Ceremonies are regular events held by Scrum teams. ‘Agile’ is a broad word describing a different way of working with shorter, time-boxed cycles for releases.

Under the broad umbrella of agile, Scrum is one of the most popular approaches that teams use to organise their work and releases.

Each short iteration of work in Scrum is referred to as a sprint. A sprint is normally a 2 week period where the team focuses on a small slice of work.

The idea is that everyone focuses on 1 slice of work. And that slice is to be completed and shipped to the customer within that same sprint.

Scrum can be broken down into a few important elements:

1. Roles
2. Artifacts
3. Ceremonies

This post will focus on the Scrum Ceremonies.

All of the 4 Scrum ceremonies help ensure the Scrum team stay focused on the slice of work they agreed to focus on in that sprint.

It helps the team with transparency about progress on the work they committed to finish and to raise any issues early before they become blockers.

Let’s have a look at each of the four agile ceremonies in Scrum:

1. Stand up (or daily Scrum)

Goal of the stand up: a brief check-in where the team can raise issues or communicate with the whole team face to face.

Who joins the daily stand up: Developers, Scrum Master, Product Owner

Outcome of daily stand up: the team raises any blockers, but doesn’t have to solve them. Ensure each team member is clear about what they are working on. Each team member should be able to answer these three questions:

• What did I complete yesterday?
• What will I work on today?
• Am I blocked by anything?

When to hold a stand up: daily

Tip: stand ups can be done by business teams and don’t always have to be face-to-face. Here’s a photo of Australian bank ANZ’s executive stand up in action:

And another pic from InsideIT’s stand up:

2. Sprint Planning

Goal of sprint planning: sprint planning helps the team prepare for what work is coming up next. The team discusses each item of work which has been prioritised by the Product Owner.

Who does sprint planning: Developers, Product Owner, Scrum Master

Outcome of sprint planning: that everyone knows what the sprint goal is and how they are going to achieve it. Make sure everyone understands what’s the overall vision or objective of the work.

The team will be comfortable with what work is available to be picked up in the next sprint. The team will discuss any impediments or opportunities and how they can optimise the way the work will be completed.

The team will also estimate the work and draw a line when it is estimated that the effort to complete the work exceeds the team’s capacity or historical velocity.

When to hold sprint planning: at the end of a sprint or very beginning of a new sprint.

Bonus: sometimes in sprint planning you will find things you won’t do, and that’s valuable too.

3. Sprint review

Goal of the sprint review: showcase the work completed and receive feedback from the Product Owner and relevant stakeholders.

Who joins the sprint review: Executive Sponsors, Developers, Scrum Master, Product Owner

Outcome of the sprint review: each team member feels empowered by showcasing their work to the team. The team can celebrate their achievements. Executive team can ask questions. Product owner can provide feedback and check the work is of high quality and satisfies the user story. Works best with drinks and cake.

When to hold a sprint review: at the end of each sprint.

4. Retrospective

Goal of the retrospective: honest discussion about what worked well and didn’t work well. Encourage self-improvement and transparency.

Who joins the retrospective: Developers, Scrum Master, Product Owner

Outcome of a retrospective: receive feedback from the team and seek to improve in the following sprint. The beauty of agile and Scrum is the fast feedback loop.

If something isn’t working well, it only hurts the team for a maximum of 2 weeks. It can then be addressed at the retrospective and action can be taken to address the issue before it gets out of hand.

The outcome should be a commitment from the team to focus on addressing areas that need improvement or continuing behaviours that benefit team health and/or velocity.

When to hold a retrospective: at the beginning of a new sprint, reflecting on a sprint that has just ended.

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The common theme across these Scrum ceremonies is that they encourage team collaboration, transparency and communication.

In my experience, this is what truly makes agile a better way of working.

It’s not the story points or even the way the backlog is prioritised that makes a difference. The true game-changer of agile is that it helps teams with open and honest communication.

These agile/Scrum ceremonies won’t always work the same for every team.

However, they are a great way to facilitate conversation and encourage continuous improvement.

You may be just starting out, or you may have worked with agile methodologies for a while, but we’re sure you can agree that scaling agile in a large organization can be daunting. PI Planning is key to scaling agile, so we’ve developed this guide to help you run successful planning sessions, and build your confidence for your next scaled planning event.

We'll cover:

• What is PI Planning?
• Why do PI Planning?
• What is the goal of PI Planning?
• What should be included in the PI Planning agenda?
• What happens in the first part of the PI Planning meeting?
• Why is a confidence vote held at the end of PI Planning?
• When is PI Planning held?
• What is a pre-PI Planning event and when is it needed?
• PI Planning in SAFe
• PI Planning in Scrum
• What is the difference between a PI Roadmap and a Solution Roadmap?
• What is a program?
• What is a program board?
• Who should be involved in PI Planning?
• How to prepare for PI Planning
• What happens after PI Planning?
• What is a post-PI Planning event?
• Remote or hybrid PI Planning
• Common PI Planning mistakes
• Using Jira for PI Planning

Let’s start with the basics…

What is PI Planning?

PI Planning stands for Program Increment Planning.

PI Planning sessions are regularly scheduled events where teams within the same Agile Release Train (ART) meet to align and agree on what comes next. Teams will aim to align on goals and priorities, discuss features, plan the roadmap, and identify cross-team dependencies.

The goal is to align the teams to the mission and each other. Here are the essential elements of PI Planning:

• 2 full day events run every 8-12 weeks (depending on the length of your increments)
• Product Managers work to prioritize the planned features for the increment beforehand
• Development teams own user story planning and estimation
• Engineers and UX teams work to validate the planning

Why do PI Planning?

PI Planning is incredibly beneficial for large-scale agile organizations. PI Planning enables:

• Communication
• Visibility
• Collaboration

To understand the impact, let’s look at an example of a large organization that hasn’t yet implemented PI Planning. This organization has 250 teams and 6,500 team members. These teams rarely speak to each other, outside of dealing with a critical issue that has forced them to collaborate.

Alignment across these teams happens at the leadership team level, and they have multiple levels of managers in between who cascade information down with varying success. There is a constant battle for resources, budget, and opportunities to work on the most exciting projects.

Their projects have a habit of conflicting - one team would release something and then it would break something in another team’s project.

PI Planning is the first time many big companies get their teams together in a room or on the same call to talk to each other. This is a chance to have important conversations about who is working on what.

Why is this important?

1. When you’re touching a system or a code repository, you need to know how it’s going to impact another team
2. You might need to do some work to enable another team to work on their feature first (and vice versa)

With proper planning and collaboration, teams can get things done more effectively, release with more predictability, and stay on budget.

All very good reasons to do PI Planning.

What is the goal of PI Planning?

PI Planning is an essential part of the Scaled Agile Framework, a framework that’s designed to bring agile to large companies with multiple teams.

SAFe PI Planning helps teams in the Agile Release Train (ART) synchronize, collaborate, and align on workflows, objectives, releases, and more.

Without PI Planning, teams don’t have structured communication. They may not know what the other teams are working on, which can cause a lot of problems. For example, two teams might be working on different features without realizing there’s a dependency, which could hold up the release or require a significant rework of the code.

The goal of PI Planning is to have all your teams aligned strategically and enable cross-team collaboration to avoid these potential problems.

Now that we’ve covered off the “why”, let’s dig a bit deeper into the “what”. The best way to get a picture of what happens during PI Planning is to take a look at an agenda.

What should be included in the PI Planning agenda?

Here’s a standard PI Planning agenda template:

Day 1 AgendaDay 2 Agenda8:00 - 9:00 | Business Context8:00 - 9:00 | Planning Adjustments9:00 - 10:30 | Product/Solution Vision9:00 - 11:00 | Team Breakouts10:30 - 11:30 | Architecture Vision and Development Practices11:00 - 13:00 | Final Plan Review and Lunch11:30 - 13:00 | Planning Context and Lunch13:00 - 14:00 | ART Risks13:00 - 16:00 | Team Breakouts14:00 - 14:15 | Confidence Vote16:00 - 17:00 | Draft Plan Review14:15 - ??  |Plan Rework?17:00 - 18:00 | Management Review and Problem Solving?? | Planning Retrospective and Moving Forward

Source: scaledagileframework.com/pi-planning

This agenda might be perfect for you, or you might make changes based on the needs of your teams.

Distributed teams, very large ARTs, and other factors might require you to be creative with the schedule. Some sessions may need more time, while others can be shortened. If you have teams in multiple time zones, your PI Planning agenda may need to go over 3-4 days. If it’s your first PI Planning event, try the standard agenda, get feedback from your teams, and experiment with different formats next time.

What happens in the first part of the PI Planning meeting?

The first part of the PI Planning meeting is designed to set the context for the planning that happen next.

Day 1 usually kicks off with a presentation from a Senior Executive or Business Owner. The agenda allows an hour to talk about the current state of the business. They highlight specific customer needs, how the current products address these needs, and potential gaps.

After that, the Product Management team will share the current vision for your product or solution. They’ll talk about any changes that have occurred since the last PI Planning session (usually around 3 months prior). They’ll describe what’s coming up, including milestones and the next 10 features that are planned. This session should take around 1.5 hours.

Why is a confidence vote held at the end of PI Planning?

The confidence vote is a seemingly small but very important part of PI Planning towards the end of the event.

It is important the team is confident in committing to the objectives and work that is planned. The Release Train Engineer will ask teams to vote on this.

Everyone participating in planning needs to vote. This could be via a raise of hands (and fingers) or it could be via the tool you’re using. For example, the Team Planning board in Easy Agile Programs allows each team member to enter their confidence vote.

