How to increase efficiency of a distributed team using JIRA/Kanban?

Hi Uriel:

Just Jira, Hold the Kanban

Atlassian Jira started as a bug-tracking platform for software development. Increased functionality was added to the platform along the way, including project management tools. Opinions differ on how easy or difficult Jira is to set up and use: some say it works pretty much out of the box, while others disagree. In any case, many development and support teams use Jira to capture information about issues and to plan and track issue resolution. 

Find Efficiency With Kanban Boards in Jira

One of the four  [removed] , Kanban, pronounced kahnbahn, is a method for improving team process efficiency to ensure just-in-time delivery (JIT) of value to the customer. In  [removed] , the focus is on work-in-progress (WIP). When a team isn’t spending time planning or being constrained by fixed sprints, they can offer continuous delivery of a working product to the customer. Therefore, releases can sometimes be delivered as often as every day or every hour.  

The method centers on the  [removed] , a highly visual tool to surface setbacks and dependencies. The board tracks all work items in columns that correspond to workflow states, such as To Do, Doing, and Done. Charts on completion time and bottlenecks provide further visual analysis power, as well. 

The benefits of Kanban are rooted in the overlapping knowledge sets within a team, so no single person is responsible for one area. That way - in a development environment for example - any team member can pick and complete any task, and knowledge is shared through training and code reviews. Similar to continuous integration (where every work item is tested as it is coded), every team member can potentially code and test. Ultimately, Kanban holds the entire team is accountable for the efficient cycling of work items.

Unlike other methodologies, such as  [removed] , Kanban can be implemented relatively easily, without completely disrupting existing systems. To use Kanban in Jira, you’ll need to implement it through Atlassian’s Jira Agile add-on, which supports both Scrum and Kanban boards. 

I hope this heps you.

Hello,

I've been working with many large distributed teams and indeed it's tricky to manage them, especially remotely.

To answer your questions:

1) Kanban is a method used to deliver faster value to your customer. It's mainly used in IT software development, but it can be used in any team that needs to deliver something. The basic principle behind Kanban is to limit work in progress so that you can achieve a faster delivery time (or lead time).

You can easily set up a basic Kanban Board by drawing 3 columns on a physical whiteboard or e-whiteboard: Work To Do, Work In progress and Work Done. You can divide your work in smaller chunks and start populating the board. As your purpose is to limit work in progress, you should have a limit of how many of these smaller chunks you work on. There's an interesting mathematical theory called Little's Law that shows that the more Work in progress you have, the longer the lead time for delivery will be.

2) JIRA is a software tool that you can use to implement a Kanban board. Although most IT teams out there use it, I wouldn't recommend it for a team of engineers like you have. It's too complicated and you won't need most of it's functionalities. Plus, it costs a lot if your team is bigger than 10 people.

I would recommend something more simpler and cheaper (preferably free), like Trello or Restya. They look much cooler and are more user friendly that JIRA.

3) Managing a large distributed team

As I mentioned, it's not easy to manage a large distributed team. But it can be done with the use of modern technology. What I would recommend is that you do these following meetings using video calls:

• a weekly planning meeting (1 hour) to discuss what are the tasks for the next week, to do some capacity management, to check the availability of the people.

• a daily huddle meeting (15 min-30min) to check with your team if they have any impediments to do their job and check on their progress from the previous day
• a weekly retrospective meeting (1 hour) to ask the team what went well in the previous week, what could be improved in the future and what are the learning points.

This way not only you'll manage your team remotely, but you will also insure you can promote a continuous improvement mindset in your team.

For any other questions, give me shout and I'd be more than willing to help you.

Cheers,

Mirel