The ABCs of Agile Methodology
Emphasizing a methodology that is ongoing, cyclical, and an iterative delivery process, agile is not your Father’s (or possibly your Grandfather’s) development process. Traditional, long development patterns where assumptions are made and unwanted features aren’t fleshed out until the very end, are a thing of the past. With agile, it is the customer and their needs placed at the forefront that rules the day, where the “plan-do-check-act” process of continuous delivery runs the show.
Customer-centric, efficiency, and adaptability are the foundations of agile, and these underpinnings help create an environment that encourages communication and collaboration. Teams comprised of business stakeholders, developers, testers, and designers work together to incrementally deliver value.
Waterfall vs Agile: Choosing the Right Methodology for Your Project
With more than half a century under its sequential belt, waterfall was the standard methodology for software and product development, well suited for smaller, repeatable, primarily projects of a physical nature. Best for projects that follow a repeatable process, time and time again, waterfall methodology tends to work best when infrequent updates are needed.
Agile, on the other hand, is better suited for medium-to-large projects where often the scope changes during its lifecycle – especially for digital and innovative work where development experiences some or even a great deal of fluidity, many times where the end goal may not be known or defined at the outset.
With its iterative nature, agile requires (or at least encourages) daily meetings as well as recurring half or full-day planning sessions giving it a higher overhead and time commitment. However, when one factors in the delays, cost overruns, and other issues involved when changes are introduced midstream in an organization utilizing the waterfall methodology, in the end, you are most likely decreasing overall costs, increasing efficiencies, and as a result, adding to your bottom line.
Often times, hoping to achieve the best of both worlds, teams will try and combine traditional waterfall with agile methodologies, hence the term “wagile”.
What can often be the result is instead of getting the best of both worlds, you get the worst. First, confusion and distrust can easily develop when the early adopters of agile within the organization become demotivated seeing many tenets being set aside. “Scope creep” can settle in with this mishmash of methodologies competing for dominance, and costs and inefficiencies can soar where weekly waterfall meetings have daily standups and retrospectives added to everyone’s calendars.
The saying, “don’t change horses midstream” seems quite appropriate to wagile. Determine at the outset which methodology everyone will be using based on the size and complexity of the project and stick with it. At its conclusion, if determined that agile is the better methodology of the two, make a complete switch then and moving forward.
Agile in Jira Cloud
For a moment, consider agile to be akin to the road to a destination, with different types of cars traveling that road to reach the destination. Each car will reach the destination utilizing this road, each will do so however with different features. In our agile highway example, two of the most prominent “cars” are Scrum and Kanban.
Scrum, having its focus on planning work via short sprints tends to be the better fit for medium-to-large projects with iterative releases, whereas Kanban (in Japanese meaning “visual signal”), structured towards tasks being continuously released in the shortest time possible, is best suited for smaller, simpler projects. With Scrum’s backlog, tasks are pulled to the active sprint as current tasks are completed and when capacity in the team is available. The team evaluates the importance of each and an estimate is created as to how long it will take to complete.
Image source: TheScrumMaster.co.uk
Kanban takes a slightly different approach adding issues directly to the active queue. Here, planning and time estimates take a back seat as the overall goal is to complete work quickly and efficiently, minimizing the number of open tasks. This minimization of work in progress often helps increase efficiencies and reduce bottlenecks. It is a very visually driven process as noted above in the name Kanban itself. It’s ease of use and flexibility are probably its two key selling points, whereas a lack of defined responsibilities and timing parameters can sometimes create issues in the team workflow.
Image source: MonolitoNimbus.com.br
Benefits, Features, and Forge
Now that we’ve taken a broad look at some of the fundamentals of agile, the methodologies of scrum and kanban, let’s turn our attention to some of the benefits of implementing agile within Jira Cloud as a result of its powerful feature set. To note, moving forward in this article, we will simply use “Jira” to specifically refer to Jira Cloud versus Jira Data Center.
First off, Jira’s feature support of both scrum and kanban methods is one of the top benefits of the platform, allowing you and your teams to choose which works best for you. Out-of-the-box, Jira provides features including sprint management, planning, and as we discussed earlier, the ability to manage project boards based on the respective chosen agile framework, offering a level of flexibility and customization that helps Jira stand out.
Extending from this first feature/benefit is the customization of workflows. Teams not only have the ability to design their own processes to best meet the needs of their unique project requirements, they can also automate those processes using Jira events and their workflow validator. Jira events can be used to automate the process of notifications, for instance when a Jira issue has been created or updated.
Next, Jira is built for real-time collaboration, enabling team members to work in a seamless fashion using @mentions, commenting, and document sharing. This increases both transparency and efficiency. In tandem, Jira offers extensive issue-management capabilities, from task down to sub-task helping ensure accountability and again, transparency at every level.
