Understanding Jira Scrums: 4 Best Practices

Project Management is a critical part of any project. Companies work on multiple projects simultaneously and monitoring all the projects, keeping their progress in check, and collaborating with other team members for new updates, fixes, errors, etc is a cumbersome task. Companies use many Project Management tools and techniques to keep the project on the right track. 

A correct workflow and plan on how the project will look in the future and currently what stage is being implemented make the project lifecycle easy. The Scrum system helps software teams manage complicated projects or tasks by establishing a culture that promotes collaboration. The Jira Scrum is a programming tool that is utilized to unite different teams around a single objective and encourages iterative, gradual delivery. 

The Jira Scrum boards include individual tasks that are assigned or allotted to each team member or group. These tasks are mapped using a customized workflow diagram that is based upon the requirement of the organization and group. In this article, you will learn about Jira Scrum boards, how it helps companies in optimizing their workflows and managing projects effectively. You will also read about the advantages of using Jira Scrum and some best practices to use Jira Scrum.

Table of Contents

• Introduction to Jira Scrum
• Importance of Using Jira
• Advantages of Using Jira
• Best Practices For Using Jira Scrum in Business Teams
  • Setting Requirements in Backlog
  • User Stories
  • Organizing Work in Short Sprints
  • Keeping Updated
• Conclusion

Introduction to Jira Scrum

Jira Scrum is an Agile Project Management tool designed to help teams manage projects by creating a culture of collaboration. It is a framework that guides teams about the rules, events, tasks, plan of the project and helps them visualize all the progress on the Jira Scrum Board. Jira Scrum Board is a single source of truth where all team members can sync monitor the progress of other team members and projects to keep in alignment with each other. 

Jira Scrum is an Agile methodology in which the four foundation pillars make the framework are sprint planning, stand-ups, sprints, and retrospectives. Jira Scrum Boards are mainly used by technical teams who use Agile methodology to impart smooth Project Management.

Importance of Using Jira 

Organizations that want to take over a particular market, will need to go digital, regardless of which industry they are currently operating in. To go digital, they will require to embrace Agility. Companies need to implement the Agile methodology not just amount their technical groups but for business teams as well. 

Since sometimes business projects are as complicated as software advancement projects and need a reliable technique that results in success. Agile is indeed increasingly present in business settings, so it is a good idea for business teams to use tools built using Agile methodology. 

By implementing Jira as the main Project Management tool, both business and technical groups, organizations can successfully launch digital transformations projects or programs and gain an upper hand over their competitors. 

Advantages of Using Jira

One of the main advantages of using the Jira Scrum tool in Project Management projects are: 

• Increased Transparency and Communication
  The Jira Scrum is a single source of trust for basically everything a team requires to finish because it can be accessed by everyone on a team whenever they want. Everybody clearly understands what they are required to do and can rapidly distinguish any blocker.
• Powerful Agile Tool
  Jira is creating for Agile and Scrum Project Management. The program or tool comes with Scrum and Kanban boards so that Project Management team members and project managers can visualize workflows and assess the progress of a project or task.
  
  It is simpler for a project manager to comprehend which tasks are completed on time and which tasks are delayed. Jira also supports Agile sprints and numerous project views, such as epics and user stories.
• Tracking Bugs
  Atlassian created Jira to track bugs within a software project. This feature remains a crucial element of Jira’s Project Management solution nowadays. This software or tool makes it simple for designers to find, track, and record bugs inside a software. Each bug and issue can be seen by the Project Management team members and the project manager using the backlog feature.
  
  With the help of Jira, team members and the project manager can see all the identified issues in a single view, which makes it easier for the project manager to prioritize which bugs the team members need to address first.  
• Reporting
  By using the Jira software, a project manager can create more than 12 different types of reports. This feature allows a project manager to acquire significant knowledge about their team’s performance in real-time.
  
  Burn-down graphs, rendition reports, burn-up graphs, velocity tables, and cumulative flow graphs are only some of the examples of the Agile reports options offered by the Jira software. 
• Customizable
  A custom workflow diagram permits Project Management team members to make a visual representation of their procedures. This helps to increase transparency throughout a task or project. Besides the work processes, different areas of Jira, such as creating reports and Jira Scrum boards can be completely customized too.
  
