This blog’s “How To Create A Scrum Project In JIRA?” main idea is to guide project teams to make full use of JIRA to run a scrum project.
Jira is a sophisticated tool which is highly designed to run Agile projects. With predefined templates, boards, reports and metrics, it is one of the most used tools to run Agile projects in the industry.
Context : We have explained how best to use JIRA in scrum project and what should be taken care of in the “Planning and Initiation” phase of a project and “Execution” phase of the project with Scrum framework.
Pre Requisites
Before we jump into the main topic, let’s read through the list of prerequisites which have to be taken care of before starting using JIRA is scrum project.
New Project created with Scrum template ( Please select if the project is Team managed / company managed based on what is followed in your company )
A project group in JIRA is created for the development team and they are added to the project. Appropriate permissions are given to the team members
“Issue Types” are configured as per need
“Fields” are configured and associated with the project created
“Workflow” is configured as per need for all the issue type and the scheme is assigned to the project
“Components” and “Labels” are pre defined in the project
“Boards” are created by applying appropriate settings
Estimation type “Hours / Story points” is defined and configured in the screens and boards
And Of course, team members are trained on JIRA basics
Planning And Initiation
This is the phase where the backlog is getting created after the discovery session / PI planning / release planning. Post story map creation, EPICS and STORIES are created and roughly estimated using story point estimation or T-Shirt sizing. Let’s understand how to use JIRA for creation of a backlog and a few things we should take care of.
Once the backbone and user journey is drafted, the first step is to ensure all the epics are created. Create the epics by clicking on “Create Epic” button shown in the diagram
Epic Details to be captured in JIRA – Epic Name, Epic outcomes, Objective, supporting assets like Design, Data flow diagram, HLD etc.
Add stories / work items related to the epic within the epics by clicking on the “Create Issues in Epic” button as shown in the diagram.
Ensure Story points are added to the work items or stories while it is being added within the epic. This will help the Product Owner to understand the size of the epic.
Mark Epic dependency / story dependency by Linking the issue with dependent issues
Best Practices :
Backlog must have all the Epics created with details
Epics must have all the stories / work items linked to the epics
All stories must have the estimation data
Epics and Stories must have dependencies marked appropriately
Versions are created and work items are tagged with appropriate versions
Use “Components” in case you have multiple teams or platforms ( Eg: Stories can be tagged with iOS, Android and Web in case 3 teams will work on the same story )
Any new work item created must have epic and release version linked and must have estimation
Scrum Ceremonies Using JIRA
This section of the blog attempts to explain how JIRA can be used to drive Scrum ceremonies.
Context: We will cover basics of Sprint planning , Daily Scrum, Grooming, Review and Retrospective and best practices to drive them using JIRA. Duration mentioned for each ceremony is keeping in mind the sprint duration of 2 weeks
Sprint Grooming
When – Mid sprint Intent – To get ready for next sprint and mark dependencies Participants – Dev team, Product Owner, Scrum master Facilitator – Scrum Master Timebox – 2 Hours
HomeWork
PO to create a dummy sprint bucket in jira for future sprint as shown in the diagram below
PO to prioritize stories / work items and fill the bucket based on the business outcome he desires. PO drags and drops the stories into the future sprint bucket from the backlog section
Scrum master to ensure PO has bucketed the sprint based on the team’s average velocity
PO to ensure the stories have well defines “Acceptance Criteria” and assets attached to the story
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