If the average vote across the room is at least three out of five, the plan is a go-ahead. If it’s less it’ll need reworking (until it reaches a high confidence level). If anyone votes just one or two, they’ll have the chance to share their reasoning.

The confidence vote is all about making sure that the attendees are in alignment and that they agree that the plan in its current form is possible within the given timeframe. Speaking of timing, let’s talk about how and where PI Planning actually fits into your company calendar.

When is PI Planning held?

Many companies find that 8-12 weeks (which adds up to 4-6 x 2-week iterations) is the right amount of time for an increment.

Some companies hold quarterly PI Planning, for example:

• Q1 PI Planning: December
• Q2 PI Planning: March
• Q3 PI Planning: June
• Q4 PI Planning: September

However, the timing and frequency will depend on how long each program increment is scheduled to last and may need to accommodate holidays.

The good thing about PI Planning events is that they happen regularly on a fixed schedule, which means you can plan for them well ahead of time. That means teams and Business Owners have plenty of notice to ensure they can show up for the event.

This means that what happens in preparation for PI Planning can be just as important as the event itself.

What is a pre-PI Planning event and when is it needed?

A pre-planning event - separate to PI Planning - is to make sure that the ART is aligned within the broader Solution Train before they do PI Planning. It’s all about synchronizing with the other ARTs to ensure the solution and organization are heading in the right direction, together.

You’ll need to organize a pre-PI Planning event if you’re operating at the Large Solution, Portfolio, or Full SAFe levels. Essential SAFe is more basic and does not have a Solution Train, so if you’re operating at this level, you won’t need pre-PI Planning so formally.

Here are a few of the roles that should be invited to the pre-planning event:

• Solution Train Engineer
• Solution Management
• Solution Architect/Engineering
• Solution System Team
• Release Train Engineers
• Product Management
• System Architects/Engineers
• Customers

They’ll look at the top capabilities from the Solution Backlog, Solution Intent, Vision, and Solution Roadmap. It’s really a lot like PI Planning but at a higher level, across the overall solution and not just the individual ART.

The event starts with each ART summing up their previous program increment and accomplishments to set the context. Next, a senior executive will brief the attendees on the current situation before Solution Management discusses the current solution vision and any changes from what was shared previously. Other things that are often discussed or finalized include:

• Roadmaps
• Milestones
• Solution backlogs
• Upcoming PI features from the Program Backlog

In the next section, we'll help to define a few key terms that have been touched on.

PI Planning in SAFe

If you’re adopting SAFe for the first time, chances are it will start with PI Planning. That’s because it forms the foundation of the Scaled Agile Framework.

As Scaled Agile says, "if you are not doing it, you are not doing SAFe."

Definition:

SAFe or the Scaled Agile Framework™ is a series of guidelines and practices designed to help bring agility into larger organizations, across all teams and levels of the business. The framework is geared at improving visibility, alignment, and collaboration and should lead to greater productivity, better results, and faster delivery.

Whether you’re adopting all 5 levels or just essential SAFe, the foundation of your transformation and the driver for everything is the PI Planning ceremony.

Scrum and Kanban are also agile frameworks (that you may be more familiar with), and these have historically been very effective at the individual team level. SAFe helps to scale agility across teams; to have multiple teams come together to work on the same products, objectives, and outcomes. It goes beyond the team level to include every stakeholder, outlining what should happen at each level of the organization to ensure that scaled planning is successful.

The purpose of SAFe is to improve the visibility of work and alignment across teams, which will lead to more predictable business results.

This is increasingly important for organizations as they respond to changing circumstances and customer expectations. The traditional waterfall approaches fall short because they’re slow and inefficient.

Bigger companies (often with thousands of developers) can’t keep up with the innovation of smaller, more nimble startups. Along with bigger teams, larger organizations often have stricter requirements around governance and compliance, making it more complex to launch a new feature and deliver new value to customers.

These companies are looking for new ways to organize people into projects and introduce more effective ways of working that use resources more effectively and provide more predictable delivery. If they don’t, they may not survive.

SAFe is a way for these companies to start moving in a more agile direction.

PI Planning is a vital element of SAFe. It’s a ceremony that brings together representatives from every team to help them work together, decide on top features to work on next, identify dependencies, and make a plan for the next Program Increment. As a result, there’s greater visibility across all the teams, changes are made more frequently, and teams work with each other - not against each other. From there, these massive companies can speed up their processes, work more efficiently, compete with newer and more nimble companies, and stay viable.

SAFe and PI Planning are powerful enablers for organizational agility.

While SAFe is a framework designed for larger organizations, there isn't a reason stopping smaller companies from doing a version of PI Planning, too. All you need is more than one agile team to make it worthwhile.

PI Planning in Scrum

You can also use PI Planning as part of a simple Scrum approach.

Scrum Framework diagram shows when and how scrum teams can implement PI Planning

Source: Scrum.org

Scrum is an agile framework that helps teams get things done. It’s a way for teams to plan and organize their own work and tackle user stories and tasks in smaller time boxes. This is often referred to as a sprint.

If multiple scrum teams want to work better together (but aren’t necessarily operating within SAFe), they could adopt a version of PI Planning.

For example, these scrum teams could:

• Meet every 10 weeks and discuss the features they are planning to work on
• Get product managers to combine backlogs and prioritize together
• Share resources across the teams, as needed
• Map dependencies and coordinate joint releases

The good news here is that there’s no “one size fits all” approach to PI Planning, so think about how you could adopt the ideas and principles and make it work for your organization and context.

What is the difference between a PI Roadmap and a Solution Roadmap?

There are different types of roadmaps in SAFe, so it’s important to understand the differences and what each roadmap is meant to do.

PI Roadmap

A PI Roadmap is created before your PI Planning event and also reviewed and updated by Product Management after the event is finished. It will usually cover three Program Increments:

1. The current increment (work that’s committed)
2. The next forecasted increment (planned work based on forecasted objectives)
3. The increment after that (further planned work based on forecasted objectives)

Quarterly PI Planning will outline around 9 months of work. The second and third increments on your PI Roadmap will likely change as priorities shift, but they’re still an important part of the roadmap as they forecast where the product is headed next.

Solution Roadmap

The Solution Roadmap is a longer-term forecasting and planning tool for a specific product or service.

It will usually cover a few years at a time, with more specific details available for year one (like quarterly features and capabilities), and more general information (like objectives) for year two and beyond.

What is a program?

A program is where agile teams are grouped together to form a larger group. This is often referred to as the “team-of-teams” level. In simple terms, a program is a group of agile teams.

When you hear people talking about “team-of-teams” or “scaled agile”, they mean taking agile beyond a single team, and asking more teams to join in.

For example, there might be 4 teams working on a NASA spaceship mission to Mars.

NASA decides they want to see if agile can help these teams do better work. So, to start with, the Oxygen team switches from working with traditional Waterfall project management methods to embracing agile principles.

1. Launch team
2. Food team
3. Oxygen team (Agile)
4. Landing team

After a few months, NASA decides that the way the oxygen team is working is going well, so the remaining three teams similarly adopt more agile methodologies:

1. Launch team (Agile)
2. Food team (Agile)
3. Oxygen team (Agile)
4. Landing team (Agile)

Each of these 4 teams are self-organizing, meaning they’re responsible for their own work.

However, now that these teams are all working in the same way, they can be grouped together as a program.

Once you add in the business owners, product management team, systems architect/engineer, and release train engineer, you have all the roles needed to continuously deliver systems or solutions through the Agile Release Train (ART).

What is a program board?

Program Boards are a key output of PI Planning.

Traditionally, they’re a physical board that’s mounted on the wall, with columns drawn up to mark the iterations for the increment, and a row for each team. Teams add sticky notes that describe features they’ll be working on.

• Feature 1
• Feature 2
• Feature 3

Once all the features are added, they work to identify dependencies (features that’ll affect other features) and mark this up by connecting them with red string.

SAFe program boards don’t have to be physical, though. There are a lot of advantages to using a digital program board like Easy Agile Programs, which integrates directly with Jira. We’ll talk more about how you can use Jira for PI Planning towards the end of this guide.

Equip your remote, distributed or co-located teams for success with a digital tool for PI Planning.

Easy Agile Programs

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Who is involved in PI Planning?

There are 5 key roles in a PI Planning event:

1. Release Train Engineers
2. Product Managers
3. Product Owners
4. Scrum Masters
5. Developers

Here are the responsibilities for each of these roles during PI Planning:

Release Train Engineer

The Release Train Engineer is a servant leader and coach for the ART. Their role focuses mainly on planning and facilitating the PI Planning event. This means they help:

• Establish and communicate the annual calendars
• Get everything ready (including pre and post-PI Planning meetings)
• Manage risks and dependencies
• Create Program PI Objectives from Team PI Objectives and publish them
• Track progress towards expected goals
• Ensure strategy and execution alignment
• Facilitate System Demos

As the facilitator for the 2-day event, the Release Train Engineer presents the planning process and expected outcomes for the event, plus facilitates the Management Review and Problem Solving session and retrospective.

Product Manager

A Product Manager’s job is to understand the customers’ needs and validate solutions, while understanding and supporting portfolio work.

Before PI Planning happens, Product Managers take part in the pre-PI Planning meeting, where they discuss and define inputs, objectives, and milestones for their next PI Planning events.

