com as a way to conduct your session remotely. 😃
3. Read a user story. The moderator reads the team members a story from the sprint. They should provide as much detail and context as possible to help the team estimate the work involved.
4. Discuss the story as a group. First, let the team ask any clarifying questions about the user story that was just read. Then, open the floor for discussion — each team member can describe what it will take to get the story done, any dependencies blocking the work, and who on the team might need to be involved in its effort.
5. Play cards. Now, it's time to play the game. Each team member submits a card (face down!) to the moderator. When all the playing cards are submitted, the moderator reveals what each one estimates. In an ideal world, all of the numbers match! This means there is perfect team consensus about the effort required for that sprint item and you can move on to the next one.
6. Discuss and estimate again. Most likely, there will be some difference in the initial estimates. This gives each team member a great opportunity to provide support for why their estimates were either higher or lower than the others. Then, you can do another round of submitting and revealing cards to see if there is further consensus. Tip: Let the moderator decide when to end the round. Remember, you don’t need a perfect story point consensus for every user story.

You did it! Your sprint is planned, and the entire team gained a shared understanding of how each member perceived the effort and work needed to get each user story done.

The benefits of planning poker agile estimation

As an agile estimating and planning technique, planning poker has its pros:

• It encourages collaboration. As a cross-functional team, it's important that each team member has a voice during the estimation process. As each estimator provides their perspective on a user story, the group better understands how they arrived at their conclusion.
• It drives consensus amongst your entire team. With each round of planning poker, the team’s estimates are more likely to converge.
• It has documented merit as a more accurate way to estimate (versus a single person providing the estimates).

In a study published by ScienceDirect, planning poker was used to estimate half of the work of a software project. There were two discoveries. First, planning poker estimates were statistically higher than individual estimates. Second, the poker estimates turned out to be more accurate than the individual estimates for the same tasks.

Planning poker for roadmap planning

Planning poker is a fun and effective way to gain an accurate estimate for your product backlog items. But, why not also use it for strategic planning sessions like roadmap planning?

In our definitive guide to product roadmaps, we discuss how roadmaps focus on big-picture, customer-centric themes, as opposed to individual features. We also highlight that developing your product roadmap should be a collaborative process (just like sprint planning) and should involve multiple stakeholders.

So, go back to the steps above. Think about how you can use planning poker cards to get your relevant stakeholders to estimate the relative size of each customer theme in your product roadmap. It will be a fun way to get a big-picture consensus of your organization's product vision.

Grouping your themes

Planning poker is a collaborative way to get the whole team to help estimate the work involved in a user story. It drives consensus and tends to be more accurate.

If you use Jira to conduct your sprint planning meetings, you already have a tool that organizes your user stories and product backlog. As you try planning poker in your next product roadmap planning meeting, give Easy Agile User Roadmaps for Jira a look. It provides the ability to group Jira items into themes that your stakeholders can easily see. Happy playing!

There are infinite learning opportunities available when it comes to using Jira to help you make the most of the tool. From Jira tutorials to Udemy courses to an Atlassian certification, you can continue to hone your skills and learn from others.

There’s always more to discover. Brush up on skills, advance your career, and gain certificates that can land you your dream job. Continued learning can make you an indispensable MASTER of all things Jira within your organization and around the world.

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

Why agile teams choose Jira

Jira is an agile project management tool developed by Atlassian. It began as a software development application for devops teams but has evolved to help modern workplaces practicing agile methodologies augment their process.

The software is widely used for bug tracking, issue tracking, and addressing performance improvements based on real-time data. And the online functionality reduces the physical dependencies of managing a project as a team — something that grows more important to businesses every year.

Fun fact: The name Jira is the truncation of Gojira, the Japanese name for Godzilla. Atlassian recommends yelling it loudly as if you were charging into battle!

Jira is widely used by nearly every development team because it takes a customer-first approach to designing products. Jira allows for extensive customization to help teams meet the needs of their customers.

How to choose the Jira learning that's best for you

Follow these tips when selecting how to receive further Jira training and education:

• If you are pursuing training to advance your career, you may want proof of course completion, either from an Atlassian University training course or a Udemy course, to provide potential employers.
• If you are interested in becoming an Atlassian Certified Professional, you’ll need certification through Atlassian University.
• If cost is a barrier, begin with the free tutorials available from Atlassian University.

Jira tutorials, training, and certifications from Atlassian

Our list will begin with learning opportunities from Atlassian University (since they know Jira best), and then we’ll expand to tutorials, training, and courses from other online sources below.

Atlassian University

Atlassian offers several free Jira tutorials for both beginners and pros, so you can gain confidence with product skills that cover exactly what you need to get started and beyond. The Jira tutorials are clearly labeled with a timestamp to help you plan your schedule.

Each short Jira tutorial is grouped into a series based on a range of topics, beginning with the very basic to the more specific, including:

• Getting started with boards in Jira Software
• Jira Essentials with Agile Mindset
• Getting More from Jira Workflows
• Automating Jira

Some tutorial series are short enough to complete on a lunch break, whereas others will take a few hours. So instead of doomscrolling while you eat your sandwich, pull up a quick tutorial to advance your skills! 🥪

If you hope to earn a certification, but you’re not entirely sure which specific training courses will get you there, Atlassian has role-based learning paths to guide you on your way.

Atlassian University — Jira certifications

To finally and officially cement yourself as a Jira Jedi Master, you can become an Atlassian Certified Professional and the go-to expert for all things Jira. Plus, all Atlassian certifications are globally recognized, so wherever you find yourself, Atlassian will be with you.

A number of different certifications are available depending on your chosen skillset. To achieve a certification, you’ll need to take the courses available through the above training link, gain real-world experience, and take an exam.

Other Jira tutorials, training, and courses

While Atlassian University is filled with learning opportunities, plenty of other resources will help you grow from beginner to expert and from expert to master.

Top Udemy Jira courses

Udemy Jira courses offer a wide variety of topics at a range of prices for those just starting out with Jira and old pros. Students can access broader topics like agile and project management as well as Professional Scrum Master (PSM) courses to prepare you for your certification.

Courses come with a rating based on the experience of past students. And considering that over 200,000 students are learning Jira on Udemy, you’ll be able to see which courses are well-reviewed to help you decide.

From beginner crash courses to more advanced or niche topics, there’s something for everyone. They also offer free “bite-sized” Jira lessons with videos 3 to 11 minutes long, so you can fit them into any busy schedule. Plus, all courses come with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Expium’s Atlassian courses

Expium offers workshop-based Jira training for enterprise Atlassian customers. The courses aim to equip students to competently configure Jira with a range of workshops covering beginner basics to more specific topics.

The hands-on learning is available for public, private, or online classes. Expium is a Platinum Solution Partner, which means, according to Atlassian, they meet the highest training criteria and have a proven practice that can scale from small to large customers.

Guru 99 Jira tutorial: How to use Jira software for beginners

Guru 99’s free online resource is for beginners as well as those who need to brush up on the basics. It provides a step-by-step guide for using the Jira dashboard.

The resource outlines detailed use cases with annotated screenshots from the Jira tool. The detailed imagery shows the basics of creating issues and managing issue attributes as well as more specific uses, like how to set up workflows, clone issues, and create custom fields.

Guru 99’s Jira tutorial includes:

• Jira issues and issue types, such as new features, sub-tasks, bugs, etc.
• Jira issue attributes, such as in progress, open, closed, resolved, etc.
• Jira components
• How to create issues in Jira
• How to create sub-tasks, workflows, plugins, epics, and clones
• Security schemes and permission schemes
• Jira reporting and burndown charts
• How to generate a pie chart of priorities

Now it’s time to get out there and learn! Successful people know that learning never stops.

