6 Awesome Ways to Apply Trello, JIRA and Confluence to your Project

I attended Atlassian Summit 2019 and learned a lot from the presenters, attendees and knowledgeable Atlassian product managers. The presentations I attended focused on applying Agile, planning, collaboration and personal productivity using the portfolio of Atlassian tools including Trello, JIRA and Confluence.  In addition to the all the notes and conference branded SWAG, I left inspired to apply the new learning to my project teams. 

Below are six ways you can apply these Atlassian Summit lessons to your project teams using Trello, JIRA or Confluence.

  1. Use a Confluence Page to present an idea rather than a PowerPoint presentation
  2. How to Harness Your Superpowers with Trello, Confluence and JIRA
  3. Be a Great Communicator with Confluence Templates
  4. Apply Kanplan to your Projects
  5. Apply Confluence across the Software Lifecycle
  6. Prioritize Your Work with the Eisenhower Matrix in Trello

Atlassian Summit Idea #1: Use a Confluence Page vs. a PowerPoint Presentation

Before you draft another 8-10 slides to present an idea, consider using a Confluence page to document and present your idea.  Jeff Bezo’s banned PowerPoint from his meetings in favor of longer form memos.  The memo format provided more detail than in a typical PowerPoint document.

PowerPoint may be easier on the presenter but it’s harder on the audience to interpret.  Just try to interpret a detailed graph or a data table in PowerPoint format. A Confluence page is a better solution to provide data and detailed analysis and allows longer form content to be presented.

Presenters are encouraged to send out the page prior to the meeting and encourage collaboration and comments before and after the meeting on the page.  Try this technique and you’ll increase efficiency, facilitate better questions and maintain a historical record of the discussion. This single Atlassian Summit tip changed the way I will present ideas and presentations in the future!

Easy Ways To Try It

  1. Instead of email, document meeting minutes and agendas in Confluence
  2. Instead of a presentation, create a page and embed charts, graphs and any DETAILED analysis

I’ve applied this technique to providing status updates, conducting my staff meetings and even presented my Key Summit Takeaways as a Confluence page.  (It was a lot faster too using the Confluence page format vs. formatting a PowerPoint presentation)

Atlassian Summit Idea #2: How to Harness Your Superpowers with Trello, Confluence and JIRA

 

During the Atlassian Summit, Phil Oye presented Atlassian’s 4 Pillars for Product Managers and how Trello, Confluence and JIRA can support product managers.  The 4 pillars include:

  1. Leads and Inspires
  2. PM Mastery
  3. Deliver Outcomes
  4. Great Communicator

His presentation provided examples on how Atlassian tools are a product owner’s superpowers.  Several noteworthy superpowers includes:

Create a Project Poster in Atlassian Confluence

Atlassian provides many free templates and techniques in their Team Playbook.  One useful “play” is the project poster at https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook/plays/project-poster

The project poster is a useful tool similar to a project charter the helps to align everyone to the problem definition, scope and potential solutions.

Atlassian Summit Create a Project Poster Confluence

It becomes a living document to update as the problem is explored Involves the whole team through comments.

Collect product feedback using JIRA Service Desk or JIRA Software.

As new products are deployed, obtaining real-time feedback from customers can be difficult to obtain.  Product managers can include a link to integrate directly with JIRA Software or Service Desk to capture the feedback.  JIRA Service Desk includes a pre-built widget that can collect the feedback.

Atlassian Summit Collect Feedback JIRA

Use Trello to Track Feature Requests

Keeping track of feature requests can be difficult as new requests come from many different sources.  Some feature requests will go into a backlog but won’t even make it on to a product’s near term roadmap or release plan.  The superpower to solve feature request management is to use Trello to track feature requests.

.

Atlassian Summit Feature Requests Trello

A Trello board can be used to capture feature requests and then categorize and prioritize them for action or for future consideration

 Atlassian Summit Trello Board Feature Requests

Trello Board: https://trello.com/b/jXiWAmTC/feature-requests

The Trello board provides an Inbox column to capture incoming requests that need to be categorized.  It is a helpful tool to perform high level roadmap planning. As features get planned and accepted into the development roadmap, they can be transitioned to JIRA for software development and execution.

A Trello board can also be used to groom user stories as the move from ideas, requirements, estimation and eventually becoming a release candidate.  Trello also supports voting so a community of users can vote for their favorite features to drive priority.

Roadmap Template using Trello

Trello Board: https://trello.com/b/FrbAJsbH/product-roadmap

Trello also integrates easily with Confluence and JIRA using these Power Ups capabilities.  These power ups let you leverage Trello for the high level roadmap planning while implementing the roadmap in JIRA and Confluence.

