Agile in distributed teams - London Atlassian User Group

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

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Can’t you just email it to me?

No.

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

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Wallboards save livesBut remember some teams work differently…

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Summary of all tasksSingle page view accessible to all teams

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

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

signed off and ready for development

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–Supplier Project Manager at the end of Sprint 4

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

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

to prefer to update them more here rather than in JIRA

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

of time

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Training is a challengeMake sure dev teams understand the concepts before

letting them loose on the system…

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

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Getting better…(apart from the time spent line)

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Communicating information

In a controlled and collaborative manner

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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

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Wallboards againSeriously, they’re really important!

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

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GovernancePainful but necessary, stakeholders from all teams

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

…then go to the pub, relationships count.

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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

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Questions?

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