Bonus resource: Continue learning on the Easy Agile blog

And hey, we’ve got extensive learning resources on our Easy Agile blog, too! From understanding the difference between Kanban and Scrum, using epics to maximize performance, and knowing best practices for Jira workflows; you're in the right place.

Easy Agile is dedicated to helping teams work better with agile. Our apps for Jira are designed to keep the customer top of mind through every step of the product development process. They’re simple, collaborative, and made by a development team that lives and breathes Jira.

Contact our team to learn more or request a demo tutorial to see our plugins in action.

For a lot of people, 2020 isn’t quite going as expected.

Maybe you’ve had a conference or two cancelled (like the Atlassian summit 😭). Perhaps your big team planning event is on the backburner. Or maybe your entire workforce has been told to work from home until further notice.

Amazon has stopped all non-essential travel and a number of big tech companies have encouraged employees to work from home, including Apple, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Facebook, and HP (in some or all regions).

You think you’re disruptive? Well, clearly you haven’t met COVID-19!

The new pandemic has shaken things up. Record numbers of organizations are looking for ways to quickly adapt and transition their teams to working remote. It’s a huge challenge when you consider that agile is typically designed for face-to-face interaction - especially critical events like quarterly PI Planning.

We’ve put together some thoughts to help you quickly transition your team to distributed agile, based on our own experiences and working with big organizations who have been working with remote team members for awhile now. First thing’s first...

1. Don’t panic (about distributed agile)

We’re not qualified to tell you if you should panic about the pandemic (seriously though… you don’t need that much toilet paper). But we are qualified to tell you that a remote workforce isn’t as scary as it sounds. You’re going to be just fine.

Organizations like yours have been doing their thing with a distributed agile team for years now. One of our customers has a large distributed team and only does remote PI Planning. It's possible to pull it off.

2. Lead people on how to work from home

Some of the people on your team probably haven’t worked from home before. At least, not for an extended period. So, offer guidance on what’s expected and how they can make the most from working at home.

You know... like business up top, sweatpants on the bottom, and no one on the conference call will be any wiser.

But seriously, it’s a good idea to share guidance like:

• What equipment they’ll need
• A list of software and apps to download (with licensing info)
• Where to find information and access files (a single source of truth is best at all times, but especially when things are already a bit overwhelming)
• How to communicate virtually
• Ideal environments for focus and productivity
• How to block out noise and distractions
• Expected work hours
• How to switch off and take breaks

But a little guidance will go a long way in helping everyone feel more “at home” with the new work situation.

3. Encourage information sharing

You might already have a distributed agile team who are experienced with working remote. So, encourage the experienced remote workers to champion the practice and lead others.

Create a Slack channel or other environment dedicated to discussions about working from home, so that people can share tips and experiences, and ask questions. At Easy Agile, we've created a #remote channel to share our setups.

4. Get the right tools

If your team is working remote for the first time, they might not have all the bits and pieces they need at home to do their job, attend meetings, or show up properly to a remote PI Planning event.

Depending on their role, they may need:

• Computer - A desktop and monitor setup or a laptop with sufficient processing power for everyday tasks
• Meeting equipment - Webcam, headphones, and working mic
• Your preferred communication apps - Slack, Zoom, Google hangouts, Skype, or Microsoft Teams
• Security measures - Password managers, VPNs, and antivirus software
• Your project management tool - Jira, Trello, Asana, or Smartsheet
• Easy Agile Programs for PI Planning in Jira

5. Look at this as a pilot

More people want to work from home and it makes a lot of sense for businesses to encourage this new way of working. It can save a lot of money (one estimate suggests $10,000 per person per year) when teams stay at home. And you can save hundreds of thousands per PI Planning session when you don’t have to pay for flights, accommodation, and event space for a team of up to 100.

The remote work trend isn’t going away - even after the pandemic dies down. So, look at this as an opportunity to try distributed agile if you haven’t already. You could find it’s a better, more cost-effective way for you to get stuff done and give your employees what they want.

6.Trust your people

Nobody likes to feel watched while they’re working 👀 But especially not while they’re working from home. At home, your employees will probably:

• Face more distractions (like kids!)
• Step away to put a load of washing on
• Grab a coffee (and probably a few other things 😋🍛🍫🧁) from the kitchen

In between all of that, you need to trust that they’ll get their job done, do their best, and be productive - even if it happens outside of regular business hours.

Fortunately, if you’re agile, you likely have built a culture of trust already. So, keep up with regular communication, virtual standups, and transparency. This should be enough to monitor progress and keep your people accountable without micromanaging

7. Stay social

Even if you can’t meet face-to-face, create opportunities for your teams to come together virtually, socialise, and chat. Set up a non-work Slack channel, do regular video calls, and talk about more than just work. People, relationships, and connectedness matter even more when you can’t be in the same room together.

8. Get better at risk management

When all of this blows over (and it will), you’ll come out a much stronger organization than before. If a single team member, a whole team, or your entire organization need to work remote in the future, you’ll be able to easily switch gears with minimal disruption.

Use this opportunity to uncover risks you might not have considered previously. Ask questions like:

• What if half of us get sick and can’t work for a few weeks?
• What backup options are in place for our internet connection, files, and communications?
• What if our building is suddenly inaccessible?
• Become more aware of potential risks to your company so you can be better prepared in the future.

9. Look on the bright side

While a pandemic isn’t an ideal scenario, it’s okay to look for the positives, like:

• Your teams may find they love working from home
• Some distributed agile teams will find they’re actually more productive
• You'll get greater work/life balance
• No commutes
• More quality time with family
• Reduced emissions from cars and planes
• Quieter roads with fewer traffic jams and accidents

And maybe… just maybe… some of these changes will stick around for the better 🤞

Waste is expensive! 💸 It’s paying someone not do any real work, paying for supplies you don’t need, or paying for team members to sort out a preventable issue. Lean agile aims to eliminate wasteful resources and tasks for improved efficiency and reduced costs — while never sacrificing quality. In fact, lean agile prioritizes bringing value to the customer with every decision that’s made.

Lean agile is a development method that helps teams identify waste and refine processes. It’s a guiding mindset that facilitates efficiency, effectiveness, and continuous improvement.

Consider this: You probably work a lot better when your desk isn’t completely covered with a mess of things you don’t need. When you eliminate distractions and waste, it establishes an organized workspace and workflow. This helps you focus on what’s most important, ensuring you work efficiently and effectively.

Here, you’ll learn more about the development of lean, the benefits of lean agile, and the five core principles of lean.

The development of lean agile

Lean agile, or lean software development, originates from the principles of lean manufacturing. The concept was brought into manufacturing to improve profits by reducing costs instead of solely relying on increased sales. If a company can eliminate waste and become more efficient, it can save money, thereby increasing overall profits.

Lean agile is an agile methodology that, in basic terms, is quite simple: improve efficiency by eliminating waste. Unlike traditional, waterfall project management, which dictates a set plan laid out by a project manager, lean agile strives to reduce all tasks and activities that don’t provide real value. This helps ensure everyone involved in a project or product development can work at optimal efficiency.

If you’re looking to dive into the history of lean agile, Lean Enterprise Institute Inc., founded in 1997 by James P. Womack, PhD, is a leading resource for lean methodology. It aims to help people and teams work better through lean thinking and practices.

Lean practices are popular because they can be applied to other agile approaches and software development methods. Lean agile provides a clear application for scaling agile, which is often difficult for large or growing organizations.

The benefits of lean agile

In case you’re not on board with lean agile yet, let’s review its main benefits.

Waste less time

Time is wasted when processes don’t run smoothly. In lean manufacturing, it’s important for goods and services to be delivered quickly and effectively. No one's time should be wasted on the job, and companies should aim for shorter lead times without sacrificing quality.

Wasting time in any industry is expensive, but it’s particularly important to pay attention when working in agile software development. Even a small bottleneck or broken process can completely throw off a workflow or product deadline. Lean agile helps development teams manage time effectively to ensure everyone is utilized, no one's time is wasted, and roadblocks are anticipated in advance.