And while Jira by itself offers features like the ones just mentioned and many more, Atlassian understands developers rely on a multitude of tools to make the magic happen. As such, Jira integrates with a wide variety of software via REST APIs and webhooks, allowing for the flow of information in a reciprocal manner furthering its collaborative ecosystem. The Atlassian Marketplace offers thousands of apps built for integration with Jira, extending its core project management functionality.
To ensure its Cloud customers work within the most secure, reliable, and scalable environment, Jira created its serverless app development platform, Forge. With API authentication, hosting, and multiple development environments all baked in, Forge gives developers the tools needed to build feature-rich, fully-functional apps in just days, or even hours. Giving access to Atlassian’s full suite of developer tools (Jira, Jira Service Management, Confluence, Compass, Bitbucket), custom apps and integrations become a reality, or as apps distributed through the Atlassian Marketplace.
We’ll touch on one of those apps, our very own Agile Hive, here in just a bit more detail further in this article.
Powerful Reporting in Jira Cloud
While reporting certainly falls under the features and benefits umbrella of Jira, we wanted to give a little extra space to this topic.
Reporting is one of those critical elements of the workflow that in our humble opinion, helps bring everything full circle. By that we mean, when you’re head down in your work, it’s “hard to see the forest for the trees”. Without some means of seeing the broader picture of a project or goal, it can be difficult or even impossible to appreciate or fathom it. That in essence is what reporting does.
Jira reporting and analytics are integrated into the platform. KPIs can be reviewed at a glance, the progress of projects can be monitored, and trends can be identified via templates and dashboards that can be customized to best meet the needs of each team. Sprint, epic and issue reports, burndown and velocity charts, and many more are available to help guide the direction and performance of your teams.
Image source: Atlassian
SAFe® in Jira
Scaled Agile Framework, or SAFe®, was and is the natural progression of larger organizations wanting to take advantage of Lean-Agile principles, while still recognizing the unique differences and challenges faced by these “teams of teams”.
Flashback to the turn of the century, the Agile manifesto comes to life when a group of 17 software developers, meeting at a ski resort in Utah no less, gathers to discuss perspectives on the need to find an alternative to the then burdensome, monolithic, documentation-laden software development methodologies of the day. Most certainly they were also gathered to enjoy some incredible skiing and fellowship, however, the future of agile software development weighed heavily on their minds.
This group, the self-named “Agile Alliance,” crafted what we know today as the Agile Manifesto, which consists of four values and twelve principles for agile software development. While the Manifesto and its tenets worked quite well for smaller organizations, larger institutions were still stuck with project-waterfall methodologies.
A decade after the Agile Alliance’s work, Dean Leffingwell steps forward with the SAFe framework, combining Lean, Kanban, and Scrum principles and applying them to the team, program, and portfolio levels. Foundational to SAFe then just as it is today – which is owned and continuously developed by Scaled Agile, Inc. – are the following principles:
- Decision-making that moves to a decentralized model
- Cadence, collaborative, cross-team work planning
- Integrated, incremental, fast-paced cycles
- Setting limitations to Work In Progress (WIP), smaller “chunked” work cycles and managed backlogs
Finding ourselves on the threshold of 2025, many of us working in agile or scaled-agile within the Atlassian ecosystem and more specifically with Jira Cloud, how do we implement SAFe within this environment? Cue the segway phrase; “We thought you’d never ask”.
Implement SAFe® in Jira With Agile Hive
In an earlier article on our blog here, “Adopting SAFe® in Small Steps”, we discussed five steps that would need to be integrated into any implementation of SAFe within an organization:
- To deliver exceptional value, identify teams that must be in close alignment and tightly integrated
- Develop a complete understanding of how these collaborating teams operate
- Evaluate the composition of all teams (e.g. organized by skillset, a project component, other?)
- Document the cadence each team typically works within
- Between teams, identify what processes are being used (agile/scrum, kanban, combination, other?)
LACE (Lean Agile Center of Excellence)
Often the responsibility of the LACE (Lean Agile Center of Excellence) team, the group of individuals at an organization tasked with implementing the SAFe®, once these steps have been completed, and each team and all members will need to be brought up to speed, with everyone on the same page moving forward in implementation (agreed terminology, common cadence timeframe and increment dates, etc.).
