#Jira and Reporting with Agile Hive

Companies and organizations across industries rely on the capabilities of the Scrum tool Jira from the Australian software company Atlassian for automated report generation in agile projects. Typical application areas include project task and requirements management, with the tool being used specifically in defect management and troubleshooting. Jira supports the planning, management, monitoring and implementation of tasks. At the same time, it is used to control, monitor and manage requirements. In this way, even complex systems can be developed efficiently and with few errors, on which work is shared. Applications such as an electronic helpdesk also work with it. The ability to manage workflows efficiently makes Jira an optimal solution for controlling projects and improving processes within workflows.

Using Jira, organizations can increase project management productivity – without losing track of tasks, deadlines, deliverables, and reports. Companies that organize their projects in an agile way using Jira benefit from an effective working environment. The resources available in the team are optimally distributed, and the possible need for additional manpower can be identified early in the process. Jira brings the following benefits:

• Schedules for coordination within the project can be effectively created, supplemented and changed without important work steps being overlooked.
• The consistent use of Jira in everyday work leads to significant time savings in many areas of the company.
• Teams operating internationally across national borders and time zones work together more smoothly. Since each employee can see exactly which tasks he or she has to complete in which time period, there is no need for constant contact.
• The distribution of tasks works according to priority. All necessary reports, statistics and progress can be read in real time, so every team member is aware of the current status quo.
• If a team member has a question for the person in charge, he can use the ticket system. His question is answered quickly, clearly and immediately.
• Data backups are carried out at regular intervals, and the current status is always available. This supports a quick response to errors and problems that arise.
• Since Jira is responsive, it can be easily accessed and applied via various mobile devices.

Jira works reliably, is clearly designed and can be used flexibly. This makes it a useful addition for a wide variety of companies and project-based organized work areas. The tool simplifies teamwork and creates a better workflow.

Comprehensive reporting was already a critical success factor of a project in classic project management. However, due to the advancing agility in project management, it is necessary to adapt reporting to the new requirements. This is primarily due to the different design of the workflow, especially since project phases lasting several months are being replaced by short project sprints lasting about three to four weeks – phases of a value-creating project process. The measures required to manage projects are changing. Changes are aimed only at adjusting the project scope, but disregard time and budget planning. These metrics must be captured:

1. success rate – reporting helps teams measure their success rate against the predefined goals of the project.
2. identify failures – the time invested in identifying and solving problems can spark conversations regarding the optimization of processes and techniques. These can be applied during sprint reviews.
3. time to market – this describes the time agile projects need to spend to bring the product to market.
4. total project cost – the cost of an agile project is directly related to the project duration. Since agile projects deliver results faster, this also reduces the costs.

The reports provide greater visibility to agile teams. They reflect the team efforts and help the teams to always keep an eye on the progress of the project. This way, they know at all times how high their goal achievement level is and makes it possible for them to plan their projects effectively. Agile status reporting enables teams to implement necessary changes in a timely manner. This enables them to adapt in a constantly changing project environment. “Product owners” can leverage agile status reporting to initiate constructive conversations. At the same time, they can use them to set necessary standards with their team and external stakeholders.

Given the immense importance of reporting for the functioning of agile project management, there is a need for software that specifically specializes in the creation of reports – Agile Hive. This software makes precise planning and detailed observation of the progress within the project course possible. It automatically collects the necessary data and uses it to provide reports for all project hierarchies and automates their updating. Agile Hive has been specifically developed for use with Jira.

Agile Hive exposes dependencies between work processes and enables tracking of dependencies. These dependencies can be deployed with Agile Hive from discovery and enables monitoring of the full solution process. Reports can be accessed via clear dashboards. At the same time, Agile Hive makes it possible to create and share timely, appropriate views for each role within the project. Role-specific assignment of tasks can also be done via Agile Hive.

As mentioned, Agile Hive is a program specifically designed to integrate seamlessly with Jira. It is designed to overcome functional limitations of the base Jira software. While Jira is the leading tool in the field of agile project management, it is not suitable for scaling to large projects. To successfully use the successful Jira project management software when scaling, it should be implemented with Agile Hive. It can be used to boost the transition to Scaled-Agile as companies grow.

Because this type of implementation kills two birds with one stone. It not only supports scaling, but also maximizes compliance with SAFe® at the same time. All these structural SAFe® artifacts are related as holistic Jira projects at every level – from portfolios to large solutions and teams. This makes it highly flexible to assign unique names or workflows to projects. This does not affect Jira projects outside the SAFe® context.

SAFe® relies on teams that organize themselves in an agile way via “Scrum” and achieve high quality results from their work at all times thanks to the XP practices they use – where XP stands for “Extreme Programming”. Via Scrum, the team is assembled, and the XP practices make it possible for the team to have a fixed work environment and deliver high-quality output. The core of effectiveness lies in the combination of several agile approaches at the same time, the entire development of a product is managed via Kanban. Kanban is an agile management method that specifically aims to ideally distribute the work to be done among the available capacities. Project management uses the Lean approach, which helps to remove unnecessary and redundant elements from the project work. As a result, a significant increase in customer value is achieved.

The scalable framework SAFe® casts the previously proven and much-used agile methods Scrum, Lean, Kanban and DevOps into a fixed form. In the modern, digital business environment, it is essential in successful project management to work in an agile manner. Today, even large companies are forced to use agile working methods in their projects in order to survive on the market in the long term, to develop innovations and to successfully deal with the challenges of the modern, multi-layered market environment. Especially for large companies and corporations, this represents a complex and difficult challenge to master. SAFe® is the optimal solution for working at scale in the field of agility. Solutions for the framework exist for all levels of an organization – from teams to sectors to upper management. SAFe® is considered the best framework for use in scalable, agile-organized projects.