In PI Planning, the Product Managers present the Program vision and upcoming milestones. So that they can manage and prioritize the flow of work, they review the Draft plan and describe any changes to the planning and scope based on the Management Review & Problem Solving session. Once the PI Planning event is over, they use the Program Objectives from the Release Train Engineer to update the roadmap.

Following PI Planning, Product Managers play a critical role in communicating findings and creating Solution PI Objectives.

Product Owner

The Product Owners are responsible for maintaining and prioritizing the Team Backlog, as well as Iteration Planning. They have content authority to make decisions at the User Story level during PI Planning Team Breakout sessions.

Product Owners help the Team with defining stories, estimating, and sequencing, as well as drafting the Team’s PI Objectives and participating in the Team Confidence Vote. They’re also responsible for conveying visions and goals from upper management to the team, as well as:

• Reporting on key performance metrics
• Evaluating progress, and
• Communicating the status to stakeholders

Scrum Master

The Scrum Master is a servant leader to the Product Owner and Development team, which means they manage and lead processes while helping the team in practical ways to get things done.

They facilitate preparation for events (including PI Planning) and prepare System Demos. They help the team estimate their capacity for Iterations, finalize Team PI Objectives, and manage the timebox, dependencies, and ambiguities during Team Breakout sessions. The Scrum Master also participates in the Confidence Vote to help the team reach a consensus.

Developer

Developers are responsible for researching, designing, implementing, testing, maintaining, and managing software systems.

During PI Planning, they participate in Breakout sessions to create and refine user stories and acceptance criteria (alongside their Product Owner) and adjust the working plan. Developers help to identify risks and dependencies and to support the team in drafting and finalizing Team PI Objectives, before participating in the Team Confidence Vote.

Do you have a key role in PI Planning? See how the right tool can help you manage your release train or program better.

Watch an Easy Agile Programs product demo

How to prepare for PI Planning

If you want to succeed at PI Planning, you need to prepare.

Every PI Planning event relies on good preparation so that your organization and attendees get the most out of the event and achieve your planning objectives.

The first step is to ensure that everyone involved properly understands the planning process. All people participating in PI Planning (along with key stakeholders and Business Owners) must be clear on their role and aligned on strategy.

Any presenters will also need to get content ready for their presentations.

To ensure that the PI Planning event runs smoothly, make sure that the tools you need to facilitate planning are available and working properly. Be sure to test any tech that you are relying on ahead of time (including audio, video, internet connectivity, and access to PI Planning applications), to ensure that your distributed teams can participate in the PI Planning event. Don’t forget to plan for enough food for everyone, too (planning is hungry work).

What happens after PI Planning?

After PI Planning, teams do a planning retrospective to discuss:

• What went well
• What went not-so-well
• What could be better for next time
• There will also be a discussion of what happens next, which can include things like:
• Transcribing the objectives, user stories, and program board into your work management tool (like Jira)
• Agreeing on meeting times and locations for daily stand-ups and iteration planning
• Making sure that everyone has their belongings and leaves the event rooms clean when they go

The other thing that usually happens after PI Planning events is a post-PI Planning event.

What is a post-PI Planning event?

These are similar to the pre-PI Planning events we looked at earlier. A post-PI Planning event brings together stakeholders from all ARTs within the Solution Train to ensure they’re synchronized and aligned.

Post-PI Planning happens after all the ARTs have completed their PI Planning for the next increment. They present the plans, explain their objectives, and share milestones and expected timelines.

Like PI Planning events, post-PI Planning involves using a planning board, but rather than features, it outlines capabilities, dependencies, and milestones for each iteration and ART. Potential issues and risks are identified, discussed, and either owned, resolved, accepted, or mitigated. And similar to regular PI Planning events, plans go through a confidence vote to ensure they meet the solution’s objectives, and are reworked until the attendees average a vote of 3 or more.

Remote or hybrid PI Planning

PI Planning in person was once standard, but with teams more likely to be distributed, gathering everyone at the office isn't always feasible. This doesn't have to be a barrier.

The most important principle is to ensure that the teams who are doing the work are able to be 'present' in the planning in real-time, if not in person.

This may require some adjustments to the agenda and timing of your planning, but with forethought and support from the right technology, your PI Planning will still be effective.

Tips for remote PI Planning

Remote PI Planning is ideal for organizations with distributed teams or flexible work arrangements. It’s also a lot cheaper and less disruptive than flying folks in to do PI Planning every few months. If you have the right tools and technology, you can run PI Planning and allow everyone to participate, whether they’re in the same room or on the other side of the world.

Here are a few tips for remote PI Planning:

Embrace the cloud

Use online shared planning tools to allow your team to access and interact with information as soon as possible - ideally in real-time. Ensuring that all participants have instant access to the information simplifies the process of identifying dependencies and maintaining a centralized point of reference for your planning. This helps prevent errors that arise from working with different versions and transferring data between sources.

Livestream the event

Live-streaming audio and video from the PI Planning event is a viable alternative to in-person planning. Actively encourage your remote team members to use their cameras and microphones during the event. While it may not fully replicate the experience of having them physically present, it does come remarkably close.

Record the PI Planning event

Ideally, everyone will participate in the PI Planning live. But if your teams are distributed across multiple time zones or some team members are ill, it’s a good idea to record the event. Having a recording to refer back to could also be useful for attendees who want a refresher on anything that has been discussed.

Be ready to adapt

Some teams will change the standard PI Planning agenda to fit multiple time zones, which could mean starting the event earlier or later for some, or even running it across 3 days instead of 2.

Set expectations

A common issue that can arise from having distributed teams tune in remotely is too much noise and interference. Before your first session kicks off, communicate about when it’s acceptable to talk and when teams need to use the mute button. That way, your teams will avoid getting distracted, while still ensuring everyone can participate.

For more tips, check out our blog on how to prepare for distributed PI Planning.

Whether distributed or in person, if your team gets PI Planning right, it makes everything in the upcoming increment so much easier.

📣 Hear how PNI media have embraced virtual PI planning

Common PI Planning mistakes

PI Planning doesn’t always run smoothly, especially the first time. And the framework itself may present a challenge to some organizations. Here are some common mistakes and challenges to keep in mind (and avoid):

Long, boring sessions

Avoid starting your PI Planning event with long sessions filled with dense content. Think of creative ways to make these sessions more engaging, or break them into shorter sessions. Consider different formats that help to involve and engage participants. And be sure to make room for team planning and collaboration.

Tech issues

Any event is vulnerable to technical mishaps, but if you’re streaming audio and video to a distributed team, this can really impact the flow of the event. It’s a good idea to carefully test all the equipment and connections ahead of time to minimize potential problems.

Confidence vote

Some PI Planning participants struggle with the confidence vote concept. People may feel pressure from the room to vote for a plan to go ahead, rather than speaking up about their concerns. Failing to address issues early only increases the risk of something going wrong during the increment.

Time constraints

When you have a large ART of 10 or more teams, there are a lot of draft plans to present and review, so less time is allocated to each team. Chances are that the feedback will be of poorer quality than a smaller ART with 8 teams.

Not committing to the process

PI Planning isn’t perfect and neither is SAFe. However, the process has been proven to work for many organizations, when the organization is committed. Start with the full framework as recommended; you can adapt the framework and your PI Planning event to suit your organization, but be sure to commit to the process that follows. Anything that is half-done will not deliver full results.

Sticking with the same old tools

If something is not working, fix it. For example, too many teams stick with traditional SAFe Program Boards even though they’re not always practical. If the post-it notes keep escaping, the data entered into Jira seems incorrect, or you have a distributed team who want a digital way to be part of your PI Planning event… it’s time to upgrade to a digital program board like Easy Agile Programs.

Using Jira for PI Planning

Jira is the most popular project management tool for agile teams, so chances are you're already using it at the team level.

When you need to scale team agility as part of an ART, it can be difficult to properly visualize the work of multiple teams in Jira. The only way you can do that in the native app is by creating a multi-project board, which is rather clunky.

Traditional PI Planning on a physical board using sticky notes and string may achieve planning objectives for co-located teams, but what happens next? After the session is over, the notes and string need to be recreated in Jira for the whole team so that work can be tracked throughout the increment. This is a cumbersome and time-consuming process that is open to error as sticky notes are transcribed incorrectly, or go missing.

The best way to use Jira for PI Planning is to use an app like Easy Agile Programs to help you run your PI Planning sessions. The integrated features mean you can:

• Set up a digital Program Board (no more string and sticky notes!)
• Do cross-team planning
• Visualize and manage cross-team dependencies, create milestones
• Identify scheduling conflicts to mitigate risks
• Get aligned on committed objectives for the Program Increment
• Visualize an Increment Feature Roadmap
• Conduct confidence voting
• Transform Jira from a team-level tool to something that’s useful for the whole ART

Join companies like Bell, Cisco, and Deutsche Bahn who use Jira to do PI Planning with Easy Agile Programs (from the Atlassian Marketplace).

Looking for a PI Planning tool for Jira?

We’ll continue to revisit this guide in the future. If you have any questions about PI Planning or you notice there’s an aspect we haven’t covered yet, send us an email 📫

It’s one of the most common practices in agile software development; the flat product backlog. We’ve all seen them, we’ve all contributed to them, and we’ve all inevitably drowned in them.

In its simplest form, a flat product backlog is a laundry list of ‘stuff to do’ that will ultimately provide value to the customer. These actionable items are prioritised (top to bottom) in the order the value will be delivered. If a team is adopting the Scrum method the backlog is split into future sprints to provide an indication of what will be delivered and when.

