Agile methodologies can be a game changer in delivering high-quality products faster, more reliably and efficiently. However, implementing Agile practices can be a challenge without the right project management tools in place. Moreover, scaling those tools within a large organization can itself be a daunting task. Jira and Confluence are the two most popular tools for Agile project management and collaboration. In this blog, we explore best practices that can help delivery teams scale the adoption of these tools with immediate effect.

BEST PRACTICES OF HIGHLY PRODUCTIVE AGILE TEAMS

Before getting started with Jira and Confluence, it is worthwhile having the existing processes documented and communicated to the team. Sharing the existing process from beginning to end helps drive a common understanding of the workflow, lifecycle and escalation paths. If this hasn’t been done already, consider conducting a SIPOC (supplier, input, process, output, customer) exercise to gather the information.

JIRA

• Jira workflows are customizable for a reason. Customize your workflows to mirror the product lifecycle and processes to ensure your team follows the same steps from creation to completion. This, together with work-in-progress limits, promotes progression and flow, in contrast to issues going back and forth in status. Be sure to also include the subject matter experts’ perspective and share the workflow with the team.  
• Labels are a great way to organize information. While labels can effectively be used to categorize issues and thereby make it easier for people to find what they need, it can also become a source of risk. For instance, inconsistencies and misspellings will create new labels that won’t yield the expected results when queried with the right label. As a result, it is worth setting up a change control process for managing labels.
  
  

CONFLUENCE

• Templates are a great way to ensure consistency and save time. Create templates for commonly used reporting formats, documents and pages in Confluence. This will help ensure that everyone is following the same format and that the information is consistent. 
• Create and communicate a naming convention for your organization. It sounds obvious, but it is easy for things to become confusing without a naming convention. Create a standard naming convention for projects, issues, and spaces in Confluence. This will help make it easier for everyone to find what they need and ensure that information is organized consistently. You would be surprised to see how many variations people can come up with for the same item.

CONCLUSION

 Using Jira and Confluence effectively in a large organization often demands care and consideration. However, by defining your processes, customizing your workflows, using labels, templates and creating a naming convention, you can set your teams up for success by helping them use these tools effectively and consistently across the organization. Stay tuned for our future blogposts where we dig deeper into how CIOs can work with global tooling admins to turn many of these challenges into new enterprise scaling opportunities.

At Capco, our Agile experts possess a thorough understanding of these tools and experience in helping financial organizations leverage them to drive transformation successfully.

To find out more about how Capco’s Agile consultants can help your institution, contact us to discuss the opportunity and potential implementation.

REFERENCES

16th Annual State of Agile Report digital.ai. https://digital.ai/resource-center/analyst-reports/state-of-Agile-report/