JIRA and Confluence for Agile in distributed teams

And the many, many pitfalls….

Friday, 4 July 14

Key points• Information wants to be free

• Meeting notes are your friend

• JIRA can over-complicate user story management

• Make sure external users have training

• How to effectively communicate

Friday, 4 July 14

Can’t you just email it to me?

No.

Friday, 4 July 14

This guy is your enemyDon’t let him sabotage your project

Friday, 4 July 14

Wallboards save livesBut remember some teams work differently…

Friday, 4 July 14

Friday, 4 July 14

Summary of all tasksSingle page view accessible to all teams

Friday, 4 July 14

JIRA or Confluence?Which system should I create my stories in?

Friday, 4 July 14

JIRA can confuse peopleUser stories want to live in Confluence until they’re

signed off and ready for development

Friday, 4 July 14

–Supplier Project Manager at the end of Sprint 4

“You know I wasn’t convinced, but this JIRA thing is awesome”

Friday, 4 July 14

Confluence can work betterStories are simpler to edit in confluence and people tend

to prefer to update them more here rather than in JIRA

Friday, 4 July 14

Create JIRA issueThis is awesome! Works on tables, will save you a heap

of time

Friday, 4 July 14

Training is a challengeMake sure dev teams understand the concepts before

letting them loose on the system…

Friday, 4 July 14

Before training…How not to manage a burn down chart…

Friday, 4 July 14

Getting better…(apart from the time spent line)

Friday, 4 July 14

Communicating information

In a controlled and collaborative manner

Friday, 4 July 14

Daily stand-up• Every day

• Same time

• Same location

• No excuses

• No disruptive team members!

• Keep it to the point

• No whinging

• Take it offline

Friday, 4 July 14

Wallboards againSeriously, they’re really important!

(and can be used for a Nerf gun scoreboard and sweepstakes…)

Friday, 4 July 14

GovernancePainful but necessary, stakeholders from all teams

Friday, 4 July 14

Co-locationIf you can, do it once a week…

…then go to the pub, relationships count.

Friday, 4 July 14

Biggest learnings• The tools do matter, having 3rd parties in a single system helps,

a lot!

• Relationships can be neglected when teams are separated, co-locate, video-conference.

• Page restrictions cause pain - use only for commercially sensitive information

• Get people on-board. Some people don’t like JIRA, those people sometimes need a cattle prod…

• Sometimes JIRA is overkill, particularly for non-technical teams, use what’s appropriate for the audience

Friday, 4 July 14

Questions?

Friday, 4 July 14