Moving with Global Agility: Atlassian’s JIRA Project Management Tool Closes the Gap
Introduction to Agile Development
Agile development is a compelling approach to project management for modern DevOps and software teams. According to the Agile Manifesto, there are four core values and twelve guiding principles. The values emphasize putting people over tools, streamlining documentation in favor of development, enabling customer collaboration, and believing that change always improves a product.
12 Principles of Agile
- Customer satisfaction through early and continuous software delivery
- Accommodate changing requirements throughout the development process
- Frequent delivery of working software
- Collaboration between business stakeholders and developers throughout the project
- Support, trust, and motivate the people involved
- Enable face-to-face interactions
- Working software is the primary measure of progress
- Agile processes support a consistent development pace
- Attention to technical detail and design enhances agility
- Simplicity
- Self-organizing teams encourage great architectures, requirements, and designs
- Regular reflections on how to become more effective
Why Agile Matters
The objective of Agile is to bridge the gap between development and business teams, allowing all teams to contribute throughout the development process. Agile adoption is on the rise, and for many millennials, Agile represents the ideal collaborative work environment.
For enterprise companies, distributed teams across different time zones may find the frequent Agile meeting cadence daunting. Initially, increased daily or weekly meetings may feel redundant, especially for those accustomed to the Waterfall method. However, the benefits quickly become evident when QA teams provide early feedback on functionality, or business groups request mid-process changes. Short daily stand-ups can save hours of high-value work and ensure software is delivered on time and on budget.
Challenges of Agile for Distributed Teams
Agile was originally designed for co-located teams, which is no longer realistic for mid- to large-sized organizations. Communication gaps can arise because distributed teams have fewer real-time interaction opportunities. Speakerphone or video stand-ups help, but 93% of communication is nonverbal, so even video calls may not fully address collaboration at a granular, code-writing level.
These gaps can be effectively mitigated through advanced collaboration software designed to support DevOps teams, such as Atlassian’s JIRA Software and Confluence.
Case Study: DocuSign
DocuSign adopted Agile in 2014 and experienced exponential growth. Between 2014 and 2016, the company expanded to 30 distributed teams across multiple time zones. To manage this growth, DocuSign implemented Atlassian’s suite of products:
- JIRA: Project management and tracking
- Confluence: Collaboration and reporting
- HipChat: Team discussion and notifications
The integrated suite allowed teams to collaborate seamlessly across locations, incorporating design specs, development, and release management into one iterative process. DocuSign increased its project delivery rate from 53% in 2014 to 86% in 2016.
Adopting Agile Across Distance
While transitioning to Agile can initially be overwhelming for globally distributed teams, the process is simplified with proper planning and collaboration tools. Atlassian’s platforms, integrated and configurable, make distributed Agile adoption seamless. Clovity, as an Atlassian Solution Partner, helps organizations implement these tools effectively across all teams.
📧 Contact us at sales@clovity.com or visit 🌐 atlassian.clovity.com to get started today.
