A Project Manager Guide to Jira Align - Part Deux (2)

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Welcome to Part Deux (2) of the series of articles on how Jira Align can benefit the Project Manager role. In Part 1, we introduced you to setting the subjective health on the work our teams are doing. So how do we instill trust in our assessment of health with empirical data and information in Jira Align?

“I'm not saying I don't trust you, and I'm not saying I do. But I don't.” - Topper Harley

Many Project Manager’s are responsible for reporting out on the status of the work being done by a program each program increment. The Program Room is a great landing spot for much of the work the program and teams are working on.

The default view and configuration of the Program Room is not necessarily the right information we want to see as a Project Manager. Use the View Configuration to toggle on/off some of the widgets on the page. You may want to remove some of the widgets that are not providing value for you and your teams. It also simplifies the view and reduces some of the clutter of data.

After you set which widgets you want to see, then you can move those on both the left and right side of the main page area so that you can see your critical information in a page view without having to scroll down too much.

What is great about this page is that you can drive into the team details. In the upper right corner of the page is the teams associated to the program. I recommend that you set the team logos so that you can easily distinguish your teams. When you select a team, this acts as a filter on the Program Room page and you see the associate teams work and details.

Did you also know that the Feature and Story details in the middle of the program room is also configurable? Select the gear icon to open up and toggle on/off the columns on the list.

Another tip is when you hover over the feature progress, it shows details such as % done, stories and story points accepted so that you don’t have to dive into the feature details.

In summary, configure and use the Program Room for seeing all of the work our program and teams are working on. Use the Program Room for readouts and then you can dive into the right detailed information directly from this page.

Want to know more about Status Reports?  Check out A Project Manager Guide to Jira Align - Part 3.

[Richard Wilson _Jarow Digital_]

Thanks @Tom O_Connor good article.