Jira is Our Love Language: How NDCS is Empowered by the Atlassian stack
Hello Atlassian Community! We are Hannah and Theresa, Scrum Masters at NDCS, and last week our wonderful colleague Hollie told you all about us in her Online Community Article.
This week we have the privilege of telling you all about our Atlassian tech stack, our love of Jira and a tiny bit about Dashboards. (Hannah has a particular affinity for Dashboards. What about you? Comment below and let’s talk!)
It’s exciting to write about this because our journey to becoming a modern, Agile charity has been exciting and transformative, but above all, it's helping us deliver our vision and mission to great success.
And a huge part of that has been our use of Atlassian tools.
Why We Needed New Tools
When we moved to our new organisational design, we shifted from a top-down, hierarchical system to a much flatter organization with Agile teams, including Scrum, Kanban and LeSS teams. This new way of working required new roles like Scrum Masters and Product Owners, as well as new tools to support this decentralised approach.
At first, we had a "free-for-all" of different project management tools: teams were using Miro, Mural, Trello, Asana, Monday, and MS Projects. While the enthusiasm for change was great, it wasn't sustainable or accessible, and it was causing us to fall back into siloed ways of working.
The Power of Jira
That's when we realized we needed to consolidate, and after trying out different options, we landed on Jira. Jira provided a comprehensive solution that gave us the visibility, transparency, and collaborative benefits we needed.
For Product Owners, Jira has been a game-changer. It provides the visibility and transparency they need to get a complete overview of projects. We even have a Product Owner who loves Jira so much that we made him a t-shirt that says "Jira fan boy". For our Development teams, who often come from diverse backgrounds and may not have used project tools before, Jira has simplified everything. It helps them see that something that looks complex is actually manageable, and they love it once they get to know it.
Data-Driven Insights and Remote Work
One of our favorite things about Jira is how it provides data-driven insights through dashboards. The data is directly based on the behaviors of our teams, so they trust the metrics and are engaged with them. We can use this data to see our velocity and burn-down, allowing us to have realistic expectations and make informed decisions about our projects.
Jira has also been hugely impactful for our remote work environment. It gives us the same transparency and clarity that a small startup would have with a physical whiteboard, but on a massive scale. We've been able to extend this to our external partners as well, inviting them into our Jira projects to work with us in real-time, which has significantly improved our trust and relationships. Jira allows us to work from anywhere but feel closer than ever.
Image: Whilst we’re unable to show you a screenshot of our actual system, our complex Jira dashboards look quite similar to this one below.
A Direct Impact on Our Mission
Ultimately, the biggest benefit of our Atlassian tool stack is that every hour we save through reduced duplication and unnecessary conversations is an hour we can put back into directly serving deaf children, their families, and the professionals who support them. The more efficient we are, the better we are able to serve the people who matter most to us.
What more would you like to know?
When we interviewed with Fun Man Andy to uncover all of the above, it was a full-on 60min call, and in reality, this blog is really only tip of the iceberg.
We'd be happy to field any questions about our tech stack here in the forum! Please ask away.
And please don’t forgot, we love engagement on our Social Media channels, so likes, follows and comments are greatly appreciated!