Reduce costs

When businesses eliminate waste, they save money. In its original form, lean manufacturing ensured companies had the right amount of materials, employees, and working hours at any given time. Overproduction, overhiring, or simply having too many materials to store are expensive wastes that can be eliminated through better management of systems and processes.

Any business, no matter the industry, will save money with improved efficiency. Lean agile ensures that waste is continually eliminated and agile teams continue to fine-tune processes for optimal efficiency.

Improve work quality

With lean agile, it’s not only about efficiency — it's about maintaining efficient processes while bringing a quality product to customers and stakeholders. When businesses intentionally improve processes, they remain competitive. Lean principles consider the customer value of any action or decision to ensure needs are always met or exceeded.

The five principles of lean agile

There are five core principles for implementing lean methodology:

1. Value
2. Value stream
3. Flow
4. Pull
5. Perfection

These principles describe a five-step process that guides the implementation of lean techniques for manufacturing, software development teams, and other agile practicing industries.

1. Identify value

The first step requires you to step into the shoes of the customer. Value is what the customer needs and wants from a specific project or product.

Consider from the customers’ point of view: What are their expectations? What are they willing to pay for? How do they want their needs met?

Sometimes, customers may be unable to define exactly what they’re looking for — especially if it’s a new product or technology they’re unfamiliar with.

In any case, the project cannot move forward without clearly identifying what it will take to provide customer satisfaction. You’ll need to identify the end goal (value) customers are hoping to find with the product or service.

2. Map the value stream

Next, the team visually maps each of the steps and processes it will take to bring the product from inception to delivery. By making each step visible and always keeping the value top-of-mind, it’s easier to see which steps don’t directly contribute to continuous delivery. Once wasteful steps are found, the team finds ways to eliminate those steps or reduce them as much as possible.

Getting rid of waste ensures your company doesn’t unnecessarily spend money on steps and processes that don’t add value. And — most importantly — the customer gets exactly what they’re looking for.

3. Create flow

Once the waste is eliminated from the value stream, the next step is ensuring the remaining processes work as effectively and efficiently as possible, which means no delays, disruptions, or bottlenecks. It’s important for the steps that create value to work in tight sequences to ensure the product flows smoothly toward the customer.

In order to achieve this kind of agile transformation, lean businesses must train their employees to be adaptive and multi-skilled, create cross-functional teams, break down and reconfigure steps in the production, and balance employee workloads.

4. Establish a pull system

With enhanced flow, your team can deliver products and services faster. A pull system enables “just-in-time” manufacturing and delivery, limiting inventory and work in progress (WIP) items by only producing enough to meet customer demand.

By establishing a pull system, you create products and services as needed as opposed to creating them in advance, which leads to a growing inventory or list of tasks that need to be stored and managed — draining your bottom line.

5. Seek perfection

By completing steps 1-4, waste is eliminated — for now. However, the work is never done. There is always a process that could be improved, and there will always be steps in project and product development that waste time and money or don’t deliver value. That’s why the fifth step of seeking perfection is key.

Lean takes time to implement, and going through the process once is not enough. Build a continuous improvement mindset into your company culture, and never settle for the same old.

Lean agile made easy

Lean prioritizes the elimination of waste to improve efficiency. This helps teams continually improve their processes while emphasizing the tasks that bring the most value to customers.

If you’re looking to learn about how agile principles work with other development approaches, we recently covered eight different software development methodologies, including rapid application development, extreme programming (XP), and other agile frameworks.

Easy Agile is dedicated to helping teams improve their processes and agile methods. Our Jira plugins help product owners, Scrum Masters, and development teams align around product goals, workflows, and customer needs. The tools are simple to use, collaborative, flexible, and they work seamlessly with Scrum, Kanban boards, and other agile processes managed in Jira software.

You can contact our team or watch a demo to learn more about our tools and follow our blog for the latest content on Jira, agile, lean, and the development process.

The lean methodology is all about eliminating waste and improving efficiency to maximize and deliver consistent customer value. Under lean, if a process doesn’t bring value to the customer, it’s considered wasteful and is eliminated or reduced as much as possible. It’s a development method and guiding mindset that helps teams refine their processes in the name of efficiency, effectiveness, and continuous improvement.

Here, you’ll learn about the origins of lean as well as 7 key benefits of adopting the lean methodology.

An intro to lean methodology

The lean methodology grew out of lean manufacturing. The concept was introduced in manufacturing to improve profits by reducing costs as opposed to relying solely on increased sales. If a company can eliminate waste and become more efficient, it can save money, which increases overall profits.

While the roots of lean manufacturing can be traced back to the 1400s, Henry Ford first fully integrated the entire production process, creating something called flow production in the form of an assembly line.

This was a revolutionary change in car manufacturing, but while Ford certainly enhanced flow, he didn’t leave much room for variety. In the 1930s and ‘40s, Japanese manufacturers Kiichiro Toyoda, Taiichi Ohno, and others at Toyota made a series of simple innovations that allowed them to provide both continuity in process flow and a wide variety of vehicles, creating the Toyota Production System.

This form of lean production enabled the elimination of waste, reduced costs, increased efficiency, and made information management simpler and more accurate. Lean methodology was further distilled and explored in the books The Machine That Changed the World by James P. Womack, Daniel Roos, and Daniel T. Jones, and Lean Thinking by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones.

The latter book also introduced the five key principles of lean:

1. Identify Value
2. Map the Value Stream
3. Create Flow
4. Establish a Pull System
5. Seek Perfection

Learn more in our article, Understanding Lean Agile and the 5 Lean Principles.

Of course, lean thinking has evolved beyond manufacturing and has been adapted and applied to everything from healthcare to construction to logistics and distribution to government to software development.

1. Increased efficiency ⏳

The application of lean to business processes is all about reducing waste to increase efficiency. But how do you figure out which processes provide value?

Once customer value is identified, teams can create a value stream map. Value stream mapping tracks each of the steps and processes to bring a product from inception to delivery. Organizing your processes visually where everyone can see them allows teams to clearly see what does and doesn’t provide value. If any steps or processes don’t bring value to the customer or are found to be otherwise wasteful, they are eliminated or reduced as much as possible.

A team can’t be efficient if they’re wasting time on tired processes that don’t provide customer value. Adopting lean methods helps to get rid of those processes, so you can dedicate your team’s energy exclusively to the processes that do, thereby increasing your team’s value flow, efficiency, and productivity.

2. Reduced bottlenecks 🛑

A bottleneck or broken process, no matter how small, can totally derail a workflow or make it impossible to meet a deadline.

With lean, tasks aren’t blindly or randomly assigned. Teams work together to ensure work is evenly distributed and deadlines are met. They discuss any potential bottlenecks in advance so they can be solved before they become a financial burden or delay work. Since capacity and WIP (work in progress) items are continually forecasted, monitored, and adjusted with lean, bottlenecks are anticipated in advance, every team member participates, and no one’s time is wasted.

3. Fewer costs (and fewer surprises!) 💸

Eliminating waste means saving money—no matter the industry. Overproduction, having too many materials to store, overhiring, and production bottlenecks are expensive and wasteful. These wastes can be eliminated with better management of processes and systems, enabling companies to always have the right number of employees, amount of materials, and working hours at any given time.

Adopting the lean methodology means increasing efficiency, which benefits any company’s bottom line. Make sure every cost is accounted for and necessary to the production process by consistently reviewing your company’s work processes and eliminating any costs that don’t add value.

4. Systems can adapt better and faster 🌎

Businesses today must adapt faster than ever due to increasing customer demand, rapidly evolving technological advancements, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The larger the size of the organization, the harder it is to adapt. Long-running business systems were not designed to be flexible, so when adjustments need to be made, it may take months or years before the entire organization is on the same page.

