Are you ready for Jira Align? Six Ways to Align the Agile Enterprise

Transformation starts with connected teams.

Did you know that Jira Align was named a Leader in the latest assessment of Enterprise Agile Planning Tools in Gartner’s 2020 Magic Quadrant? It is the only platform that lets you implement and extend any framework at scale, including hybrid and custom frameworks.

In fact, Jira Align was designed to provide the visibility, alignment, and productivity that organizations need to succeed with Scaled Agile. With Jira Align, you can keep your teams working in Jira Software while extending coordination and planning to the program, portfolio, and enterprise levels, but how the tool works?

1. Discovery & Planning

Discussions to align goals, define responsibilities and terms, schedule, and discover other configurations necessary to implement platform

2. Jira Integration

Connect Jira Software to Jira Align with security and gateway stakeholders

3. Quarterly Planning

Platform demonstration of views such as Roadmap, Program Board, Risks, Objectives, Dependencies, and Program Room

4. Capture & Prioritize Backlog

Create themes/epics, backlog, ensure appropriate visibility, address known risks, objectives, or dependencies, prioritize the backlog

5. Ongoing Assessment

Guidance, adjust Jira Align configuration as needed, identify operational gaps, and provide training as needed

6. Review & Keep Planning

Workshop to review outcomes and plan for next phase, documented readout of the session and a plan next steps

Jira Align is the only platform built for scaling agile to the enterprise. Now that you have the big picture about Jira Align, think about how you can set the agile culture for your team and other leadership members before start using Jira Align.

Here are just a few suggestions:

• Lead by example to create a strong agile culture

Transforming an organization is the responsibility of leadership. If leaders are consistent in their message and actions, employees are more likely to participate.

• Prioritize facilitation as a critical skillset

At scale, lean collaboration and planning become more complex. It’s important to invest in skill sets that create transparency and openness leading to successful outcomes.

• Focus portfolios on outcomes rather than output

Analyze the performance improvement of the feature in the marketplace and make informed

decisions for future work. Don’t simply deliver a feature to the marketplace.

• Empower individual decision making

Create organizational structures that facilitate allowing teams to make decisions about their work. This improves flow, engagement, and innovation.

• Create a toolset for self-organization

Agile transformation requires a strong tooling system that connects teams to programs to portfolio management.

We hope these tips are helpful as you prepare your agile team to scale and reach high performance. As always, we are here to help if you want to learn more about how Jira Align connects your business strategy to technical execution.