Depending on the size and requirements of the organisation, the list of things to be done could be 10, 100 or 1,000 actionable items. It’s easy to see how managing the latter comes with the challenges of updating, assigning, grooming and scheduling these items.

What’s Wrong With Flat User Story Backlogs?

So far we know that flat backlogs represent a list of things to be done. This comes with its challenges, and its shortcomings were best described by Jeff Patton when he said;

We spend lots of time working with our customers. We work hard to understand their goals, their users, and the major parts of the system we could build. Then we finally get down to the details — the pieces of functionality we’d like to build. In my head I see a tree where the trunk is built from the goals or desired benefits that drive the system; big branches are users; the small branches and twigs are the capabilities they need; then finally the leaves are the user stories small enough to place into development iterations.



After all that work, after establishing all that shared understanding, I feel like we pull all the leaves off the tree and load them into a leaf bag — then cut down the tree.



That’s what a flat backlog is to me. A bag of context-free mulch

How do you pick an item from a list, and deem it the thing that’s going to provide the most value to your customers, without that additional context?

Shortcomings of a Flat Product Backlog

• The flat backlog makes it impossible to discover the ‘backbone’ of your product — the customers interaction experience with the product
• Arranging user stories in the order they’ll be delivered doesn’t help a product manager explain to others what the system does
• The flat backlog provides no context or ‘big picture’ around the work a team is doing
• A flat backlog makes it hard for the product manager to determine if they’ve identified the relevant user stories
• Release planning is difficult with a flat backlog. How do you prioritise what to build first in an endless laundry list?

User Story Maps

A story map is a visual representation of the journey a customer takes with a product, including the activities and tasks they complete. This visualisation helps the team to focus development on providing the most value to customers and their desired outcomes.

It provides context for teams by answering the following questions:

• Why are we building this?
• Who are we building this for?
• What value will the solution provide for the customer and when?

The story map still showcases the ‘stuff to be done’, the difference here though, is the way in which this information is visualised. As you can see, rather than listing these items out, each item is contextualised under a bigger piece of work. Besides the way the information is visualised, the key difference between a flat product backlog and a user story map, is the focus on the customer journey. Let’s unpack this by breaking down the anatomy of the user story map.

What A User Story Map Achieves that a Flat Product Backlog Can’t

• Focus on Desired Customer Outcomes: the visualisation of the customer journey allows teams to identify and implement features based on customer outcomes, and track progress at a glance against a story map
• Bring the Customer Journey to Life: the transformation of the flat product backlog to a customer centric story map means teams have a better understanding of their customer journey and what their customers want and value
• Prioritising Actions Based on Value to the Customer: visualisation of the customer journey allows teams to prioritise work based on “value to customer”, resulting in better outcomes and less waste

Are you getting lost in your flat product backlog? Are you stuck in an endless development cycle, but not really sure for who or why your building features?

Easy Agile TeamRhythm

Easy Agile TeamRhythm supports User Story Mapping, sprint or version planning, backlog refinement, and team retrospectives.

A couple of weeks ago, our partner Adaptavist released their State of the Atlassian Ecosystem Report which surveyed approximately 1,000 users of Atlassian tools and services. After reading the 50+ page document, I decided that the reports' insights were extremely valuable and worth sharing.

You can also download the full report here. It is a fantastic read and incredibly interesting for anyone working within the Atlassian ecosystem.

Key take-aways from Chief Information Officer at Adaptavist

• Despite a turbulent year, Atlassian ecosystem continues to grow and evolve. This year the company surpassed $US500 million in quarterly revenue for the first time
• For those who rely on Atlassian Server, the company’s decision to sunset its Server products has forced some soul searching and tough decision-making
• Atlassian continues to focus on driving improvements around security, customisation, and feature parity
• Let's open up collaboration across the ecosystem and find new ways to tackle the challenges that lie ahead.

Key findings

• Usage Up: Atlassian usage up despite decrease in IT spend overall. Including Jira, Access, Trello, Align and Advanced Roadmaps
• Non Tech User Up: Increase in non-technical teams using Atlassian tools including Operations and Marketing.
• Challenge: The biggest integration challenge organisations face is connecting Atlassian with other third-party apps such as Zoom, MS Office, Slack, Gitlab, Github, Salesforce.
• Cloud: Atlassian Cloud adoption is increasing slowly but surely, 28% 2020 to 34% 2021. Server represents the majority of deployment followed by DC
• Challenge: Customisation (57% concerned), app integration (48% concerned), cost, and feature functionality (43% concerned) are the main concerns about migrating to Atlassian Cloud
• Changing deployment: 65% of respondents are expecting to change how they deploy Atlassian products in the next three years. Sunset of Server spurring this.
• What people want more Automation - drives business processes, reduce operational costs and improve integration with tools
• DevOps is Up: 27% of respondents developing a DevOps strategy in next 3 years. Adoption across verticals. Why? Automates workflows, faster development cycles, better coordination across teams, improved time to market. Why not? Lack of capability, inadequate training, budget (Same as the benefits that org’s can expect from DevOps!)
• Agile Adoption Up, barriers to scaling efforts though: 67% of large enterprises (>5,000 employees) have high agile adoption intentions. Agile at scale adoption has increased from 10% in 2020 to 49% in 2021. Biggest barriers to agile at scale adoption: other priorities, current method working fine, unclear ROI. Why do org’s want to adopt agile at scale? Better team coordination, align strategy with delivery, increased visibility.

Keeping stakeholders in the loop is one of the key responsibilities of a product owner. A ton of work goes on behind the scenes before stakeholders can be presented with information about a product's deliverables and timeline. If sprints are your framework for getting work done and projecting delivery dates, the agile development team needs a way to make sure it's working through the product backlog at the right pace. The sprint burndown chart can show you the way.

In this post, we’ll talk about how to use a sprint burndown chart to monitor if your team is on track to complete its work and how putting user stories into sprints and epics generates even greater insights via user story maps.

What is a sprint burndown chart?

Image credit: Atlassian

First, a review: A sprint is a fixed period of time — typically between two and four weeks — that an agile software development team uses to complete a defined set of work.

A sprint burndown chart is a visual comparison of how much work has been completed during a sprint and the total amount of work remaining. It helps measure a Scrum team's progress, and it provides an easy view of whether the team needs to make any adjustments to complete its work for the current sprint iteration.

A burndown chart is a graph with a y-axis and x-axis 📉. The vertical axis measures the total amount of work that the team estimates it will complete during its current sprint. The horizontal axis shows the number of days remaining until the end of the sprint. On the chart are two lines: the actual work line (a line that represents the team's progress) and the ideal work line (a straight line from the top of the y-axis to the end of the x-axis).

You want your actual work line to follow your ideal work line as closely as possible. This would mean that work is being completed incrementally and at such a rate that it can be completed by the end of the sprint. Sprint goal achieved. 👍

A good practice for a team's product owner is to review the burndown chart on a daily basis. Doing so will allow you to detect if there are any progress issues happening in the sprint. For example, if your actual work line is trending above the ideal work line, then too much work remains to be completed by the end of the sprint at the current pace. We'll break down a few reasons why this may be happening later in the post. 😉

The sprint burndown chart is also a great tool to use during a sprint retrospective. Looking at this as a team can help generate talking points to discuss around the sprint retrospective's three key questions: What went well in the sprint? What didn't go as well as we hoped? How can we get better in the next sprint?

A primer on estimation methods

To measure effort on the vertical axis, we need to choose a metric.

Historically, traditional software teams used time to estimate the effort needed to complete a task or a project. For example, "I think it will take me three days to finish that user story." However, this approach can be risky because people tend to underestimate the amount of time it will take to finish a project.

The unit of measure on your sprint burndown chart's y-axis will depend on your estimation metric of choice. Let's review two common ones employed by agile sprint teams.

Ideal days

An ideal day is an estimate by a software developer of how many uninterrupted days it will take to complete a task. Assuming an ideal workday is eight hours of interruption-free work, the estimate could be stated as, "That user story will take me two ideal days." A benefit of this approach is that it accounts for work disruptions; however, it can be problematic because it often positions estimates as best-case scenarios.

Story points

Agile teams use story points as a relative estimate of effort as opposed to a time-based approach. Instead of saying, "I think this task will take me two days to finish," you would state, "I think this task is worth two story points." In this estimation technique, two story points are twice the effort than one story point.

Teams can use ideal days as a baseline to calibrate their story point estimates. For example, one ideal day can be equivalent to one story point, two ideal days to two story points, and so on.

A main benefit of using story points to estimate is that it allows teams to focus on relative measures of effort instead of thinking about how long it will take to finish a task.

Why your sprint burndown might be off track

A perfect actual burndown line is like Bigfoot — if it's been witnessed, it's probably a hoax. 😂

No team can perfectly estimate its work and develop at the exact pace represented by the ideal line. That said, if you notice large differences between your actual line and the ideal line (i.e., your actual line is much higher or lower than the ideal line), a number of things might be occurring:

• The team over- or under-committed to the amount of work at sprint planning
• Story points were added to or removed from the sprint after it started (scope creep)
• The estimated effort for some user stories is off

As a product owner, when you notice something that's off about your line after your daily review of your chart, you should mention that to your team members. The daily stand up is a perfect time to do so.

User stories and epics provide the big picture

User stories describe how a functional part of a product will work from a user's perspective. The common format of a user story reads, “As a [user role], I want to [user activity] so that I can [user goal].” For example, one might read, “As a new customer, I want to sign up for this product so that I can create my profile.”

User stories are placed in sprints to show what work (from the user's perspective) will be finished and by when. They can also be placed in epics to group them into themes within a product. Epics are widely used by agile teams to represent the high-level activity users will accomplish while using a product.

