What Are the Best Ways to Use Atlassian Tools for a Small Business?

Hellstar Sports
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October 28, 2024

 

 

Hi! I’m trying to understand how to use Atlassian tools like Jira and Confluence better for my small business. I’d love to know what the best practices are, especially for managing projects and keeping my team organized.
I have a small online business of E-commerce website , Hellstar sports

Does anyone have advice on using these tools effectively for a small business? Any tips for beginners would be really helpful! Thank you!

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Nikola Perisic
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October 28, 2024

Welcome @Hellstar Sports 

Jira offers pleny of templates that you can choose from: https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/templates

There are two types of projects:

  • Team-managed - suited for small teams that want to start right away with their project tracking,everything is managable by a project admin
  • Company-managed - more customization options, can only be created by Jira admins, containts permissions, notification, workflows, custom fields, quick filters and more

Some of the best practices include:

  • Foster good communication with your team members - that way you will know which issues are in progress, which require more time, etc.
  • Keep workflows simple - don't include too much statuses
  • User management - give access to the users who really need the access to your project
  • Permissions - make sure that you manage which users can do which operations
  • Use Agile boards - Jira offers both Scrum and Kanban

Scrum - finishing work in small increments by completing sprints

One sprint shouldn't be longer than 2 weeks. Every day there is a daily stand up where the scrum team is discussing what was done yesterday, what will be done today and if there are any blockers.Scrum is for those who like estimations and a structure.

Kanban is much more light weight than Scrum. It's focus is on the continuous work and limiting WIP (work in progress) issues.

1 vote
Morgan Watts
Contributor
November 7, 2024

If you're a true beginner, using Team Managed Projects is a nice "dip your toes in" first before worrying about Company Managed Projects. 

Atlassian offers a plethora of free training modules to take online. Their "Get the most out of X" learning paths (collections of trainings) are very useful in learning the basics. 

Atlassian

Keep It Simple

Some of these words may be mysterious but keep Screens, Workflows, and Projects as simple as possible. I typically remove most of the fields from an issue screen unless it's requested to stay. It's much easier to digest a summary, description, and start dates and due dates, than numerous fields. 

Collaborate. Ask for feedback.

Communicate with your teams a LOT to figure out what features they like the most and use the most. Fine tuning a Jira project for the team can lead to wild increases in productivity. Less time typing emails, hunting for documents, asking for updates.

Leverage the tools.

Innovation and improvement are uncomfortable. Learning the tools that guide the former and latter is even more uncomfortable. Find comfort in the journey. 

I suggest using Confluence if you're- planning a project, asking, "what needs to happen next?" or "What is our dream world to make a new product launch as simple as possible?" You can host some solid brainstorming sessions from Confluence templates for "hey, we're launching this new hoodie what're the steps that need to get done?" Select some templates, use them for a meeting or two to figure out if they work. If template A doesn't help, try template B. There's lots of options. 

Once you collect the steps you can create Jira issues right from Confluence into a Jira project. 

Automation (if you have it).

Depending on the Jira + Confluence packages you pay for utilizing automation will be the BEST way to save employees' time. You can automate having emails send out when a specific issue card is moved, or if a specific bit of information is added to an issue card that can prompt emails, notifications or changes. No more "hello, checking for an update on this clothing design" more "ah, an email telling me the art design team finished their first idea, let me review."

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