With lean, teams can better adapt. Lean systems aren’t as rigid, so it’s easier to make adjustments along the way, meaning teams will better adjust for unexpected circumstances. The lean methodology can help any business, no matter its size, adapt to changing times gracefully, as lean is the exact opposite of a set it and forget it process.

5. Stakeholder visibility and strong customer relationships 💞

The lean methodology leans into both stakeholder and customer needs, which results in a better end product. Progress in lean is measured based on the value delivered to the customer instead of the completion of tasks.

With lean, customer value is paramount. Every project and task begins with considering the point of view of customers and putting yourself in their shoes. Feedback is gathered alongside product development instead of at the end to ensure new information is considered and that the final product will be exactly what the customer needs or wants.

6. Continuous improvement mindset 🧠

Lean is the enemy of the status quo. Lean demands the constant fine-tuning and refinement of processes and enables a continuous improvement mindset. It’s not a “set it and forget it” process, as lean is all about consistent process improvement. No matter how successful or efficient the company is, there is always room for improvement and new, innovative ways to bring value to the customer.

This attitude instills a continuous improvement mindset in everyone involved on the team, whether it’s a small development team or an entire lean enterprise (SAFe). Teams can anticipate and expect regular feedback from leaders, managers, and stakeholders. With lean, innovations and iterations are less precious and more plentiful. The team continues to improve and fine-tune their skills and processes with each passing product.

7. Increased team engagement 🤝

Employee disengagement is expensive. Disengaged employees have higher absenteeism, lower productivity, and lower profitability — all of which can majorly drain a company’s resources. If a company’s culture doesn’t inspire employees to show up and do their best, that company is going to hemorrhage money every year until its bottom line bottoms out.

A lean organization, on the other hand, puts teams on the frontline of product development. Under lean management, employees have direct and regular contact with managers about how their work is going and how the process could be improved. Since teams are more involved in the process, they are more engaged and more likely to actively participate, provide feedback, and buy into their work.

Engaged employees are a company’s greatest asset. Bringing everyone into the process gives teams ownership over the outcomes, boosting their creativity as well as their accountability. Increased team engagement means enhanced efficiency, effectiveness, and team morale.

You can apply the lean methodology anywhere to reduce waste and improve efficiency. Let’s recap. The top benefits of adopting lean include:

1. Increased efficiency

2. Reduced bottlenecks

3. Fewer costs (and fewer surprises!)

4. Better and faster systemic adaptation

5. Stakeholder visibility and strong customer relationships

6. Continuous improvement mindset

7. Increased team engagement

Agile made easy

Easy Agile can help your agile team work better together to deliver for your customers. We have a suite of agile apps for Jira designed to put the customer first through every step of the product development process. From team agility with Easy Agile TeamRhythm, to scaled agility with Easy Agile Programs, our plugins work with multiple agile frameworks, including Kanban and Scrum.

If you work with Jira, you’ll find our lean tools especially helpful for improving the functionality of your workflows and enhancing team collaboration.

Kanban vs. Scrum — are they different, and can software and product development use them together? The answer to both questions is YES!

Both Kanban and Scrum are popular agile methodologies. They are different, but they can be used together. They are each part of agile, a better way of working that focuses on iteration and collaboration to reduce waste and maximize efficiency.

Agile is the antithesis of classical project management. Think of it like jazz vs classical music. Rather than one composer bringing an already composed and organized piece of music to an orchestra and dictating what happens where, jazz is collaborative, each band member feeds off of each other, creating music in an agile, iterative process.

This post will take a deep dive into both Kanban and Scrum methodologies. Continue reading to discover the differences and similarities between Kanban vs. Scrum, and learn how they can be effectively used together.

How is the agile methodology different from project management?

The traditional project management methodology is linear, meaning each project element is completed in sequential order. Only when each element is completed can you move onto the next one. Think of traditional project management as an assembly line. It has a strict succession of steps that are planned out by the project manager before any new work or iterations can begin.

The project manager is the person the entire team depends on for leadership. The flow of work remains the same from project to project, and the steps rarely evolve.

By contrast, agile is a non-linear way of working that focuses on flexibility and collaboration between team members. Agile project management focuses on getting something completed that stakeholders can see and evaluate on a regular basis, so value is continuously provided.

Each iteration yields new, actionable insights from both the team and the customer about what’s working, what isn’t, and what needs to change. It’s a multifaceted approach that eliminates the bottlenecks that can arise in the traditional method.

Kanban vs. Scrum

Kanban vs. Scrum is not a dichotomy. They are both agile methodologies designed to help teams work in an iterative process. They are both systems that are regularly used in the development process to ensure a value-driven approach. The goals and methodology are the same, but the steps are different.

A Kanban workflow is a way to visually organize tasks that ensures work items move forward while allowing changes and adjustments to be made along the way. A scrum works in 2-4 week sprints designed to complete a set amount of work or solve a specific problem. Throughout each sprint, teams check in daily to ensure progress and to identify any possible roadblocks.

Kanban vs. Scrum isn’t a one or the other choice. Both might be used at the same time, depending on what’s required of projects or user stories. Learn more about the differences and similarities of these two methods below.

Kanban vs. Scrum: Kanban methodology

Kanban was originally utilized by Taiichi Ohno, an engineer at Toyota, as a lean manufacturing system that decreased waste and increased efficiency. The Kanban method is a task management tool designed to maximize efficiency by visualizing all of the required work and limiting works in progress.

Work items are represented visually on Kanban boards so that every team member can see the state of each piece of work at any given time. It enables real-time communication and full transparency between team members since each work item is intentionally assigned. A Trello board is a simple example of a Kanban.

How to use Kanban

With a Kanban, work flows visually through various stages of completion to promote cohesive collaboration and real-time communication across teams. In its simplest form, a Kanban is a To-Do, Doing, and Done board. Work moves from one section to the next on a physical or digital Kanban board, depending on how far along the specific task is.

To solve more complex problems, which is usually the case in software development, a Kanban can become more advanced with added layers for specific clients, products, or deliverables.

A key aspect of the Kanban methodology is that each person is only allowed to work on one task at a time. This ensures no aspect ever moves too far forward without working in unison with the rest of the tasks on deck. The one-at-a-time system identifies critical connections between tasks as well as potential roadblocks that could cause delays.

Encouraging cross-functional teams to intentionally identify work items ensures tasks are appropriately prioritized. It also combats the negative effects of multitasking, allowing developers to zero in on one task at a time.

Kanban vs. Scrum: Scrum methodology

Scrum, sometimes called a “scrumban,” is based on empiricism and lean thinking. Empiricism is the belief that knowledge comes from hands-on experience and objective, observable facts. Lean thinking focuses on the essentials, bringing value to individuals while eliminating waste. A scrum uses real-time collaboration over theorization to provide a lightweight framework for solving complex problems.

The Scrum process uses an interactive and incremental approach that manages risk and enhances predictability through set intervals of iteration called sprints. The sprints yield an imperfect but valuable version of a product the team can quickly bring to stakeholders, whose feedback is then integrated into the next sprint. The sprints continue until the desired outcome or product is achieved.

How to use Scrum

A Scrum takes place over a set amount of time called a sprint. Each sprint generally takes two weeks to a maximum of four weeks to complete. The important part is that the time frame is set before the Scrum begins.

There are three main components of a Scrum:

1. Roles: The people

• Product owner
• Scrum master
• Development team

2. Artifacts: What gets done

• Product backlog
• Sprint backlog
• Increments

3. Ceremonies: Recurring events

• Sprint planning
• Daily Scrum
• Sprint review
• Sprint retrospective

The product owner orders and prioritizes backlog items, which are the aspects of a product that need completion. At the beginning of a Scrum, the product owner designates which artifacts from the product backlog move to the sprint backlog. The sprint backlog represents the goals and the desired outcomes of the upcoming sprint.

