Jiralympics Week 2: Staying in sync(h) with Jira

[#1]

Welcome to the second week of the Jiralympics! 👋🏻

Last week, we saw how teams both in and out of the water require seamless collaboration to achieve shared goals. To keep the aquatic theme flowing, this week’s challenge is similar to artistic swimming.

Artistic swimming is a sport in which a group of swimmers perform synchronized choreography with music. Many are awestruck by the rhythm, flair, and beauty of the performance as swimmers seem to move effortlessly through the water.

However, artistic swimming is not as easy as it looks. Underneath the water, swimmers are holding their breaths for unusually long durations and using their strength to maintain balance or propel themselves out of the water, all while trying to stay in sync with their teammates.

Similar to artistic swimming, setting up your Jira instance and ensuring your end users have a positive experience is no easy feat. Many Jira admins put a lot of thought and effort in building out Jira’s most powerful planning capabilities to ensure users spend less time fiddling with their project management tool and more time driving projects forward.

For many Jira admins, creating that seemingly seamless experience might include:

1. Introducing a new, virtual teammate - Artistic swimmers are known for their high-flying acrobatics, which requires lifting one teammate out of the water. These stunts would surely be easier to accomplish with an additional pair of hands. Similarly, many teams are now harnessing the power of Atlassian Intelligence and letting their new virtual teammate pick up some of the heavy lifting. With Atlassian Intelligence, teams can increase efficiency and accelerate work.

2. Reducing manual tasks and processes - Breathing underwater has become second nature to many artistic swimmers. For years, they’ve trained to increase their lung capacity so they’re not wasting any mental space thinking about the next time they can rise to the surface and get some air. Likewise, Jira’s powerful automation engine is performing hundreds (if not thousands) of tasks in the background so teams can increase their workload capacity and spend less time on tasks that require unnecessary mental energy.

3. Creating workflows that match real-life processes - It might surprise you to learn that artistic swimmers aren’t always in the water. They start on land, practicing flexibility and dance choreography. In a similar sense, many teams have created ways of working that they would like to be replicated in their project management tool. In Jira, teams can create custom workflows that match these real-life processes to reduce friction and deliver faster.

With Jira, it’s easier than ever before for teams to collaborate and stay aligned while working their way.

So, do your teams act like artistic swimmers? How have you set up your Jira instance to help your teams stay synchronized? What sport team is your professional team most similar to?

[Amanda Barber]

I'd say my team is most like a Rowing team. We're small and mighty, highly collaborative, great at communicating, and a solid team. We all bring our unique skills and work together towards a common goal.

[Kavitha Chandrasekaran]

My team is similar to whitewater rafting team. We come across calm and rough waters, but through collaboration, team spirit and an attitude to give the best, we enjoy the ride and reach our destination. Jira helps keep the team in sync. Our workflows are set up effectively to match how our team can function at its best. As a team coach, I encourage team to have stretch goals. But we wear life jackets on and we accept spill overs from Sprint :-). 

  

[Walter Buggenhout]

Maybe one of the most important things I usually come back to, is configuring screens in such a way that the team actually recognises its own work properly. Investing time to make sure screens only show the fields actually needed to define an issue, using terminology that is familiar to users really pays off. While this may be an investment at first, it saves a ton on unnecessary manuals, training and documentation and greatly improves user adoption.

[Walter Buggenhout]

Something else that comes to mind and that's sometimes overlooked a bit, is tweaking the flow of notifications Jira can send to users. In the analogies of rowing and water, the flow of notifications could easily end up in a flood instead. To avoid a situation where users start spending (way too much) time building email rules to direct Jira messages to their email trash or spam folders, it's definitely worth sitting down with them to come to a supported agreement on the desired level of messages being sent out. While we're all capable of spectacular things when we work together, we all have our individual preferences when it comes to working styles. Taking these into account yet again may increase adoption and effectiveness of communication, which is quite essential for teamwork to be at its best!

[Autumn Hall]

I am a product manager and development leadership are our Jira admins, so they are our choreographers and I am just one of many following the choreography (processes) they lay out for us. 😊

[Susan Waldrip]

I try to balance our workflows so they're flexible and useful without being cumbersome or overly complicated. We use the same workflows for three teams that are all fairly different in their activities, and it's working so far. We've also set up a series of "Did You Know...?" sessions for tips and tricks, procedures and policies, hear what they've learned and can share with each other, and gather feedback about what's working and what needs improvement. Through listening and sharing, everyone on both teams feels involved and invested in our JSM's success, which is really cool!

[Leslie Barrett]

I think we also work like a rowing team. We are a two person team and it's imperative that we stay in sync. We've worked together to build and support a process that keeps everything moving forward. We've set clear expectations within our team and to the users we support. If one of us is dragging a bit, we communicate the need for help; the other one steps in & adjusts to keep things on track.

