From Zero to Jira: How Marketing and Content Overpowered their New Year Collaboration Resolution

[#1]

Those of you who know me well may say, "Oh, Teodora, please stop digging into this.. all the time."
Honestly, too hard to stop! I feel provoked by every new feature, release, and use case, especially by business users who feel Jira is not the right fit for their activities.

Photo by Anna Bokova from Pexels

As each new year, our team felt the need to improve how we collaborate and track our work. And me being a fresh addition to the marketing team resulted in what I love the most - a big empty canvas for unleashed creativity!

No need to share our development teams are already peacefully working in Jira. Speaking of Marketing and Content, as we say here in Bulgaria, that's another beer!
We used what's best in life - personal spaces, notebooks, sticky notes, Google Docs, and loads of Slack. As you can expect with a fully distributed team, it's pretty hard to peek into someone's notes from a thousand miles away.

Our challenge

Marketing and Content are the primary ingredients of almost any recipe for business success. To make our activities more balanced and cohesive, we wanted to have:

• good planning structure;

• activity tracking and project status;

• real-time reporting on our progress;

• quick navigation from idea to task to content.

Our decision-making process

Working in a small company made by overachievers has its significant advantages - we decide fast. And by being Marketplace Vendors, we never miss an opportunity to learn more about the Atlassian tools. Integrating and using our apps in the process was just an excellent addition to the whole plan.

We may live on an Old Street (pun intended), but we are not Old School (wink wink.)

Our set-up

Now you may be a little surprised, but as I am always saying: "Inspect and adapt!" We are on our path to further improvements, but the decisions so far led us to that initial setup:

Jira Software using a Scrum board

By using the classic Agile approach to the Scrum board, we ensured our work would have two major components: beginning and end. It's the same reason we moved with Jira Software than Jira Work Management. Kanban is giving too much "freedom" regarding deadlines, which may turn into a trap with content crafting.

Having a nice mix of both resulted in our month-long Sprints.

One-month Sprint: are you mad?

We are all mad in a way.

Business teams cannot estimate and plan their work precisely. The nature of their work gives these limits, and we are well aware of that. By extending our Sprints to a month, we have enough time to program and perform various activities: from a social post to redoing a wiki page to crafting an extensive technical article. 

We have time to do our work and confidence we'll meet the desired time-frames.

What's behind

Keeping it simple is our mojo. Our Scrum board consist few critical settings:

Issue types: Epic, Story, Task, Sub-task

Workflow: To Do, In Progress, In Review, Done

Components: Blog, Brand, Documentation, Event, etc.

Most Critical Fields: Due Date, Priority, Components, Linked Issues

A simple workflow allows us not to waste time on something we can't do well, like estimates and story points. You never know if your article is 1 or 8 before you start digging into it.

Fields like Due Date and Priority help us stay on track if we feel like it's Friday and it's only Wednesday :)

Real-time Dashboard reports

Real-time reporting helps us never lose track of how we move towards our monthly goals. Looking at this green segment creeping makes me feel warm and cozy.

As humans, we are driven by emotions. Having a comprehensive illustration of our progress and efforts uplifts our productivity and mood.

(Curious fact: each sector of the Assignee pie chart is made with the person's favorite color 😌 )

This article turned longer than expected! Wrapping up with my favorite line, quoting Christopher, my partner in Board 😎

I'm wondering if I need a third screen so I can have the Scrum board open all the time :D

If you made it to the end - thank you! I'm always curious to hear about your business challenges and how you are adopting Atlassian tools, so feel free to share your feedback and experience. 💙

[Pramodh M]

@Teodora V _Fun Inc_

A good way to start the Jira Project for a beginner in Agile Team

Thanks for sharing :-)

[Teodora V _Fun Inc_]

Thank you, @Pramodh M; I hope it will help business beginners adopt the Agile approach with less stress 😌

[Italo Qualisoni]

@Teodora V _Fun Inc_ That's great - Thanks for sharing :D

[Teodora V _Fun Inc_]

Thank you @Italo Qualisoni! You are very welcome :) 

[Jorge Wanderley]

Thanks for sharing your process of managing your content marketing team with Jira. I`m trying to get inspiration from some cases and apply in my work. Your case was very helpful :) 

[Ted]

@Teodora V _Fun Inc_ what is the widget you're using on your dashboard for the pie + line charts? Is that out of the box or an add-on?

[Teodora V _Fun Inc_]

Hi @Ted!

It's an add-on my company makes. It's called Custom Charts for Jira - Reports, and the marketing team finally decided to take advantage of actually using the company tools.

Initially, I thought it would be a nice playground for us to learn about the app's latest features and releases. Still, a few months into Sprint tracking, we use it daily to see progress on our activities, counts of tasks, or quick navigation around certain issues.

[Ted]

@Teodora V _Fun Inc_ ah cool! Looks super useful, thank you!