How to Use Checklists to Simplify Jira Workflow

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Well, if you’re reading this article, I assume your workflow is not as smooth and agile as expected. And one of the reasons may lie in the recurring processes that your team does on a daily/weekly/monthly basis. So, what’s wrong with them?

 

If you ever faced the problem of missing tasks (I mean the situation when your team has some daily/weekly recurring tasks, but they always forget to do 1 or 2 of them), you’re not the only manager with such a problem. If these tasks are so simple and repeated on regular bases, it’s not a good idea to scold your employees. Let’s figure out why they can forget to do them every time and how to organize recurring tasks in Jira.

Why do teams mess up with repetitive tasks?

The answer lies in the peculiarities of our memory. The truth is that only five to nine things can be stored in our short-term memory at once. Therefore, the brain must effectively re-juggle and reset every time we switch tasks, making us forget what we were just thinking about.

So, it's not the fault of your subordinates. They forget to complete repetitive tasks not because they’re not attentive enough or lazy, they just don't have an effective tool to tackle this problem and improve team efficiency.

Even though it’s not difficult to remember to make a call, schedule a meeting, make a regular payment, send a report, etc., this is the number of tasks that overwhelms your team, making them miss on stuff and slowing down the workflow.

How can a ToDo list simplify the workflow?

Well, to figure out how a to-do list or checklist can benefit the overall efficiency of your team, you should understand what it actually is. In a nutshell, a checklist is a step-by-step guideline of everything that needs to be done.

For instance, if you need to create and send for review email templates - these are 2 separate tasks, where the 1st is to write a template, and the 2nd is to send it for review. One checklist may include from 2 to an unlimited number of items that should be done for the task to be completed.

Every point is a separate minor task for your team to execute and then mark as done, so you as a manager will have full control over the task progress, and also, your team will not occasionally skip anything.

As you see, checklists are a magic stick when it comes to time management and micromanagement. Since routine tasks are essential for the workflow, to-do lists will eliminate the stress of the necessity to remember many minor things and the schedule to do them.

Now, when we’ve figured out what checklists are their benefits for the workflow, let’s have a look at how to use checklists in Jira.

Jira checklists to simplify workflow

So, if you’re already using Jira as your workflow management tool, I’m sure you’ll enjoy Recurring Checklists and Report for your repetitive routine tasks, which was designed to help you manage Jira tasks workflow more efficiently.

This is how you set up your checklists in Jira.

In order to structure tasks and give your team a comprehensive activity guide, they should simply follow to complete a series of tasks, use the Recurring Checklists and Report add-on.

1. To get started, complete the checklist. Move your tasks to a checklist. 

I'll use an example of a marketing checklist. For instance, our marketing team has weekly tasks that must be completed, and our team leader should see that these tasks are closed.

The checklist menu allows you to make a complete guide with explanations, tables, lists, etc. Also, you can mark users for every separate item from the checklist, having multiple executors inside your checklist. For example, select the project in which the checklist issue should be created and an assignee who is now responsible for this part of the work.

2. Set up automation. 

Our marketing department has the highest amount of weekly tasks compared to other departments, but there are those that need to be completed once a month or quarter. It’s so easy to forget about these issues, but scheduling helps to do this automatically. Our manager doesn’t have to waste time creating these tasks every time as the platform does it by itself, reassuring that everything that needs to be done will be done. 

You can make custom task creation settings with a checklist so that you don’t have to continuously create the same tasks anymore, and don’t worry that you’ll forget something important.

3. Control the execution of tasks from the Report tab. 

With a one-page report, you can easily control the execution of tasks, loading, and make decisions. Once you open the report, you’ll directly have a comprehensive understanding of the project process, what stages are already completed, and which are still waiting to be done.

The bottom line

As you see, using checklists in Jira is very simple, but they make an immeasurable contribution to smoothing the workflow, making it agile and transparent. It’s a win-win situation for you and your team to control the repetitive processes and do them on time without the stress of forgetting any single item from the list.

While you focus on items that demand your dedicated attention, Recurring Checklists and Report plug-in automatically creates issues for the repetitive tasks and reminds you and your team when the time comes to do them.

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