💡 Use Easy Agile TeamRhythm to transform flat product backlogs into impactful, visual representations.

The Scrum master helps everyone understand Scrum theory and practice. They are responsible for the effectiveness of the Scrum team. Throughout the 2-4 week sprint, the team focuses on the backlog, checking in for daily scrums or daily stand-ups. During these Scrum meetings, team members share what story points they completed, what story points they will complete next, as well as any roadblocks that stand in the way.

Deliverables are produced on a regular basis, and adjustments are made along the way as needed. A Scrum board or Kanban board might be used to help teams visualize their progress throughout the sprint.

Ceremonies are the recurring events held by Scrum teams cycling through on a 2-4 week basis. A Scrum begins with a short planning phase, then the work begins. The Scrum team meets daily to review progress and make changes as needed.

At the end of each sprint, a sprint review is held with stakeholders or clients to ensure value is being met, and continuous improvements are pushed forward. Lastly, a retrospective meeting takes place with the project owner, scrum master, and development team to review the past two weeks, including successes, key metrics, and challenges to be addressed before the next sprint begins.

Using Kanban and Scrum together

It doesn't need to be Kanban vs. Scrum — they can work together. A development team might choose to use the Kanban system within a Scrum to provide a visual representation of work moving forward throughout each sprint.

They are both valuable systems in your agile toolkit that work together to provide prioritization, collaboration, and constant value delivery. So, you don’t ever have to choose between Kanban vs. Scrum. Save the decision-making for the real problems, like what to put on the pizzas you order for your team. 🍕

A Scrum framework provides designated blocks of time for teams to complete a specific deliverable or set of deliverables while providing daily Scrum meetings to ensure cohesion and advancement. The Kanban system will ensure tasks are taken on one at a time in an evolving, visual process.

Learn the ways of the Scrum with Easy Agile

Easy Agile crafts solutions to make every agile team more effective. We help teams build simple and collaborative user story maps in Jira for backlog grooming, version planning, and silky-smooth sprints.

We believe there is a better way to work, and we want to help teams just like yours. Learn more about our suite of agile apps and follow our blog for the latest agile trends, tips, and more.

As an agile team, you’re likely well aware of Jira software and its supreme capabilities for creating agile workflows. Jira workflows are a staple for development teams (ours included! 🕺), and there’s no question why.

Jira takes a customer-first approach to design projects, and it’s highly customizable, making it extremely popular among agile teams working in software development. As the folks who developed Jira at Atlassian like to say, “The more agile your team is, the more Jira will be able to help.”

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. 😎

We’ve also dedicated our company to making products that work directly with the Jira software you use. While you probably already know how to use Jira workflows, you may not be getting the most out of them. In this post, we’ll share seven best practices for getting the absolute most out of your workflows.

Free workflow apps

Try our FREE Jira workflow apps available on the Atlassian Marketplace!

Easy Agile Scrum Workflow for Jira

Easy Agile Kanban Workflow for Jira

Why dev teams choose Jira workflows

Unlike traditional project management tools, Jira takes an agile approach to product development. Jira Software is a family of software platforms designed to help agile teams do what they do even better, so team members can plan, track, and release great software every time.

The Jira server allows for multiple frameworks, including both Scrum and Kanban processes, making it completely versatile, no matter what style you’re used to. It helps you manage all phases of your workflow with complete visibility, and you can continually improve your performance based on detailed real-time data.

🙋🏼 If you’re new to Jira, follow this how-to tutorial from Atlassian for developers joining an existing Jira cloud project.

Jira workflow best practices and lessons learned

We love its flexibility and how it helps development teams work to meet stakeholder and customer needs. Our two CEOs worked directly with the Atlassian Jira team for five years, where they got to know the product inside and out.

1. Make customer-focused decisions

Every decision you make should be customer-focused. Repeat that again and again — you can even record it on your phone and listen to it while you sleep every night! Agile methodologies are especially effective because they focus on this priority in every problem.

Keep this mantra top of mind through every step of your Jira project, such as when you add workflows, create new workflows, define specific issue fields, or resolve issue types. To continually bring value to the customer, you need to visualize their journey from start to finish.

User story maps are invaluable tools for keeping customers at the forefront of everything you do. They help teams prioritize based on customer needs, and they give a clear view of the customer journey. It’s their story, after all, so why not view your backlog from their perspective?

Easy Agile TeamRhythm transforms flat backlogs into impactful, visual representations of the customer journey. The app integrates seamlessly with your agile boards in Jira and is designed to help teams provide value to customers quickly and frequently.

2. Use personas to gain a deeper understanding of your audience

Personas are the ultimate tool for empathizing with customers. They ask important questions about users so development teams can gain a deep understanding of the people who will use the product they’re working on. If you aren’t using personas yet, move it to the top of your to-do list.

A persona asks important questions of the user to capture buying habits, pain points, behavioral patterns, demographics, and more. Using these directly with your user story maps or alongside your product roadmap will help you make the decisions that will bring the most value to the customer.

Easy Agile Personas for Jira configures directly with your current Jira projects. The app has the functionality to create and store customer personas natively in Jira software, so you can prioritize customer needs every step of the way.

3. Create a workflow for your team, not everyone else

Some teams create a one-size-fits-all workflow and duplicate it across issue types with only small changes on the way. Depending on the team, that might not work. A status and transition that works for one issue type, for example, might not work for another. Some issues may require specific statuses and transitions, or even restrictions and automations that only work for them. You can mold a template, but it’ll never be the most effective workflow for your team.

Still, the one-size-fits-all approach is tempting. It’s easier too. But ultimately, the people on your team will end up working with a tool not made for them, but for someone else. Remember, as an admin your job is to serve the people on your team. You want your team to work with joy and harmony. You want your workflows to be effective for the people working in them, not easy to create for the admin. Putting in the effort now will have a scaling effect, given that the people on your team have to work in Jira every day.

If not one-size-fits-all then, what do we recommend?

Start from scratch. Start from zero, from nothing. Clear your mind of all templates that exist and do the work of talking to your team. Figure out the steps your team goes through and translate them into Jira. Talk to a representative from each role on your team, and make sure their needs are met. The best workflow is the one that’s tailored to your team, not for everyone else. It’s not easy and it’s going to take time, but your teams will thank you for it.

4. Don’t add more detail than what’s needed

When working in Jira, there’s such a thing as too much detail. Although it can be tempting to include absolutely everything, this may not actually be the best move.

Overuse of custom fields can lead to a slower response time on Jira issues, and it may cause frustrating holdups. Don’t get in your own way by creating an overly complicated structure. Whenever adding to your Jira workflow, think back to your customer needs and OKRs. Simple is often the more effective choice.

5. Don’t over-customize or overcomplicate

Custom workflows offer dev teams a solution that can be adapted to meet their current needs. But customization can come at a price.

As your Jira workflows evolve, they will become more and more unrecognizable from one workflow to the next. In some cases, they may get to the point of becoming a completely different species that will have trouble working with original versions.

Add custom fields when you need to, but don’t overdo it on complex workflows. Set standard practices across your team for how and when different workflows are customized to minimize compatibility issues. Ensure that customization is approved by those who understand OKRs and have the entire big picture in mind. It may be prudent for larger teams to limit admin assignee access to prevent unnecessary and possibly harmful customizations.

6. Keep your workflow simple: limit statuses and transitions

Adding a status for every part of your team’s process may seem like a good idea, and Jira definitely supports it. But keep in mind that every status and transition adds more complexity for the team working in the workflow. If you want to move fast, keep your process lean.

After mapping how your team works, include only the statuses and transitions you need. A workflow with too many statuses and transitions can be confusing to understand. Remember that the team working in the workflow will have to understand and use it.

