Uriel CEO at Uriel Robotics Services
Motto: You don't need to be great to start, but you need to start to be great.
How can the efficiency be increased when managing over ten prodigy headcounts, within UAV/Aerospace industry activity, distributed over three countries by using Jira Kanban methodology?
I look forward to your solutions.
Mirel Process improvement Consultant
Chuck LEAN Business Consultant
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.Â
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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. Â
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.Â
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.Â
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I hope this heps you.
Bring your startup/business/company
to the next level.
Hello,
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I've been working with many large distributed teams and indeed it's tricky to manage them, especially remotely.
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To answer your questions:
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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.
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2) JIRAÂ 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.
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3)Â 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:
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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.
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Cheers,
Mirel