  Software developers can even utilize Jira to make a custom filter using a language called “JQL”, which stands for Jira Query Language. Jira also developers to integrate more than 3,000 third-party applications to their software, so that can extend its functionality.
• Multiple Use Cases
  Jira is most certainly designed for programming development groups. But there are still a few version of Jira software that is developed to support different departments within an organization. The marketing team can utilize this software to plan the launch of complicated products or services and enormous scale events.
  
  The HR department can utilize Agile software to make custom workflow diagrams to improve their recruiting and onboarding procedures. The software can also be utilized to assess operational performance. 
• Safe and Secure
  Nowadays, it is impossible to overlook data security. Jira software permits administrators to make custom roles for different members of the team with complete control over which employee can access what.
  
  This software is compliant with General Data Protection Regulation, PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard), ISO/IEC (International Organisation for Standardisation/International Electrotechnical Commission) 27001 and 27018, SOC 2 and 3, etc. All information is encoded utilizing TLS 1.2+ and servers that contain client information utilizes AES 256 encryption.

Best Practices For Using Jira Scrum in Business Teams

Probably the best practices or techniques for utilizing Jira Scrum in business teams are: 

1) Setting Requirements in Backlog

Jira Scrum is equipped with all the things that an Agile business team requires. One of the main features that prove to be useful toward the start of a project is epics. Epics are used by project managers to specify the scope of a project for other members of the business team.

A project manager can utilize epics to describe what employees need to do. For instance, a task, such as launching an advertising campaign to a target audience that is located in the United States of America.
When the epics are completed, the project manager can begin breaking down them into stories that describe tasks that should be achieved more precisely.

For example, for the epic we have defined in the above example, one of the stories can be creating a video that defines the main objectives and mission of the brand and the different products or services that the brand offers for the USA audience.

The backlog feature of Jira helps to serve as a task pipeline for the Project Management team. A project manager can utilize the backlog feature to store each requirement mentioned by the client about the project and persistently update them. The Project Management team members need to see which tasks they need to complete to achieve the main objectives of the project. 

2) User Stories

User stories are one of the most crucial artifacts for Jira Scrum project groups. A user story is a high-level description of the requirement that includes barely sufficient data to permit designers to estimate precisely how much time and effort they will need to put in to complete the project on time.

By working with the backlog feature, the Project Management team members can benefit from user stories in the following way: the entries included in the backlog will presume the point of view of the client to explain which features of a provided outcome should be fulfilled to keep the client happy.

A project manager can replace these features with explicit figures, for instance, to increase the brand’s revenue by 15 percent, the project manager needs to persuade investors to increase the investment that has invested in the sales campaign project by 20 percent.  

3) Organizing Work in Short Sprints

Jira is designed using the Agile methodology and one of the most famous Agile techniques is Scrum. When utilizing Jira Scrum, Project Management team members needs to work in short sprints that typically last approximately 14 days and during the 14 days, projects managers tend to conduct stand-up meetings every day and followed by a sprint review where Project Management team members and the project manager talk about could have gone better and how to optimize their procedure.

Jira can also be used by a project manager to implement Agile methodology successfully into the business setting without any problem.

4) Keeping Updated

One of the most beneficial features of Jira Scrum teams is the everyday stand-up meetings where different teams involved in a project can discuss the progress of the project and any problems they are facing for only a few minutes toward the start of the day. Typically, these types of meetings are organized or conducted by the project manager.

Clients and Project Management team members all attend these meetings to share more information about the project and evaluate blockers. Stand-up meetings are informal, however, it is crucial to let the Project Management team members know that they need to pay more attention to know about the possible challenges within the project and introduce different measures to alleviate the risks as soon as possible.

To help everybody make the most out of the stand-out meetings, the project manager can create a special space in their Jira projects where team members are allowed to add new information about the project. This type of transparency would assist business teams to collaborate more efficiently. 

Conclusion 

In this article, you learnt about Jira Scrum and how it helps teams manage complex projects in a hassle-free manner. You also read about the different functionalities it provides to teams for optimizing their workflows. Then, you went through a few advantages of Jira as a main Project Management tool, why Agile methodology works best for technical as well business projects, and best practices to follow while using Jira Scrum for Project Management. 

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