7. Iterate on your workflow

It’s great to plan out your workflow, but don’t worry about getting the perfect workflow on the first try. Teams change, and Jira can adapt to those changes. What’s important is creating the best workflow you can now and iterating based on changes and feedback from the team.

This may seem counterintuitive, especially if your team isn’t used to working agile and wants to set and forget the workflows. Keep in mind that Jira workflows are here to serve your team’s needs at the current time. They’re here to adapt to your needs right now. As you evolve, your workflows evolve with you.

8. Involve stakeholders when creating workflows

These include both internal and external stakeholders in the process to ensure their needs are consistently met. The product manager is just one person with one viewpoint — you need a variety of team perspectives.

Stakeholders need to be involved, and they need to have continual access to essential documents, such as your product roadmap or user story map. These living documents are a work in progress. They represent the overall vision at any given time, and since they’re always evolving, your stakeholders need to know how to access them and how to decipher them.

When admins don’t involve the team in creating workflows, the workflow may not be the best one for the team. Remember that when you’re building a workflow, you’re doing it for people. These people will be working with the workflow you build, so make it work for them.

To create effective workflows, involve a stakeholder from each role within your multidisciplinary team. Here are some key roles to consider:

• Product Manager: Understands the overall vision and roadmap.
• Software Engineer: Knows the technical intricacies and feasibility.
• Product Designer: Focuses on user experience and interface design.
• Content Designer: Ensures that content is clear and effective.
• Quality Assurance Engineer: Guarantees the product meets quality standards.

Get a representative from each of these roles, find out how they work, and once you’ve created your workflows, check that they’re happy with them. If you don’t, you might end up with statuses and transitions that people don’t use, and you might miss important workflow rules that can speed your team up.

Then take your team’s feedback and iterate. They’re the ones who are working in Jira.

9. Teach stakeholders about the iterative process

When it comes to agile and working in Jira, everything is iterative. The plan you set out with is bound to change with the needs of your customers.

This is really difficult for some stakeholders to understand, especially if they’re not used to working with agile. The ideas and methodologies that come naturally to you may be completely foreign to the stakeholders and key customers you involve in the process.

Take it slow and BE PATIENT. Teach stakeholders about the agile process, and ensure they understand that any plan is completely subject to change. Plans are “living documents” that represent what the team hopes to accomplish based on what will provide the most value to customers in that snapshot of time.

10. Test your workflow

If you don’t test enough, you’ll have a workflow with so many errors they’re hard to fix. If you test too much too early, you won’t be able to move quickly. Testing is a balancing act. There are no hard rules, but there are two stages where people usually test their workflows:

Stage 1 - Testing the new workflow in a separate project or instance

Before you get your team to use your workflow, you want to check that everything works properly. To do so you can copy your workflow to:

• A separate Jira project
• A separate Jira site, if you have one

Either way, you want a place in Jira that doesn’t impact people in the project for testing. There you can create sample issues and manually run through every step of the workflow. You can check for things like:

• Whether the statuses and transitions make sense
• If the issue ever gets stuck at particular steps in the workflows
• Whether workflow rules are working properly
• How a representative from each role in your team goes through the workflow

Stage 2 - Testing with your team in your actual project

Testing is a continuous process.

After getting your workflow into Jira, there are bound to be problems your team runs into that you didn’t consider. That’s why it’s important to get feedback from the people actually using the workflow.

It’s not something you have to do every day, or even every week, but keep in touch with your team every now and then. If you have meetings about the tools you use or about how you work, make sure to talk about how the workflows are working for them.

11. Make use of agile Jira apps

Jira is a fantastic platform with tons of features and development tools for agile teams that we can’t praise highly enough, but it doesn’t come with everything. Take advantage of plugins designed to help teams just like yours. The Atlassian marketplace offers a number of Jira apps that provide specific solutions, including Easy Agile’s four Jira plugins:

• Easy Agile TeamRhythm
• Easy Agile Programs
• Easy Agile Roadmaps
• Easy Agile Personas

Each of our plugins seamlessly integrates with Jira to simplify your development and streamline your business process.

Marketplace

Try any of our apps free for 30 days — we’re sure you’ll love them. If you have questions, contact our team or watch the demos on each product page to learn more.

Jira is the #1 software development tool used by agile teams. It’s designed to help development teams plan, track, and release awesome products. With Jira Software, teams can work within multiple different frameworks, including Kanban and Scrum, while gaining access to agile reporting, integrations, and automations.

It’s completely versatile, so teams can work in whatever way best suits them. Plus, Jira Software is designed to help teams continuously improve their performance. This agile project management and agile software development tool is available in three different packages:

• Jira Core: The basic Jira platform
• Jira Software: Jira Core plus additional Agile functions
• Jira Service Desk: Service experience delivery

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.

Jira Software Scrum boards

Jira Software is designed to work within various agile frameworks. The Scrum process helps devops teams bring iterative and incremental value to stakeholders and customers.

One Scrum is usually made up of a two-week sprint that aims to complete a specific set of backlog items from the product backlog. Product owners plan sprints, and a Scrum Master guides the development team through the various stages of the Scrum.

The team works to complete the most important work while meeting for daily standups to review their progress and any potential roadblocks. The daily standup allows teams to learn on the go and use an iterative and customizable approach.

Jira Scrum boards unite teams around a single goal while promoting iterative, incremental delivery. The tool provides data-driven Scrum insights so that product owners and team members can keep track of sprint goals and improve retrospectives. Jira’s customization helps teams deliver consistent value to stakeholders quickly and effectively based on ever-evolving customer feedback.

With Jira Scrum boards, you can:

• Build a single source of truth for all of the work that needs to be completed
• View your progress visually during the development cycle
• Provide all team members with a clear view of what’s on their plate
• Quickly identify any blockers or potential blockers
• Organize work around the sprint time frame
• Avoid over-committing on work at any given time
• Don’t lose track of key dates or milestones.
• Utilize key metrics, including burndown charts and velocity reports

Jira Software Kanban boards

Image credit: Atlassian

Kanbans provide workflow transparency for development teams by establishing a visual representation of what needs to be done, what’s in progress, and what’s been completed. They also help teams understand their capacity so they can focus on one key task at a time. Work to be completed moves from one column to the next — from To Do to In Progress to Done.

Jira Kanban boards provide a framework for teams to continuously and efficiently deliver work. They are simple to use, visually engaging, and completely customizable to the specific needs of the team. Jira Kanban board columns can be customized based on other requirements, such as In Review or Waiting for Client Feedback.

With Jira Kanban boards, you can:

• Clearly visualize workflows
• Depict work at distinct stages
• Build a single source of truth for all of the work that needs to be completed
• View an at-a-glance summary of where work stands
• Capture relevant information for Jira issues, tasks, stories, or bug tracking
• Limit the amount of work-in-progress
• Prevent bottlenecks and spot them before they delay work
• Configure workflows to be as simple or as complex as needed
• Customize boards based on the needs of the team
• Utilize real-time visual metrics

Jira Software roadmaps

Roadmaps help agile teams see the big picture surrounding the development of a product. They establish a flexible plan for what the team hopes to accomplish and provide a visual of how all of the pieces connect.

Even though the roadmap lays out a clear view of the road ahead, it’s not a set-in-stone plan of what’s to come. The agile methodology and nature of roadmaps mean they are constantly updated and fine-tuned based on new information that continually flows in from team members, stakeholders, and customers.

Jira roadmaps are available to teams and organizations through Jira Software Premium. They help teams track progress based on the big picture to predict capacity and avoid bottlenecks.

With Jira roadmaps, you can:

• Sketch the big picture
• Map and account for dependencies
• Track your progress
• Account for team bandwidth
• View capacity on a sprint-by-sprint basis
• Iterate and update as you learn more about a project, product, or customer needs
• Sync in real-time so that everyone is on the same page
• Create multiple roadmap versions to account for different scenarios
• Share your roadmaps with stakeholders

We designed the simplest roadmapping tool for Jira. Our Easy Agile Roadmaps For Jira help development teams create product roadmaps that are simple to use, flexible, and collaborative. It offers an intuitive one-click drag-and-drop functionality and a super-clean user experience. Watch a demo of our roadmaps in action to learn more.