[Huwen Arnone _Deiser_]

I wouldn't say my team works as artistic swimmers, which they also put a lot of work into, but regarding aquatic sports. I would say my team is more like a water polo team, similar to last week (which was football) because we have different teams working as a whole. And regarding that:

When introducing a new virtual teammate, water polo players could also use additional support to boost performance. This is precisely how Atlassian Intelligence (or Rovo—watch here) offers a helping hand that takes on some heavy lifting, enhancing efficiency and accelerating work.

To reduce manual tasks, water polo players must master the art of staying afloat while executing complex plays and defending against opponents. The relentless commitment my team is performing develops the stamina and skill to manage these demanding tasks seamlessly, similar to Jira's automation engine that allows us to perform numerous functions in the background and focus on more strategic activities.

We create workflows matching real-life processes, and spending significant time practicing drills and strategies on land is proof of concept that allows us to think strategically and collaborate using tools and team collaboration essential to succeeding in the water (or daily tasks). In Jira, we try to recreate custom workflows aligned to real-life processes, reducing friction and delivering results faster.

[Malene Vikkelsø]

As a Jira Admin, I feel like a runner preparing for a marathon. Of course the race itself is hard, getting the team to understand the purpose, governance and usage, and thereby stay in sync within the team and within the rest of the organisation. However, the preparation before the race (setting up the correct configuration, with workflows, screens and fields) are more important and makes it possible for me to actually complete the race, and thereby ensure the team delivers.

[Shawn Doyle - ReleaseTEAM]

I want to say Rugby, but I am not big on sports.

[Brant Schroeder]

Going with football (soccer) team again.  Our team is always striving to be better and improve.  Our Jira instance is the same.  We make iterative improvements to ensure we get the most out of our teams and the software.  

[Andy Gladstone]

I'd say our team is like a Cycling Team in the Tour de France. 8 individuals that are working together with our unique strengths to go for the win. Some of us are sprinters, some rouleurs, some can pull the team through when everything is going smoothly (on the flat stages) and others that can pace us up the mountain passes of the Alps and Pyrenees when things are tougher. But in the end, we all need to make the time cut and deliver our efforts on time to continue to ride together for another day.

[Hana Kučerová]

As I'm still partly on a parental leave and work mostly during the evenings, when others are resting, I see us as relay runners. When one ends, the other starts :-).

[Chrissy Clements]

Our team is all about flowing seamlessly - just like artistic swimmers, and the key to our success is focusing on the value stream.

We create custom Jira workflows that match our real-life processes, ensuring everything moves smoothly. This reduces friction and speeds up delivery, just like how synchronised swimmers glide effortlessly through the water. By aligning our workflows with our actual work patterns, we keep everyone in sync and focused on driving projects forward.

[Stephen_Lugton]

As Shawn Doyle says, we're like a rugby team; we're all aiming in the same direction but with the external partner's team trying to knock us over, and some are running faster than others while the rest keep giving each other big hugs.

[Emilee]

@Andy Gladstone As a big fan of TDF, I love this analogy for a team! Many ppl don't realize how much of a team effort cycling is but the team needs many different skill sets to accomplish the goal they've set out. Recommend Tour Unchained on Netflix if anyone wants to learn more about the team's efforts. 

@Chrissy Clements Glad your team works like well-coordinated swimmers! It sounds like your workflows play a big part of that! If you haven't already, definitely consider submitting for the team awards! 

@Brant Schroeder I'm with you on the soccer/football team coordination! You should check out the week 4 post I just submitted that uses this example :) 

@Malene Vikkelsø You bring up a good point! It's not just the sports teams that require all the coordination but all the teams behind the games that setup the course, make the rules, and hand out the awards. We could sort of compare that to all our Jira admins who are the behind-the-scenes players making everything possible for the rest of the teams to play. 

[Casey Gould]

We're not ready for the Olympics yet, but our organization uses Jira Automation as both a teammate and a coach. There are cases where Jira Automation is our teammate, looking for specific conditions where it can auto-populate a number of fields and save our teams time. There are also cases where Jira Automation is our coach, checking our work and sending emails or comments to prompt actions or correct behavior.

It's like @Chrissy Clements' coxswain comparison but if the coxswain also jumped in and rowed sometimes (which I don't think is a thing, but I'm not a rowing expert)!

[Alex Koxaras _Relational_]

Like I said on my previous post, we are relay swimmers. We swim alone, but we are definitely not alone! And we have to work together to ensure our progress towards common goals.

[Summer Hogan]

Piggybacking off the week 1 post, my team is like a relay team in swimming and Jira definitely helps my team stay synchronized! We would not be as functional as we are without Jira's workflows that replicate our real-world processes and the automation we have in place to keep things flowing smoothly. 

[Antoine Berry]

Wonderful read, actually reminded me about this beautufil discipline, the perfect match between sport and art. Hopefully going to witness it in the olympics. :)

I would argue there is a similarity with the configuration of a jira instance, the naming of all the schemes, there is something of beauty, and most importantly, keeping it healthy.