Atlassian Summit Idea #3: Be a Great Communicator with Confluence Templates

Confluence provides a ton of useful project and product templates.  PMO usually create a collection of MS-Word documents to support project methodology.  Instead of relying on a MS-Word template, teams can collaborate more effectively by using Confluence templates.

Atlassian Summit Confluence Templates

If your team is developing product requirements, creating a project plan or managing a launch schedule, consider using a Confluence template before creating a spreadsheet or document that needs to be distributed via email.  

The real superpower is communicating effectively and immediately with Confluence.  Instead of emailing the latest version of a document, simply check the Notify Watchers checkbox and everyone will be notified of the latest changes.  Collaborators can use the @ tagging Confluence feature to tag team members to support questions and follow-up answers. For more detail, check out this article on How to Build a Release Plan in Confluence

Atlassian Summit Idea #4: Apply KanPlan to your Projects

Agile teams continue to balance using Scrum vs. Kanban as models for delivering solutions.  Teams often find themselves in the middle of being “Wagile” – Waterfall and Agile as they continue along their Agile journey.

For example, a project team may implement Kanban but also want to maintain and groom a backlog of user stories.  As a product backlog grows, the To-Do list can become overwhelming when viewing the JIRA board. In other cases, the team still wants to use epics to categorize the backlog but deliver using Kanban.

Atlassian Summit Kanban and Scrum

The KanPlan presentation was a useful presentation and hands-on lab that demonstrated how teams can use a mixed methodology by changing JIRA filters and boards.   I snagged a few screenshots from the presentation to highlight how a Kanban backlog can be configured.

Kanban Backlog

I like how removing all statuses from the To-Do column keeps Open issues on the backlog.

Promote issues into Kanban boardPromote issues into the Kanban board

Now the team can drag issues from the Backlog into an In-Progress status and they will appear on the Kanban board.  Epics can still be used to manage the board.

Kanban and Scrum

With this configuration, the team can maintain focus on the immediate work instead of endlessly scrolling through the an unplanned backlog.  Go ahead and give the hands-on lab a try!

Atlassian Summit Idea #5: Apply Confluence Across the Software Lifecycle

Sherif Mansour presented multiple use-cases for applying Confluence across all phases of the Atlassian software lifecycle –  Inception, Planning, Building and Tailoring.  The presentation provide many examples including:

  • Organizing Customer Interviews
  • Defining Personas
  • Roadmap planning
  • Using Team Calendars for communication
  • Capture requirements and link them to supporting interviews
  • Requirements traceability with JIRA
  • Documenting meeting minutes and decisions
  • Confluence status reporting
  • Managing release notes in Confluence

Using the Roadmap Planner

The presentation featured how the Roadmap Planner can be used to convey a high level timeline.  I’ve used a wide range of tools to develop graphical timelines including Excel, PowerPoint and Microsoft Project.  The Atlassian Roadmap Planner is by far the easiest to use for a high-level Gantt chart using a pick-a-date management approach. 

Each swimlane can be configured for a workstream, project or major work theme.  The gantt chart bars can be a task, project phase or an epic. Milestones are added using the marker icons.  It is an effective way to present a high level timeline instead of fighting with PowerPoint or Excel to move each graphic icon when a date changes.

Roadmap Planner

(I prefer to have a tool calculate the timeline based on durations, but this tool is still a fantastic solution to the Arts and Charts problem).

Below is one quick Gantt chart than I created in a few minutes.  If the PM wanted to incorporate task or project status into the bars, the color could be changed to reflect a Red, Yellow or Green status.  If needed, I can link each of the bars to a corresponding Confluence page for a detailed status report.

Program Gantt Chart using Roadmap Planner

Atlassian Summit Idea #6: Prioritize Your Work Using the Eisenhower Matrix in Trello

At the Summit, Lauren Moon presented on productivity and prioritization using Trello and introduced the Eisenhower Matrix.  The Eisenhower Matrix is a simple 2×2 grid to map tasks against importance and urgency axes.

Eisenhower Matrix

In the example below, a collection of tasks are mapped against the 2×2 matrix for importance and urgency.

Eisenhower Matrix with Tasks

Obviously, the Important and Urgent tasks fall into the Do category, while Important and Not urgent become Decisions and Unimportant but still Urgent tasks are Delegated.

Eisenhower Matrix Decisions

Trello can be used to create a simple Eisenhower matrix to map your daily task list into a simple prioritization board.  Trello has an example at https://trello.com/b/CXVefGzw/to-dos-eisenhower-matrix-style

Trello Eisenhower MatrixEisenhower Matrix in Trello

Manage Team Tasks with the Rule of 5

Trello can also be used to manage team tasks and manage expectations during 1:1 meetings with team members.  Joel Spolsky – Co-founder of Trello and author of one of my favorite software blogs – joelonsoftware.com – used the Rule of 5 to manage teams more effectively.