In guidance from Scaled Agile, Inc., a LACE is the final of three components needed to establish a successful and guiding coalition for change within an organization;
- Train a number of Lean-Agile change agents as SAFe® Program Consultants (SPCs)
- Train executives, managers, and other leaders
- Charter a LACE
A LACE is composed of team members from throughout the organization who are committed to its mission of supporting the SAFe® core values of alignment, transparency, built-in quality, and program execution. The LACE should include a C-level member within its ranks to ensure the group has the authority necessary to effect real and lasting change. Specific Agile Release Train (ART) roles such as Product Owner, Release Train Engineer (RTE), and System Architect are assigned.
Planning Interval (PI) and Retrospective (Retro)
Typically lasting between eight and twelve weeks, the PI incorporates timeboxed iterations of development consisting of core planning, development, validation and testing, and finally with delivering value by those teams involved in the ART. Often thought of as the crux of a successful SAFe implementation, the PI enables each ART to plan the subsequent increment of work, set limits on the work in progress (WIP), summarize value for the purposes of feedback and assessment, and finally ensure the ART retrospectives inspire relentless improvement.
The Retro is a regular event held after the completion of an interval to determine essentially what went well, what didn’t, and what can be improved for the next one. Retros consist of both a quantitative and qualitative review of the previous PI. On a quantitative level, this would include an analysis of the success (or not) of interval goals being met, what bottlenecks were uncovered, flow metric results (velocity, efficiency, load, etc.), and the like.
Qualitatively, teams assess improvements that were identified, comparing them to current processes, improvements are then identified as to how they can be implemented to make improvements in the next iteration.
Your Single Source of Truth
Our discussion in this section of the article – that which is specific to SAFe – stands over and above the basic functionality of Jira Cloud. So you might ask, “can you implement SAFe in Jira without any additional tools or guidance”? The answer would be yes, with the rather large caveat that it will be neither easy, nor complete, and most certainly, not the best Lean-Agile way to do so.
This is where Agile Hive steps in, automatically providing the entire SAFe configuration such as SAFe artifacts, dependency management, workflows, boards, dependency management calculations, PI Planning views, reports, and a great deal more as we’ll see.
Agile Hive is built from the ground up as a Forge-compliant plugin to be tightly integrated with Jira Cloud. As a foundational element, representing your organization’s SAFe hierarchy effectively is truly possible in Jira alone. Agile Hive gives you the functionality to completely translate the hierarchy and takes care of linking your Jira tickets in the background.
Agile Hive for Jira Cloud provides ready access to your organization’s SAFe hierarchy.
At a glance, teams can see all parent and child issues, any dependencies that exist between them, and then directly access all the information within each respective Jira ticket as they normally would. Additionally, Agile Hive provides functionality to projects on the ART and Team levels that can be mapped to a dedicated issue type: Risks, Objectives, Milestones.
Extending beyond the basic reporting functionality included with Jira as mentioned earlier in this article, Agile Hive includes SAFe-specific, automated, comprehensive reporting functionality at both the Team and ART levels. With the Roadmap planning capabilities included, teams can visualize and plan for the next series of upcoming features. Provided at every level of SAFe, Agile Hive allows features to be scheduled directly on a graphical timeline.
ART level information with reports including widgets for
PI Progress, Velocity, Burnup, and PI Overview among others
As mentioned in regard to the importance of PIs to the proper implementation of SAFe, the included Team Planning Boards empower teams to plan work collaboratively during PIs, breaking down features into stories and identifying any and all dependencies.
To note, if and when the time comes to transition from one level to another, your new SAFe hierarchy can be easily moved and represented from Essential SAFe at the team level, up through ART, Solution Train, up to the Portfolio levels. Agile Hive takes on the role of your organization’s single source of truth within Jira Cloud, all without extensive reconfiguration, disparate tooling, or incomplete SAFe standards.
Scaled Agile Platform & Atlassian Platinum Partner
Seibert Group, the parent company of Agile Hive, has been a certified Scaled Agile Platform Partner since 2019, and as such, users can be certain Agile Hive is up to date with the latest SAFe standards. This status is awarded exclusively by Scaled Agile, Inc. Therefore, Seibert Group is officially accredited and part of the worldwide SAFe partner network from which the further development of the product benefits Agile Hive.
Furthermore, Seibert Group is also an Atlassian Platinum Partner, one of the largest Atlassian Experts worldwide with over ten years of success in the Atlassian Ecosystem where we continually develop successful, scalable product solutions based on Atlassian systems year after year.
Where Can Agile Hive Take You?
Our commitment to continuing to develop a robust, SAFe in Jira solution, means we’re always innovating, open to feedback from our customers, and continuously developing our product for the market. When you’re ready, we’re ready – book an appointment and we’ll be happy to answer all your questions regarding tooling, SAFe transformation and consulting services, whatever’s needed to move you and your organization forward with implementing agile in Jira Cloud!