Jira Software reporting

Image credit: Atlassian

No matter how you choose to use Jira, you’ll gain access to a range of critical insights. Clear metrics will help your team make data-driven decisions. Utilize agile reports and dashboards to better understand what you’re doing well and where you can improve your process.

Use Jira reporting to analyze sprint reports, burndown charts, release burndowns, velocity charts, cumulative flow diagrams, and more. Real-time data helps teams track progress in a meaningful way, including managing sprint progress and accounting for scope creep. Take clear data into your retrospectives and provide customizable dashboards to stakeholders and leadership.

With Jira reporting, you can:

• Make data-driven decisions
• Track your progress against both product and sprint goals
• Monitor progress so you can take action if work falls behind
• Use past data to create realistic estimates
• Spot overcommitment and excessive scope creep
• Catch bottlenecks
• Predict future performance
• Take clear metrics intro retrospectives
• Provide stakeholders with visual data using customizable dashboards

Jira Software integrations

Image credit: Atlassian

Jira offers integrations with the tools and apps your team is already using. You can seamlessly connect Jira Software to plugins like Bitbucket, Trello, Confluence, GitHub, Slack, and many more. There are thousands of integrations available.

You can also extend Jira Software with over 3000 apps available in the Atlassian Marketplace. The marketplace contains apps for dozens of categories, including code review, design tools, reports, time tracking, and workflows.

That’s where you’ll find the Easy Agile products we designed to offer teams a customer-centric approach to product development.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm is trusted by companies of all sizes, including Amazon, Twitter, Adobe, AT&T, Cisco, JP Morgan, and Rolex. Our team agility app helps you and your team deliver for your customers by prioritizing the work that will deliver the most value to your users. It helps you work better together with smooth sprint and version planning, simple story mapping, easy backlog refinement, and team retrospectives for continuous improvement.

Access a free trial for 30 days. If you have questions, contact our team to learn more about our suite of Jira products.

For more content written for Jira users just like you, follow the Easy Agile Blog and tune into the Easy Agile Podcast for an inside look at the most interesting and successful business, tech, and agile leaders.

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!

We believe there’s a better way for teams to work. That’s why we built a suite of powerful Jira apps. In this post, we’ll share more about Easy Agile Personas, Easy Agile TeamRhythm (formerly User Story Maps), Easy Agile Roadmaps, and Easy Agile Programs. We’ll go over how to use these tools as well as key features that will help your team.

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.

We believe in the power of agile, and we’re passionate about helping teams work better together. To us, that means working with simple tools that are flexible, collaborative, and customer-centric. That's why Easy Agile apps for Jira always keep the customer top of mind. Let's take a deeper look at the plugins that will improve the way your team works in Jira.

Product development with Atlassian Jira Software

Jira cloud solutions take a customer-first approach to designing products. And Atlassian products are commonly used by software development teams.

If you're on an agile team or looking to build your agile capability, a key foundational tool is Atlassian's Jira Software.

With Jira, you can:

• Create Jira workflows to plan, track, and release customer-centric products
• Choose between multiple frameworks, including Kanban, Scrum, or both
• Manage backlogs with complete visibility
• Use structured features designed specifically for sprint planning
• Search for issues and Jira instances with JQL, Jira Query Language
• Improve performance based on real-time data
• Reduce physical dependencies by moving your agile solutions online

Easy Agile Apps for Jira

Jira is an amazing platform with tons of features agile teams can make good use of, but it may not offer the best solution to your specific use case. For specific solutions, such as integrated customer personas or a tool for PI Planning, you’ll need a Jira app from the Atlassian Marketplace, like the Easy Agile tools we’re about to cover.

Easy Agile Personas for Jira

Customer Personas help development teams zero in on a customer-centric approach. They dig deep to understand exactly what customers need and want so that software development teams can deliver on those desires.

Customer personas are vital to understanding how to bring consistent value to clients. They answer questions about customer pain points, behavioral patterns, goals, demographics, buying habits, and more. Effective personas really get to the heart of what makes customers tick so that every software development decision is based on the real people who use the product.

Easy Agile Personas for Jira is designed to produce customer-centric work. It helps teams empathize with customers so they can make development decisions based on what will provide the most value to users.

Our persona tool integrates directly with your current Jira projects. You can create and store customer personas for a smooth experience that prioritizes customer needs every step of the way.

Watch an on-demand demo to learn more. And did we mention our persona template is designed to work with Easy Agile TeamRhythm? You can add personas directly to your TeamRhythm user story map. Our agile plugins are designed to work better together.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm

Backlogs are full of potential, but when you have more than a few items on your list, a flat backlog can quickly become overwhelming. What do you start with first? What fits within the bigger picture? And what’s going to bring the most value to your clients?

Flat maps are bland, void of context, and they provide no insight into the customer journey. It’s like choosing an original Nintendo game when you have a VR headset available. Nice for nostalgia, but not for making stellar products.

Enter the TeamRhythm User Story Map.

Our co-founder, Nicolas Muldoon, describes user story mapping as “a facilitated, curated conversation that brings everyone along for the journey.”

User story mapping is an effective way of organizing and prioritizing your user stories for the purpose of scheduling your work and designing releases. It helps teams visualize the customer’s journey through the creation of your product from start to finish, and it includes all of the tasks to complete along the way.

A user story is a goal or outcome that the user or customer wants to achieve. It’s the smallest unit of work capable of delivering value back to the customer.

Here’s an example of how a user story is typically written: “As a [persona type], I want to [action] so that [benefit].”

It’s your user’s story, so it’s best written from their perspective. Each user story is then added to your backlog, where they can be arranged and prioritized on a user story map according to your scheduled release or sprint. Read our ultimate guide to user story maps to get started.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm is an add-on designed to help teams provide value to customers fast and frequently. Manage and breakdown epics inside the story map, plan core user activities, order stories by priority, edit story summaries, and more — all while integrating seamlessly with your agile boards in Jira.

It’s time to transform your flat product backlog into an impactful and visual representation of the customer journey. Follow our Easy Agile TeamRhythm to see what we’re currently working on and what functionality is coming up next.

Easy Agile Programs Jira plugin

Program Increment (PI) Planning involves intense, focused planning to determine what needs to happen when and how everything connects. It’s when product managers can review the backlog, communicate with stakeholders, and ultimately decide what next steps will bring the most value.

The problem is these planning sessions can get quite complicated, and it’s difficult to track everything on a physical Program Board. Online agile tools help teams consolidate information so they can see the big picture. They prevent lost information, misinformation, poor test management, double handling, and inaccessibility, all while maintaining the visual process of PI Planning.

Easy Agile Programs for Jira is the complete PI Planning solution for agile teams. It’s the most effective way to visualize programs within Jira. Keep all the parts you like from your physical Program Board while increasing automation and getting rid of overwhelming layers of sticky notes and connectors. Plus, with an online tool, you can work as a team remotely while doing PI Planning.

You can plan your Program Increment with digital cards with all the string you need for solving complex problems. Our app connects to Jira dashboards to help you seamlessly manage programs, configure priorities, and streamline visibility. With a Jira PI Planning app, you’ll gain better context, a streamlined workflow, increased collaboration, and improved transparency.

Watch our on-demand demo and follow our Easy Agile Programs roadmap for the latest product updates.

Easy Agile Roadmaps Jira plugin

Product roadmaps are an agile staple. They provide an iterative and collaborative process, so the software development team can continually provide value to customers and stakeholders.