In our example above, an epic can capture all of the user stories that center around user signup, such as signing up, adding payment information, creating a user profile, and configuring notification settings.

If the sprint burndown indicates that the team is off track for a given sprint, then a combined view of sprints and epics can help you determine what impact that might have in the big picture. And, as we’ll see next, an interactive user story map can fix the problem.

User story maps: A view of epics and sprints

A sprint burndown chart is one of the handiest tools an agile software development team can use to make sure they're working and delivering at a solid pace. The burndown chart shows if any adjustments need to be made to your sprint.

User story maps provide another level of insights into team progress by:

• Showing sprints as vertical swimlanes
• Displaying epics as columns that represent the user journey through the product

This combination of swimlanes and columns unflattens your sprint backlog. It visualizes what the team will deliver and by when.

With Easy Agile User Story Maps for Jira, you can supercharge your ability to make adjustments to your sprint. It can help you:

• Create new user stories
• Edit story points on a user story
• Assign items in the backlog to an epic and a sprint

With this tool, teams can view their sprint statistics at a glance and take action. They can ensure they don't overcommit and that they're on track to achieving their sprint goals. It’s the most comprehensive user story map solution in the Jira marketplace for taking action to adjust your sprints from a big-picture viewpoint.

The sprint goal is a key aspect of any sprint, and it should be front and center throughout your two-week process. The goal ensures the team is aligned on a clear purpose for the sprint, and, if done well, the goal inspires the team to stay on track throughout the entirety of the sprint.

So, what makes a good sprint goal, and how does the sprint goal fit within the framework of a sprint? In this post, we’re going to race (or should we say sprint 😉 ) through a recap of the Scrum process, followed by a list of five critical elements of an effective sprint goal. You’ll learn how to best create, manage, and follow through on your sprint goals for a successful sprint every two weeks.

An overview of the Scrum process

We’re big fans of Scrum! Need a little refresher? Here’s how the Scrum process works and where the sprint goal fits into the whole picture.

Scrum is an agile framework used primarily by software development teams that provides team members with a streamlined workflow to meet stakeholder and customer needs. The Scrum workflow has four meetings (also known as ceremonies), which all have a distinct purpose. This structure means team members can easily support each other by sharing, tracking, and enhancing deliverables.

The Scrum framework divides work into repeating two-week sprints where a set amount of work — the sprint goal — is completed. Each Scrum begins with a sprint planning meeting, and during this time, the product owner defines the sprint goal. They choose which tasks will move from the product backlog to the sprint backlog to be completed over the following two-week sprint.

Product backlog items represent the whole picture of what needs to be accomplished before completing or releasing a product. Sprint backlog items are what the team will (hopefully) accomplish over the course of the sprint.

The Scrum Master acts as a Scrum guide who leads the team through the meetings and steps of the Scrum process. Throughout the sprint, the Scrum team meets for a daily Scrum to check in with one another and report on what work was completed over the previous 24 hours.

At the end of the sprint, a sprint review and sprint retrospective help the team gather feedback from stakeholders and improve upon their processes before the next sprint begins. The entire process repeats again with sprint planning and continues to repeat until the product or project is complete.

Easy Sprint Planning:

Drag items directly from your backlog onto your TeamRhythm User Story Map. Inline edit story summaries and story point estimates. Display your sprint goal on each sprint swimlane.

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What makes a good sprint goal?

The sprint goal keeps the team focused and aligned on what everyone is trying to accomplish for each sprint. It’s an extension of the overall product or project goals, but the sprint goal can zero in on key components the team wants to tackle for that specific sprint.

What makes a good sprint goal? Let’s find out.

1. The goal is achievable

The objective of the sprint needs to be achievable within the sprint’s allotted time frame. Generally, in a Scrum framework, the team is time-bound to two weeks.

As new information is gained and other impediments occur, there’s always a chance the sprint goal won’t be met. But that shouldn’t stop you from setting achievable goals. When a team continually fails to meet the goals of the sprint and the project, morale and enthusiasm will decline.

It’s crucial that sprint goals are manageable within the allotted time of the sprint. Sprint goals can become too large when a team tries to accomplish too many different components at once or if too much of the product backlog makes it into the sprint backlog. Rather, take a reasonably achievable workload out of the product backlog to form the sprint backlog. Otherwise, you’ll end up with one daunting overall list and no clear direction for each sprint.

2. The team understands the definition of done

The clearer the sprint goal, the better. You need to clearly define the goals of the sprint and what it means to be done. How will the team know if they achieved the desired outcomes? What does “done” look like? Does everyone agree on this definition for every given task and the overall goals of the sprint?

Your goals need to be measurable to limit ambiguity, subjectivity, or conflicting opinions around the success of the sprint.

When a team is aligned, and everyone understands what needs to be accomplished, decision-making improves, and each aspect of the Scrum team can work harmoniously toward the same aims.

3. The sprint goal is meaningful to the team

Beyond knowing what the team hopes to accomplish over the course of each sprint, the team needs to understand the reasoning behind the sprint goal.

Make sure everyone understands why they are working towards a specific sprint goal. What meaning does the sprint goal have? Ideally, the meaning of the sprint goal will relate back to stakeholder needs, the customer journey, or the user experience of your product.

Visualize and prioritize the work that will deliver the most value to your customers

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4. The sprint goal aligns with the overall product goals

The sprint goal can zero in on a specific aspect of product development, but it should still connect to the overall product goals.

While creating sprint goals, ensure the overarching product vision isn’t lost or ignored. Every sprint, while specific to its own set of goals, should work toward accomplishing your product goals.

5. The sprint goal is visible throughout the sprint

The sprint goal can’t be a “set it and forget it” aspect of your sprint. It should be visible to the team the entire time, and the team needs to continually check in on the goal to ensure they’re on track to achieve it.

The shared goal should be front and center of daily Scrum meetings. If possible, display the sprint goal for everyone to see. As you accomplish backlog items and work through the sprint, continually reference the sprint goal and the progress you are making toward it. How likely are you to achieve the sprint goal considering the time you have remaining in the sprint? What might be standing in the way of achieving this goal?

During the sprint retrospective, you should discuss the success or lack of success the team made on the sprint goal. What went well and contributed to your success? What didn’t go so well that you could change or do differently for the next sprint?

With Easy Agile TeamRhythm, each scrum board in Jira will have an associated User Story Map.

Throughout the sprint, the team can refer to the User Story Map to make sure they’re on schedule, coordinate dependencies, and keep sight of the big picture.

TAKE A PRODUCT TOUR

A customer-centric approach

Let’s recap a few of the most important factors to remember when establishing and following through on your sprint goal:

✅ Ensure the goal is achievable.

✅ Ensure the team understands the definition of done.

✅ Ensure the sprint goal is meaningful for the team.

✅ Ensure the sprint goal aligns with the overall product goals.

✅ Ensure the sprint goal is visible throughout the sprint.

Thanks for sticking with us and utilizing the Easy Agile blog. We’re passionate about helping teams work better with agile. We have a suite of Jira apps designed to keep the customer top-of-mind through every step of the development process.

Looking for a tool to streamline your sprint planning sessions? Check out Easy Agile TeamRhythm, which transforms the flat product backlog into a meaningful picture of work.

The retrospective is a critical part of the agile process, providing an outlet for teams to discuss how they can improve. A sprint retrospective comes at the end of each sprint and offers the team an opportunity to assess their processes.

What went well? What didn’t go so well? What does the team need to do to improve next time? Agile is all about learning and iterating. Every time you complete a sprint, there are lessons to be learned. Agile continually takes what a team learns — the good, the bad, and the bland — and turns those experiences into actionable improvements.

This post will dig into sprint retrospectives, including the benefits, how they fit within the Scrum process, how to run an effective sprint retrospective meeting, and common mistakes to avoid.

The purpose of the sprint retrospective

The sprint retrospective is a dedicated time for team discussion. The time is allotted at the end of each sprint so that all team members can examine what went well and what needs to change. It’s all part of the greater agile methodology of continually improving your processes as you learn more. There’s no one set way of doing things, and there’s always room to become more efficient and effective.

A sprint retrospective:

• Encourages a continuous improvement mindset
• Creates a safe space for sharing positive and constructive feedback
• Gives everyone on the team an opportunity to express thoughts, ideas, and experiences
• Provides feedback in real-time after each sprint
• Brings the team together around common goals
• Exposes any issues from the previous sprint that are holding the team back
• Informs leadership of success and potential roadblocks
• Helps product owners make decisions for the next sprint planning
• Sets the team on a positive path for moving into the next sprint

How the sprint retrospective fits within the Scrum process

The type of retrospective you hold depends on the type of sprint or agile methodology your team practices. One of the most common methodologies in software development is the Scrum framework.

A Scrum team has three types of roles:

• Product Owner
• Scrum Master
• Development team

At the beginning of each Scrum, the product owner decides which items from the overall product backlog are moved to the sprint backlog to be completed over the upcoming 2-4 week sprint. The exact sprint timeframe is set in advance.

The Scrum is made up of four distinct ceremonies or events:

• Sprint planning
• Daily Scrum or stand-ups
• Sprint review
• Sprint retrospective

After planning is complete and the team knows which backlog items they are going to tackle for the current sprint, the work begins. The team checks in throughout the sprint via a daily scrum or stand-up meeting. This quick but essential check-in allows the Scrum team to discuss their progress and address any potential roadblocks on a daily basis.

