How to clean up the noise in your Jira instance

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Your SaaS dev team may be Agile. But is Jira accurately reflecting your Agile prowess? 

If not, Obo Reveal can help. It’s a powerful yet lightweight Jira app that helps you identify where your Jira data lags or, even worse, misrepresents development reality. With Obo Reveal, your Agile plans and their corresponding Jira elements can stay in sync.

There’s much about Jira that only Engineers seem able to understand and appreciate.

Yet these days, it’s essential for people in Sales, Finance, Marketing, and Product to quickly grok what’s going on with—or at least know what’s affected by—Jira progress. That gives them a shot at being more Agile as well. But if Jira isn’t succinctly reflecting engineering reality, or other teams can’t comprehend the way it presents data, you can’t use it to accurately reflect progress to other groups.

This is where Obo Reveal shines. It turns Jira-speak into business-speak, and helps Jira work overtime for nearly everyone in your company. You simply select a Jira filter and let Obo Reveal create a rich dashboard from the data it captures—in a language everyone can understand. No painful configuration required. The smarts are built into the app.

A by-product of Obo Reveal’s transparency is uncovering some less-than-healthy habits in Jira. If your goal is full transparency, use Obo Reveal before other departments do so you can clean up Jira’s act before all eyes are on your data. 

Stories without Epics crowding you out? 

We all have them—issues created ad hoc that aren’t associated with Epics. Bugs typically don’t get Epic assignments (though it would make tracking progress easier if they did). But lots of Stories and Tasks tend to proliferate during a Sprint that don’t get Epic links.

You can dig around and find them in Jira, or use Obo Reveal and let it do the work for you. 

Obo Reveal automatically gathers all Issues without parent Epics. Reveal’s succinct list lets you peruse them and, with a single click, open the Issue in Jira to get them reunited with their rightful parents. Family planning at its best.

Bugs eating at you?

In our haste, we frequently leave bugs as orphans as well. But good hygiene says they should be linked to Jira Issues. If your Jira filter returns bugs, Obo Reveal will place them in their proper homes. If they are orphans, they will be in the Issues Without Epics card at the bottom of the Obo Reveal View.

Just like with orphan Stories and Tasks, click through the bugs to get them reunited with their parents. 

Un-pointed Issues driving you wild? 

Yes, everything should be pointed. In an ideal world, we should start with Estimated points and move on to Actual points as the development process matures. Obo Reveal helps you find those stragglers in a structured fashion. View issues arranged in family groupings with point values readily visible so you can weed out the laggards and get them pointed.

Points burndown too chill?

So you are pointing everything in a timely fashion - congrats, you are in the top ten percent. But are you burning points off with the same vigor and timeliness that you assigned them? Obo Reveal’s roll-up burndown chart gives you the view you need to see whether your burndown trend matches the elapsed time of the sprint. It’s hard to predict completion dates if issues aren’t closed when dev work is completed. Obo Reveal lets you see where the issues are so you can get the behavior you need to more accurately predict completion.

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Ensure your Jira accuracy matches your Agile skills with Obo Reveal. Contact us for an Obo Reveal demo.