Unlike static Gantt Charts or Excel Sheets, roadmaps are fluid and versatile. They are a living document that represents the team’s hopes at a specific time, based on the current needs of the customer. As needs and demands evolve, so does the roadmap.

Easy Agile Roadmaps for Jira help teams align around a product vision to sequence the most critical features for customer delivery. Our Roadmaps allow teams to add subtask themes, date markers, custom fields, split scheduled work, track progress, and export any roadmap to share with stakeholders.

It’s intuitive and simple to use for everyone on your team from product managers to developers to stakeholders. Easy Agile Roadmaps connect seamlessly with your Jira instance to plan Jira issues directly from the issues panel. It’s the simplest and most flexible roadmapping tool for Jira with one-click drag and drop functionality and a super-clean user experience.

You’ll love visualizing your process, and you’ll love how simple it is to get started. Learn how to create a Jira roadmap using Easy Agile Roadmaps or watch a demo for more information.

Try any Easy Agile Jira plugin free for 30 days

Each of our Easy Agile Jira plugins is available free for 30 days, so you can begin using them without any commitments. If you have any questions don’t hesitate to contact our team.

What is a customer persona?

Customer Personas are fictional generalizations of your most valuable customers.

They help teams understand their customers by bringing together demographic information like age, gender, location, and income, alongside psychographic information like interests, frustrations, and personal or professional motivations.

What are user personas?

Now It might seem trivial at first, to come together as a team, mocking up what seems like fake dating profiles for your most important customers.

However, this exercise sets the foundation for other agile practices down the track, and its benefits are often undervalued.

Agile experts have called for more cross-functional teams, which means this knowledge of who the customer is, is no longer the sole responsibility of your Sales and Marketing team. Everyone is responsible for understanding who the customer is.

Teams that have a shared understanding and alignment around who is actually using the solution they are delivering are more likely to succeed.

Building customer personas helps teams to address the following questions:

• Who are our customers?
• What are their common behavioral patterns?
• What are their shared pain points (professional and personal)?
• What are their goals and objectives?
• What general demographic and psychographic information may influence their decisions?
• What drives them to make purchasing decisions?
• Is the customer the buyer or decision maker?
  

There are two steps you can take to answer these questions and start to identify who your customer personas are:

Firstly, broadly define your personas

It’s not crazy to think that most companies will have some broad idea of who at least some of their customer personas are. This knowledge is accumulated over time and is based on customer feedback, support requests, conversations/interviews, and initial market research.

This knowledge is not to be underestimated and is a great starting point before looking towards analytics to flesh these personas out into more specific detail.

Secondly, look towards insights and analytics

Once you’ve come up with a few customer personas, it’s time to flesh them out with qualitative and quantitative data.

So where can we find this information?

Look at sources like:

• Website Analytics
• Facebook Insights
• Customer Surveys & Polls
• Industry reports
• Customer Interviews or
• In-Product Analytics

After looking through all of this information you can map back the data against your original assumptions.

By the end of the exercise, you and your team should have a pretty good idea of who your customers are, and how to best service them, communicate with them and build solutions for them.

Customer personas in Jira

Once these personas have been developed, the challenge is choosing where to store them.

Making the personas highly visible should encourage your team to consider them each time new work enters the backlog. You want them to think, “What would Sam the System Administrator think about this new feature? Would she use it? How would she communicate its benefits to her team? What are some of the problems Sam may encounter on first use?”

That’s why we created an app for Jira - Easy Agile Personas.

Easy Agile Personas enables you to create and keep your user personas in Jira alongside your work, so the entire team can keep the customer in mind.

Whether you choose to use Easy Agile Personas or not, the customer personas you develop are vital to building user story maps.

Try it now

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.

If you’re reading this post, it means you want to learn what will work best for the people who use your software, and improve how you approach software development. That's great! Our goal at Easy Agile is to help you do that.

So let’s start with why good user stories are important.

Why write user stories?

You may wonder why you should write user stories rather than writing features or tasks instead.

If this sounds like you, you might not yet have seen the value of writing user stories, and that they serve a very different purpose to writing features or tasks.

It’s easy to get buried in a cycle of feature development that lacks context. The objective becomes more about clearing your way through a large backlog than building solutions that add value for your customers. To build successful software, you need to focus on the needs of the people who will be using it. Your human customers. User stories bring that context and perspective into the development cycle.

What is a user story?

A user story helps agile software development teams to empathize with their customers. Written from the customer (or user) perspective, user stories help the development team understand what they need to build, and why they need to build it.

User stories are simplified, high-level descriptions of a user’s requirements written from that end user’s perspective. A user story is not a contextless feature, written in “dev” speak.

A User Story = the 'what'

A user story describes a piece of functionality from the point of view of the user.

User stories divide features into business processes.

A task = the 'how'

Tasks are the activities that need to be performed to deliver an outcome.

Tasks are individual pieces of work.

How do we write user stories?

You might like to think of a user story as an ‘equation’:

As a [user] + I want [intent] + so that [value]

Let’s break this down further;

As a [user] — this is the WHO. Who are we building this for? Who is the user?

I want [intention] — this is the WHAT. What are we building? What is the intent?

So that [value] — this is the WHY. Why are we building it? What is the value for the customer?

Let’s look at a few simple examples;

As an internet banking customer

I want to see a rolling balance for my everyday accounts

So that I can keep track of my spending after each transaction is applied

OR

As an administrator

I want to be able to create other administrators for certain projects

So that I can delegate tasks more efficiently

Following this equation, teams should make sure that their user stories are ticking all of the following checkboxes:

To write successful user stories:

• Keep them short
• Keep them simple
• Write from the perspective of the user
• Make the value or benefit of the story clear
• Describe one piece of functionality
• Write user stories as a team
• Use acceptance criteria to show an MVP.

Acceptance Criteria

User stories allow agile teams to balance the needs, wants and values of their customers with the activities they need to accomplish to provide that value.

The link pairing these two things together is acceptance criteria.

Acceptance Criteria or ‘conditions of satisfaction’, provide a detailed scope of user requirements. They help the team understand the value of the user story and help the team know when they can consider something to be done.

Acceptance Criteria Goals

Acceptance criteria should:

• clarify what the team should build before they start work
• ensure a common understanding of the problem or needs of the customer
• help team members know when the story is complete
• help verify the story via automated tests.

Let’s look at an example of a completed user story with acceptance criteria:

As a potential conference attendee, I want to be able to register for the conference online, so that registration is simple and paperless.

Acceptance Criteria:

• Conference Attendance Form
• A user cannot submit a form without filling out all of the mandatory fields (First Name, Last Name, Company Name, Email Address, Position Title, Billing Information)
• Information from the form is stored in the registration database
• Protection against spam is working
• Payment can be made via Paypal, Debit, or Credit Card
• An acknowledgment email is sent to the attendee after submitting the form

With this in mind, teams should make sure that their acceptance criteria considers all of the following:

• Negative scenarios of the functionality
• Functional and non-functional use cases
• Performance concerns and guidelines
• What the system or feature intends to do
• End-to-user flow
• The impact of a user story on other features
• UX concerns

Acceptance criteria should NOT include the following:

• Code review was done
• Non-blocker or major issues
• Performance testing performed
• Acceptance and functional testing done
  

Why?

Your acceptance criteria should not include any of the above, because your team should already have a clear understanding of what your Definition of Done (DoD) includes, for instance:

• unit/integrated testing
• ready for acceptance test
• deployed on demo server
• releasable

Writing effective user stories is a valuable practice that will help you and your team deliver software that stays relevant for your customers.

When you embrace user stories as more than just another task on your checklist, but instead view them as an essential tool for creating context and value for your projects, you can stay connected with your ultimate focus - your customer.

Transform your backlog into a meaningful picture of work to gain context for sprint and version planning, backlog refinement, and user story mapping.

Stay focused on your customers

Easy Agile TeamRhythm