The sprint review meeting takes place at the end of the sprint; it’s an opportunity for Scrum team members to showcase the work accomplished during the sprint. This could be an internal presentation or a more formal demo to stakeholders.

Last comes the incredibly important Scrum retrospective. During this time, the team can discuss what went well and what could be improved so the upcoming sprint can run more efficiently. Anything that’s learned along the way or discovered in the retrospective is brought into the next sprint planning session. This Scrum process repeats until there are no more product backlog items or the product is complete.

How to run an effective sprint retrospective meeting

The retrospective is a critical part of the agile process that should be treated with care and respect. Go in with a plan. Winging it might get you by, but everyone will get more out of the process if the person or people leading the retrospective is prepared.

Use our strategies below to run effective retrospectives that everyone looks forward to.

1. Ensure everyone’s voice is heard

The loudest voices in a sprint retrospective often get the most attention and speaking time, but they don’t necessarily have better insights than anyone else. Each person involved in the sprint process should be given an opportunity to speak.

If you find a few people are dominating the conversation or that some people never contribute, switch up your strategy to include everyone. Go around the room one by one with a question that each person needs to answer, such as “What do you think went well in this sprint?” or “What was your biggest challenge?”

2. Start, stop, continue

The 'Start, Stop, Continue' retrospective format can be expressed in many forms, but the general practice is the same. At the end of a sprint, you decide what you want to start doing, what you want to stop doing, and what you want to continue doing as you move into your next sprint. It’s a simple format that covers both what went well and what didn’t go so well.

Other versions of this exercise include the Rose Bud Thorn exercise, where participants share something positive, a budding opportunity, and a negative to improve upon. There’s also the Anchors and Sails exercise, where participants share what put wind in their sails (went well) and what anchored them down.

3. Establish specific action items

The retrospective is a waste of time if you don’t leave with specific action items. What is your team going to do about the issues brought up in the meeting? Ensure you keep track of the issues and the positive feedback people provide so that you can turn them into actionable tasks or goals before the meeting is complete.

You can’t implement absolutely every change that is brought up, but the discussion should give you a place to start. Work with the team to figure out what changes will provide the most impact. You can use an impact effort matrix or similar agile tools to make informed choices.

4. Retrospective the retrospective

Every now and again, take the time to review your retrospective. Ask for feedback from all team members on how the process could improve. What would make the experience easier on the team? What would they like to see implemented? What hasn’t been working during your recurring retros?

Wow, that’s getting a little meta, but it’s an important step. You need to continually assess your retrospective as well to make sure you’re getting the most out of the experience.

One thing to watch for: When people are bored, they engage less, which means it’s important to switch things up. You don’t want your retrospective process to run stagnant or lose its effectiveness.

5. Review action items at the next sprint retrospective

Make sure the hard work of your retrospective pays off. At the beginning of the next retrospective, take a small bit of time to review your previous action items. What goals and action items did you leave the last retrospective with? Did you accomplish what you set out to do, or do you still need to work at it?

Common retrospective mistakes to avoid

Avoid these common mistakes when running sprint retrospective meetings:

❌ Allowing a few people to dominate the conversation

❌ Not empowering softer voices

❌ Jumping to conclusions without a thorough discussion

❌ Asking the same questions over and over without mixing things up

❌ Forgetting about or not implementing the action items of the previous retrospective

❌ Skipping a retrospective due to lack of time or resources

❌ Forgetting about stakeholder and customer needs

❌ Failing to improve upon your retrospective process

Put your retrospective ideas into action with Easy Agile TeamRhythm

Sprint retrospectives help the entire team learn from each experience and improve. Doing them effectively means evaluating the retrospective itself, empowering voices, and listening to them.

We’re passionate about putting the needs of the customer first and foremost. Easy Agile builds products specifically designed for Jira users to help agile teams work more efficiently and effectively.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm supports the work of your agile team from planning right through to retrospective, encouraging continuous improvement so you're always getting better at what you do, and delivering better for your customers.

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It’s time to get things done and hand over the project to the programmers. But before they get their hands dirty, someone must plan the Scrum sprint or iteration. The Sprint Planning meeting is one of Scrum’s ceremonies, and it's the sprint's opening event. 🎬

Let's walk you through the event and explain how to prepare and hold one successfully. You'll also learn who participates in Sprint Planning and why the meeting is so important.

What's a Sprint Planning meeting?

Sprint Planning is a Scrum meeting. It kicks off a sprint, so it occurs on the first day of a new sprint. If applicable, it should occur after the Sprint Review and the Sprint Retrospective from the previous iteration.

Sprint Planning aims to decide the deliverables for the upcoming sprint and define a plan to develop the work.

The entire Scrum Team (the Product Owner, the Scrum Master, and the Development Team) collaborates during Sprint Planning.

Can you imagine a successful project without planning? 🙅 We can't either, so we don’t start a Scrum sprint without planning it.

To plan a Scrum sprint, you need to decide:

• The sprint's duration — remember that a sprint is a timebox
• The sprint goal, which is its purpose and represents the product increment's value to the customer
• The work that the Development Team can complete during the sprint, what work items the team should do first to achieve the sprint goal, and how long they should take considering the team's capacity

Additionally, Sprint Planning should motivate the team and set realistic expectations.

By the end of the Sprint Planning meeting, the team must produce the following outcomes:

• A shared understanding of the sprint goal. This goal is the guideline for evaluating the Development Team's work once the sprint is over.
• The Sprint Backlog. This artifact represents the conversation between the Development Team and the Product Owner on the to-do work. It's the result of a balance between customer value and development effort.

Now, each Sprint Planning meeting requires some preparation. Read on about who should do it and what it entails.

How do you prepare for Sprint Planning?

The Product Owner should follow these steps to set the foundation for successful Sprint Planning:

• Combine the output of the previous Sprint Review, feedback from stakeholders such as management and customers, and the product vision
• Update and, if necessary, refine the product backlog
• Know the customer value that the development team needs to create in an increment

So, once all the preparation is over, it's time for the Sprint Planning meeting to take place.

How should the meeting go?

1. The Product Owner indicates the Product Backlog items — and corresponding priorities — that they consider the next sprint's best candidates. Items can be user stories, tasks, or bugs. The Product Owner proposes those items according to customer value and product vision.
2. Based on effort estimates and the Product Owner's proposal, the development team selects the product backlog items to work on during the current sprint. By promoting those items to sprint backlog items, developers agree on the sprint goal with the Product Owner.
3. Although optional, the team might discuss dependencies between items and who should work on each one of them.

Very few steps, right? However, some practical actions should add on to these steps. Discover what those actions are below.

How do you execute a successful Sprint Planning meeting?

1. Limit the meeting's duration. ⏳ Sprint Planning shouldn't take longer than 1-2 hours per sprint week. That means the meeting shouldn't take more than 2-4 hours for a two-week sprint.

2. Let the Scrum Master be the guardian of time. They're the ones responsible for ensuring that the meeting happens within the defined timebox.

3. Hold the meeting on the same day and at the same time every time. 📅 Team members can be quite busy and have full agendas. That's why reserving a slot in every participant's agenda is a good practice.

4. Define valuable, clear outcomes. 🎁 Those, together with a clear sprint backlog, increase the Development Team's motivation. Producing the right outcomes is pure satisfaction, and a clear work plan is the recipe to achieve that.

5. Make sure that the Scrum Master guarantees these things. First, that the conversation between the Development Team and the Product Owner is fruitful. They should all agree on the sprint goal. Second, that the developers make good choices when moving product backlog items to the sprint backlog. Selecting an item that is feasible for the sprint duration, team capacity, and workload is a good choice.

It might seem easy, but this is not all there is to do during Sprint Planning. There's a bunch of things to avoid.

If we were to give you some advice...

Make effort estimates against the development team's capacity. To decide on the amount of work that the team can accomplish in a sprint, consider the team's capacity. (And remember, estimates are just that — estimates.) Developers consider their previous experience, yet each sprint is unique and might change over its course. However, considering team capacity improves the accuracy of effort estimation. Additionally, story points might help the team with effort estimation.

Consider that the development team's ability to estimate should improve over time. Therefore, the team should not critique less accurate effort estimates after the sprint. Otherwise, the team will take much longer to estimate or provide much bigger estimates next time.

Don't try to plan every single thing during Sprint Planning. Leave the idea of coming up with the most complete, perfect Sprint Backlog ever at the front door. After all, Scrum is all about flexibility, and "Better done than perfect." So, a Sprint Backlog that’s complete enough to get developers started is just what it needs to be. Remember that solving complex problems requires a learn-by-doing approach, which turns planning into an equally complex job.

Figure out a realistic expectation for the sprint's outcome. Setting unrealistic expectations for the increment that the development team can produce over a sprint is not a good idea. It might make developers frustrated that they couldn't deliver, which can seriously affect their motivation and performance. On the other hand, realistic expectations set the team for success and a sense of accomplishment. Besides, they facilitate the conversation between the developers and the Product Owner so they can agree on the sprint goal.

Have a well-refined product backlog. It must be detailed enough to allow the Development Team to understand what the work items are about. You don't want to waste precious Sprint Planning time splitting work items into a maximum of one per day. Define and follow a backlog refinement process and ensure that Product Backlog items meet your definition of ready.

Propose a clear sprint goal. 🎯 The Product Owner must be very clear on the expected customer value for the increment. Otherwise, the development team might choose a set of product backlog items that don’t relate to one another. The result could be unexpected outcomes and a low sense of accomplishment.