Joel observed:

  • There are the things you WANT your employees to be working on
  • There’s the things you THINK they’re working on
  • And then there’s the things they’re ACTUALLY working on

He applied his Rule of 5 to simplify the number of things to follow up and track with each team member.  

To apply the Rule of 5, ask each team member track the:

  • 2 Items they are working on
  • 2 items they plan to work on next
  • 1 item that everyone thinks they are working on but aren’t actually doing

Managers only need to be aware of 5 tasks per team member and only 2 of them are actively being worked.  Managers need to know which tasks are not getting done even though the team thought the person was working on that specific task.  Overall, it helps with communication and reduces the burden of tracking a long task list by resource.

You can implement the Rule of 5 using a Trello board.  An example is a available at https://trello.com/b/DQDXYzN7/team-tasks-5-things-workflow

Trello and the Rule of FiveTrello and the Rule of Five

Within Trello, you can use the colored labels to identify the different task categories. Active tasks are colored green, future tasks are yellow and red tasks are not being addressed.

You really can learn a lot from a conference!

Atlassian Summit 2019 was a great experience and you can watch all the keynotes and view all the recorded sessions at https://www.atlassian.com/company/events/summit/watch-sessions/2019/.  Conferences always provide an abundance of information and it takes a while to distill in the information and take action.  I hope this article will encourage you to put these Atlassian tools into action and apply these techniques your teams!

Want to learn more?

After the response to these tutorials, I published my eBook on How to Manage Projects and Programs with Atlassian Confluence.

manageprojectsatlassianconfluence-400.png

Feel free to check it out at https://www.tacticalprojectmanagement.com/shop/manage-projects-with-atlassian-confluence/

 

18 comments

Erica Moss
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
May 31, 2019

@Andrew Makar This is an incredible article, Andy — thank you for sharing!

Like Stephanie Grice likes this
Lauren Moon
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
May 31, 2019

Awesome writeup @Andrew Makar! So glad you took something from the talk. Eisenhower and Rule of 5 are 2 of my most effective methods. 

James Bullock June 8, 2019

Use a Confluence Page to present an idea rather than a PowerPoint presentation

I do briefings off of Confluence often, these days. I find I get to follow the interest with the audience, making for something better for them, and me.

Joe Tong
Atlassian Team
Atlassian Team members are employees working across the company in a wide variety of roles.
June 10, 2019

Great thoughts - I love the call out for using the Confluence Template page for the Project Poster.  Although you don't need to be a Confluence user for these team plays, they do help. 

Lorena White June 14, 2019

This is so useful! Thank you so much for sharing.

Danny
Rising Star
Rising Star
Rising Stars are recognized for providing high-quality answers to other users. Rising Stars receive a certificate of achievement and are on the path to becoming Community Leaders.
June 15, 2019

This is amazing, thanks @Andrew Makar 

Lorena White June 16, 2019

Thank you so much for sharing, I learned a lot from your article. Great tips that I will definitely apply.

Christopher June 18, 2019

This is great, Thank you @Andrew Makar !

Jerie Meakins June 21, 2019

This is jammed packed with useful information, thank you @Andrew Makar

Dan Sherwood June 24, 2019

Fantastic read, I admittedly got excited when I saw the Eisenhower Matrix. 🤓

Karolina Lasoń [Deviniti]
Marketplace Partner
Marketplace Partners provide apps and integrations available on the Atlassian Marketplace that extend the power of Atlassian products.
June 24, 2019

Great insight @Andrew Makar! Can't wait to try these tips out :D 

Theokritos Zafeiriou June 27, 2019

WOW I will follow all of your future posts

maxmaxwell July 1, 2019

@Andrew Makar Thank you for taking time to write this informative post.  As a new member of the Atlassian community I am in the early stages of building the process and procedures my team will use to leverage the tools provided by Atlassian.  Looking forward to exploring the recommendations you provided.

Andrew Makar July 1, 2019

Thanks @maxmaxwell @and everyone else for all your comments!  We learn together so please continue to share your experiences!

Like Rose Eliff likes this
Panashe (new account) July 10, 2019

Awesome post. thanks for sharing!

Rose Eliff July 29, 2019

Very useful information. Now to share with my colleagues. :-) 

Swirly May 27, 2020

Great information -- especially for a newbie.  Thank you!

Irma Jimenez May 5, 2022

Great article. Thank you for sharing.

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