For those who have been part of a Jira Align - Jira Integration: What are your biggest learnings?

[Peter Jessen]

Hi Everyone,

I answering @JS's question on Transitioning from Portfolio to Align, it made me think of a great question to ask the Jira Align community - What are your personal biggest take-aways, pain points, or learnings during or after your own organization's implementation of Jira Align/AgileCraft?

@Ann Bouvier- Any thoughts? :-)

Regards,
Peter

[Tim Keyes]

Hi Peter,

I believe you were integrating Jira and Jira Align before I even knew what Jira was but here are a few quick tips I have observed over the past two years.

1. Standardize the sprint cadence across teams in Jira and utilize a consistent sprint nomenclature such as "Team Apple PI 1 Sprint 1".  It has always been challenging to compare sprints across teams when their sprint nomenclature is not standardized.  

2. When implementing a bi-directional sync of work items, using a standardized workflow that matches between the two applications is going to be the path of least resistance.

3. Empower Scrum Masters in Jira by teaching them about Jira Align and the benefits Jira Align can provide the enterprise and their team.  Delineating the name of Jira Boards that will be integrated with Jira Align with an * or special nomenclature such as "JA" so scrum masters remember to keep them clean always seems to help.  

4. Utilizing a ratio of one integrated team board per an integrated Jira Project with Jira Align is going to create the cleanest integration with the most guard rails.

5. Read the community and help articles!  We write the articles and post on the community in response to common customer questions.  We are also working with our Product Team this quarter to simplify the integration and increase user experience.  I am excited for what is to come! 

[Peter Jessen]

Hi @Tim Keyes ,

Sure. Make me feel old. :-)

Great tips. I think I'll steal them and add them to my other answer. (With attribution, of course.)

Cheers,
Peter

[Arden_Hawley]

Howdy! I've actually been working with Tim on an integration at my company and would echo a lot of what he said.

If you have Jira on-prem get your network folks involved ASAP!  They will make or break your integration :) 

Having a small pilot to test out different organisations' use cases within the tool is key to wide adoption.  Not all orgs work the same and you need to address their individual needs.

I've personally focused on the backend of Jira and work very closely with the admins who manage the front end.  This allows us to each hone in on our fields to make sure no one admin is overloaded (there is a lot that goes into an integration).