Clarify the definition of done with the Development Team. Knowing what work done means in the current sprint helps the developers meet the expectations. That's because they can better understand what to do to create the increment. Also, a clear definition of done makes the Development Team more confident when estimating effort.

Strong Sprint Planning makes your project stronger

If you're following the Scrum framework, Sprint Planning is not a choice. Nevertheless, if you ever feel tempted to skip it, bookmark this article and read the following. 📑

It's easier to understand the sprint goal, to-do work, and sprint outcomes with a successful Sprint Planning meeting. If the team doesn't know where it's heading and how to get there, it gets really tough to satisfy customer needs. It's equally hard to deliver your customers valuable increments if you don't organize work by priorities.

Sprint Planning is about instilling clarity and organizing work before it's too late in the iteration. It's also about involving the whole team in preparing for all the effort that a sprint demands. A note: Keep in mind that a sprint plan must fit into a sprint's timebox and consider the team capacity.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm is perfect for Sprint Planning. It's a fast, straightforward, visual, and collaborative tool that allows you to:

• Drag items directly from the product backlog onto the user story map
• Register effort estimates in user stories
• Edit story point estimates
• Prioritize user stories in each sprint by ordering them inside the respective sprint swimlane
• Analyze sprint statistics to ensure that the planned work doesn't exceed the team's capacity and the sprint goal is realistic
• Visualize what the team will deliver and when by arranging user stories into sprint swimlanes

Let us know if you have any questions about Easy Agile TeamRhythm. We highly recommend it to your Scrum project, and our customers recommend the same.

Software development teams are known for using a wide variety of agile methodologies, approaches, and tools to bring value to customers. Depending on the needs of the team and the product's stakeholders, it’s common for teams to deploy and utilize a combination of software development methodologies.

Most dev teams combine methodologies and frameworks to build their own unique approach to product development. You’ll find there are plenty of overlapping principles from one methodology to the next. The key is choosing a system and working as a team to fine-tune and improve that approach so you can continue to reduce waste, maximize efficiency, and master collaboration.

In this post, we’ll outline and compare the following eight software development processes:

1. Agile software development methodology

2. Waterfall methodology

3. Feature driven development (FDD)

4. Lean software development methodology

5. Scrum software development methodology

6. Extreme programming (XP)

7. Rapid application development (RAD)

8. DevOps deployment methodology

1. Agile software development methodology

Agile is the most common term used to describe development methods. It’s often used as an umbrella term to label any methodology that’s agile in nature, meaning an iterative process that reduces waste and maximizes efficiency.

Most software development methodologies are agile with a strong emphasis on iteration, collaboration, and efficiency, as opposed to traditional project management. It’s like comparing jazz to classical music. 🎷

Traditional, linear management methods, such as the waterfall method we’ll cover below, are like classical music, led by one conductor who has a set plan for how the music should be played. The agile process, on the other hand, is more like jazz, which comes together through collaboration, experimentation, and iteration between band members. It’s adaptive and evolves with new ideas, situations, and directions.

2. The waterfall methodology

The waterfall approach is a traditional methodology that’s not very common in software development anymore. For many years, the waterfall model was the leading methodology, but its rigid approach couldn’t meet the dynamic needs of software development.

It’s more common to see the waterfall method used for project management rather than product development. At the beginning of a project, project managers gather all of the necessary information and use it to make an informed plan of action up front. Usually, this plan is a linear, step-by-step process with one task feeding into the next, giving it the “waterfall” name.

The approach is plan-driven and rigid, leaving little room for adjustments. It’s more or less the opposite of agile, prioritizing sticking to the plan rather than adapting to new circumstances.

3. Feature driven development (FDD)

Feature driven development is also considered an older methodology. Although it uses some agile principles, it’s viewed as the predecessor of today’s agile and lean methodologies.

As the name says, this process focuses on frequently implementing client-valued features. It’s an iterative process with all eyes on delivering tangible results to end users. The process is adaptive, improving based on new data and results that are collected regularly to help software developers identify and react to errors.

This kind of focused agile methodology can work for some teams that want a highly structured approach and clear deliverables while still leaving some freedom for iteration.

4. Lean software development methodology

Lean software development comes from the principles of lean manufacturing. At its core, lean development strives to improve efficiency by eliminating waste. By reducing tasks and activities that don’t add real value, team members can work at optimal efficiency.

The five lean principles provide a workflow that teams use to identify waste and refine processes. Lean is also a guiding mindset that can help people work more efficiently, productively, and effectively.

The philosophies and principles of lean can be applied to agile and other software development methodologies. Lean development provides a clear application for scaling agile practices across large or growing organizations.

5. Scrum software development methodology

Scrum is a system regularly used by software development teams. Like many software development methodologies, Scrum is agile, focusing on a value-driven approach. The Scrum process is based on empiricism, which is the theory that knowledge comes from hands-on experience and observable facts.

One Scrum takes place over a preset amount of time called a sprint. Usually, the time frame is between two to four weeks and the Scrum is at the beginning of the sprint. The goal of each sprint is to yield an imperfect but progressing version of a product to bring to stakeholders so that feedback can be integrated right away into the next sprint.

The specific goals of each sprint are determined by a product owner who orders and prioritizes backlog items (the artifacts that need completion). The sprint process repeats over and over again with the development team adjusting and iterating based on successes, failures, and stakeholder feedback.

Learn more about Scrum — the complete program planning solution for Jira.

6. Extreme programming (XP)

Extreme programming, also called XP, is a methodology based on improving software quality and responsiveness. It’s an agile approach that evolves based on customer requirements; the ultimate goal is producing high-quality results. Quality isn’t just limited to the final product — it applies to every aspect of the work, ensuring a great work experience for developers, programmers, and managers.

Decision-making in extreme programming is based on five values: communication, simplicity, feedback, courage, and respect. The specifics of XP can’t apply to all situations, but the general framework can provide value no matter the context.

7. Rapid application development (RAD)

Rapid application development (RAD), sometimes called rapid application building (RAB), is an agile methodology that aims to produce quality results at a low-cost investment. The process prioritizes rapid prototyping and frequent iteration.

Rapid application development begins with defining the project requirements. From there, teams design and build imperfect prototypes to bring to stakeholders as soon as possible. Prototyping and building repeat over and over through iterations until a product is complete and meets customer requirements.

This is ideal for smaller projects with a well-defined objective. The process helps developers make quick adjustments based on frequent feedback from stakeholders. It’s all about creating quick prototypes that can get in front of users for constructive feedback as soon as possible. This feedback is pulled into the user design so that development decisions are based on the direct thoughts and concerns of those who will use the product.

8. DevOps deployment methodology

The DevOps deployment methodology is a combination of Dev (software development) and Ops (information technology operations). Together, they create a set of practices designed to improve communication and collaboration between the departments responsible for developing a product.

It's an ongoing loop of communication between product developers and Ops teams (IT operations.) Like so many agile processes, it relies on continuous feedback to help teams save time, increase customer satisfaction, improve launch speed, and reduce risks.

The steps of DevOps deployment repeat, aiming to increase customer satisfaction with new features, functionality, and improvements. However, this methodology has some drawbacks. Some customers don’t want continuous updates to their systems once they are satisfied with an end product.

Software development made easy

Most software development teams use a combination of methodologies and frameworks to fit their team size, team dynamics, and the type of work being completed. The key is to use an agile methodology and work together to continually improve your systems as you learn and grow.

Easy Agile is dedicated to helping teams work better together with agile. We design agile apps for Jira with simple, collaborative, and flexible functionality. From team agility with Easy Agile TeamRhythm, to scaled agility with Easy Agile Programs, our apps can help your agile teams deliver better for your customers.

Book a 1:1 demo to learn more about our suite of Jira tools, or contact our team if you have additional questions. We offer a free, 30-day trial, so you can try out our products before making a commitment.

A sprint backlog is like an agile team's treasure map — checking off each item is like visiting a different place on the map. By the end of a sprint or iteration, the team will have delivered previously agreed outcomes and ultimately achieved their sprint goal. This is like getting to the ✖️ on a treasure map.

Join us as we find the answers you need to successfully complete each sprint. You'll learn about a sprint backlog’s purpose, plus who creates, owns, updates, and uses it.

What's a sprint backlog?

A sprint backlog consists of the items that need to be completed in order to get to the sprint goal. It should go into artifact during the sprint planning meeting. A sprint backlog has three parts:

• The sprint. Each sprint backlog targets a specific iteration.
• The sprint goal. This is the higher level aim for each sprint. To achieve it, the development team completes certain items from the product backlog.
• A plan. The sprint backlog represents a plan to deliver a product increment by the end of the sprint. It's organized to allow for progress tracking with to-do, in-progress, and done items, plus effort estimations and remaining workload.

The sprint backlog should always be accessible and up-to-date so that the development team understands the work and can see what is coming up next. It should also have enough detail to allow tracking work progress.

Each sprint starts with a sprint backlog, and the artifact's lifespan equals the sprint's duration. You may expect to find work items — user stories, tasks, or bugs — in it.

The sprint backlog is the development team's go-to home to find all the ideas for what to work on. At every Daily Stand-Up,, the team looks at it to let others know what they did the day before. Additionally, they recall or adjust priorities based on what they need to do for the next day(s).

🧐 During the Daily Stand-Up, developers also use the sprint backlog to evaluate the sprint's progress.

The sprint backlog is not only a way of keeping the development team's eyes on the prize. 👀 It's also a way to discuss how well they achieved the sprint goal.

