Where do PMs/POs spend most of their time

[robert.nadon]

Hi all,

As a partner I just came from a Jira Align overview presentation / demo and after showing the various parts of the tool (Program room, roadmap, program board, etc) I was asked "where would we be spending most of our time?".    

As a tech/partner, I understand the way the tools works and the various parts of it, but really do not know where a PM/PO would spend most of their time.  Also are their certain maps or reports you visit the most?

Thanks!

Robert

[Derek Huether]

As a former customer, I can say where I saw our people spending the most time. I saw Product Managers spend a lot of time looking at the (portfolio) backlog and the roadmap. The backlog was for intake, managing and maturing work. The roadmap was to see progress along timelines.  I saw Product Owners spending a lot of time on the (program) backlog, decomposing work from the portfolio backlog. Then a lot of time was spent on the program board, looking to see if any of their features were getting blocked by dependencies. 

The most common visual (report) I saw used was the PI Burndown. Specifically, PO's would drill down from a PI perspective down into the team view, versus going into Jira and clicking on all of the individual sprint reports (burndown).

The capability that paid for everything was orphan objects (in backlog). The Product Managers complained there was never enough capacity to deliver on their needs. They said we needed to hire 5 more teams, to the tune of $6M a year. We found out that a lot of work the teams were doing (in Jira) was not linked to Jira Epics and those Jira Epics were not linked to higher level commitments in Jira Align. Once the PM/POs realized this and they had the visibility of where capacity was going, we realized we had the capacity all along. Teams were just spending it on things that were not organizational priorities. 

[Jesse Pearlman]

Orphan Objects finder in the backlog rocks for base refinement on the backlog!  Good call out!

[robert.nadon]

That is awesome!!!  Thank you for such details, very useful.

[Jesse Pearlman]

Howdy Robert,

First, your question is not a small one.  it has to deal with how each organization may define the cut line of use between Jira and Jira Align.  

The healthiest practices are for the PO/PMs to live in Jira Align as it comes to planning and tracking delivery.  POs should spend some of their time with the teams in Jira to observe various team events.  

So a day in the life of a PO might look something like (light weight details)

• Check progress against team in Jira Align Program Room
  • Note any items that require acceptance, response, etc
• Move to backlog, review features in plan for next PI and work with PMs to identify seed stories and create those in Jira Align
• Rank and refinement in the Jira Align backlog to help sequence work with the SMs and RTEs to reduce dependencies 
• Review team level information specifically in Jira or in the Team Room of Jira Align
  
  • In Jira Align the Work tree, Program Room, Program Board, Program Increment Progress Report, Work in Process report, Dependencies, Risks, Objectives

For a PM, they should never leave Jira Align as all role responsibilities can be met there and and keep a clean strategic alignment of work to the program and teams.

A day in the life of a PM would be something like (light weight details)

• Check Roadmap and Strategic backlogs
• Verify and validate all features are aligned to those strategies and any products the organization is delivering on
• Managing the Product Vision and Business model canvas
• Working with BOs and POs on Persona development, Product Visions, Program Visions
• Managing the feature lifecycle from the Kanaban>Process Step view
• Using the Work tree, Program Room, Program Board, Program Increment Progress Report, Work in Process report, Dependencies, Risks, Objectives, Roadmaps, etc

Hope this helped you on the path fo where and how PMs and POs might live in Jira Align

[robert.nadon]

Thank you this is wonderful.     Reminds me of the Atlassian forum 5 years ago, where immediate and wonderfully detailed answers came out right away.  LOVE IT! 

I understand that today there are 10 questions a minute (total guess) to generic Jira and so it is overwhelming, the original forum still rocks, just this is above and beyond :-D