At any point in a sprint, to-do, in-progress, and done items are included in the sprint backlog for anyone to review and use to calculate the remaining workload. This helps verify if the development team is on track to achieve the sprint goal. ✌️

Jira provides a burndown chart to check the development team's work. This displays the remaining workload for the current sprint. In addition, the chart shows:

• Work in progress
• The distribution of work throughout the iteration

A Jira burndown chart also helps evaluate whether additional items fit into the sprint and effort estimations were accurate.

🛑 Keep in mind that you don't need a sprint backlog if you follow the Kanban framework. That’s because Kanban isn’t about working in timeboxes (the sprints).

Now, the sprint backlog isn't an off-the-shelf artifact that you can use in your project — every project is unique. So, someone must be responsible for populating the sprint backlog with work items.

Besides defining what a sprint backlog is, we should discuss what sets them apart from product backlogs.

Sprint backlogs vs. product backlogs

Though their names are similar, a sprint backlog and product backlog serve different purposes. A product backlog is:

• A collection of work items to either bring a new product to the market or improve an existing product
• A list of work items to tackle in the future
• A set of work items arranged by priority, with the most priority at the top
• The source of the sprint backlog items

On the other hand, a sprint backlog is:

• A subset of work items from the product backlog
• A group of items to work on during the next sprint

Here’s how the two backlogs meet: The product backlog provides work items for a sprint backlog. And, by the end of a sprint, the team might transfer incomplete work to the next sprint or the product backlog. If the work items have high priority, they should go into the next sprint. If not, they should go into the product backlog for a later sprint.

Essentially, a product backlog covers a greater amount of time than a sprint backlog. However, like the sprint backlog, the product backlog might evolve to reflect changes in the market or customer needs and, the development team needs both in order to deliver product changes.

Now, the sprint backlog isn't an off-the-shelf artifact that you can use in your project — every project is unique. So, someone must be responsible for populating the sprint backlog with work items.

Who owns and creates sprint backlogs?

Here are the team members involved in creating sprint backlogs:

• The Scrum Master. During the Sprint Planning ceremony, the Scrum Master uses the product backlog to create the sprint backlog — the output. However, the Scrum Master doesn't do it alone.
• The development team. When moving product backlog items to the sprint backlog, the Scrum Master considers the development team's input. ⚖️
• The Product Owner. The Scrum Master needs the Product Owner's agreement to include product backlog items in the sprint backlog. 👌 And if the development team has questions about the product backlog, the Product Owner is the one to ask.

The sprint backlog's creation is one part of the agile workflow that shows how essential teamwork is to agile. Nevertheless, the sprint backlog must always be owned by someone throughout the workflow. Otherwise, these artifacts can get lost and become outdated.

Scrum methodology says that the whole agile team owns the Sprint Backlog. And by "agile team," we mean the Scrum Master, the Product Owner, and the development team.

That’s because all agile team members contribute:

• The Product Owner knows what the development team should deliver by the end of the sprint. Plus, they order product backlog items by priority. In other words, the Product Owner constrains the product backlog items that should go into the next sprint backlog.
• The Scrum Master has enough experience to distribute the development team's work throughout the sprint. When considering sprint backlog item dependencies, that distribution makes the most sense.
• The development team knows how long similar Sprint Backlog items take to complete. ⏲️ This means they can determine the sprint goal's feasibility within a certain time frame.

Remember, the sprint backlog is a living document, so team members should update it as needed. Let’s look at how a sprint backlog can change.

Updating the sprint backlog

The sprint backlog should adapt to answer market trends and customer needs as they arise. Those changes might influence items in the product backlog and how they’re prioritized. As a result, the sprint backlog changes.

Let's have a look at what may cause a sprint backlog to change and who makes the updates:

1. Effort estimations were not accurate enough. If the development team realizes that some work items will take longer than expected, they should raise a 🚩. They should then negotiate the scope of the sprint backlog with the Product Owner without compromising the sprint goal.
2. A new, higher-priority user story, task, or bug comes up. If that happens, the development team should add it to the sprint backlog. That might impact the sprint's duration or push some items to the next sprint.
3. Progress in completing a user story or a task or solving a bug changes daily. As this happens, the development team should keep updating the remaining workload they estimated for the current sprint. And they should do it during the Daily Stand-Up or Daily Scrum meeting. Once the development team finishes all the work in the sprint backlog, they achieve the sprint goal. This means the development team implemented the product increment, which is ready for delivery. 📦
4. A sprint backlog item is no longer needed. This might be due to a shift in the market or customer needs. If that happens, the development team should remove the item from the artifact. 🗑️
5. The development team better understands sprint backlog requirements as the sprint continues. So, they might realize that to achieve the sprint goal, they need to include more items in the sprint backlog.

The sprint backlog: A guide for sprint success

A sprint backlog is a guide for completing a sprint goal. This means that its lifecycle is short and equals the iteration's duration. It's a visual representation of the sprint that supports Scrum team discussions on in-progress and to-do work.

This backlog may also be the most reassuring Scrum artifact for developers, as it assures them the work is organized and no additional work items will fall from the sky without their knowledge. If the workload must increase, the team will debate it and weigh the developers' experience-based opinion.

With a sprint backlog, the team perfects its ability to plan sprints, estimate effort, and allocate resources. They learn how long work takes and how much of it fits into a sprint. And by learning this, the team learns the resources they need to get to the finish line.

Easy Agile TeamRhythm is collaborative sprint planning tool that helps your team with the shared context that the story map format provides. TeamRhythm helps your team to:

• Visualize a meaningful picture of work on the user story map, sequenced into sprint swimlanes
• Create, estimate and prioritize user stories right on the story map
• See comitment at a glance with sprint statistics and sprint goals displayed on each swimlane

Try planning your sprints with Easy Agile TeamRhythm. We’re confident it will help your team collaborate even more seamlessly.

You can stick to manual Scrum workflow, or you can automate with free Jira software. We know which method we prefer.

Whichever you choose, implementing the Scrum framework creates a streamlined workflow. Each person has a specific role throughout the framework's steps.

The Scrum workflow provides team members with a simple process to help teams meet stakeholder needs.

While agile methodology aligns with Scrum, Kanban, and Lean, here, we’ll focus on what a Scrum workflow is and how this methodology can support organizational teamwork.

What is Scrum?

Teams use the Scrum framework to guide their workflow. Having a structure to follow means they can easily share, track and improve their deliverables.

Scrum divides work into smaller work parcels known as sprints, which typically last 2-4 weeks. Once the sprint is over, team members do a sprint retrospective meeting (also known as a sprint review) to chat about what worked well and what can be improved.

Scrum roles

Let’s look at the different roles that make up a Scrum team.

1. Product owner

The product owner has a core role in the Scrum workflow. They guide agile team discussions about product backlog items and features. In addition, product owners guide quality assurance to make sure deliverables are up to par.

2. Scrum Master

The Scrum Master will closely follow the principles in the agile manifesto to support sprint planning. Scrum masters guide development teams through agile methods to add value for stakeholders.

3. Software development team

Development teams are skillful and cross-functional. Teams that work in agile software development environments will typically include designers, developers, testers, and others to prevent the need for external assistance.

With the basics in place, we can take a closer look at the agile workflow stages.

Components of the Scrum workflow

The Jira workflow involves an iterative feedback cycle that focuses on creating value throughout the product development process. You can use the basic Scrum workflow steps or customize these.

The parts of an agile workflow are as follows.

1. Backlog development

A product roadmap guides team members in creating user stories and product requirements, which make up the sprint backlog. In the backlog, teams propose a list of features or user stories that the team must deliver. Product owners decide which features will make up the backlog.

2. Backlog release

Produce owner and team collaboration now decide which user stories will make it into each backlog release. Each backlog release is the completion of a smaller set of activities which eventually make up a sprint release. After completing this planning and setting timeframes for each action item, team members choose specific features for each sprint.

3. Sprint work

In a sprint, team members complete a set of backlog tasks within predetermined timeframes (usually 14-28 days). During this time, the agile team builds the product features from a specific sprint backlog.

Scrum or sprint meeting

Teams also hold Scrum or sprint meetings. During sprint meetings, the team sets a sprint goal (usually work on a specific feature). They agree on which product backlog items to complete in order to complete this product iteration. The team will prioritize, plan, and estimate the time needed to complete each task within the sprint.

Daily stand-ups

Agile teams use these daily standup meetings to track their agile workflow towards meeting sprint goals. Daily standup meetings are typically held — naturally — standing up, as they should last no more than 15 minutes. Standup meetings help teams discuss solutions to daily work issues.

4. The burndown chart

Team members can use Jira software to create their burndown charts. Burndown charts show original time estimates compared to real-time activities, which shows where expectations or team resources need to be adjusted.

5. Testing

During testing, the team demonstrates product functionalities for stakeholders. Feedback from product testing guides any needed changes.

6. Sprint retrospective and follow-up planning

The final phase of the Jira workflow is to hold a sprint retrospective. Sprint retrospectives are post-mortems on the previous workflow. At this stage, agile teams question what they did well, what didn't go as they hoped, and what changes they should make in the next sprint. Groups hold these sprint retrospectives to concentrate on better value deliverables through continuous improvement.

Jira software offers a visual display of the team's velocity, task progress, and project status. All these elements link back to the user story, and the group begins a new lifecycle to complete their project.

Create your Jira Scrum workflow in a few simple steps

You can either carry on using a manual Scrum process or transition to an automated Jira workflow for Scrum.

To create an automated, custom workflow, go to the Jira workflow designer. From there, you can manage the workflow scheme for your Jira project. You can also organize backlogs, complex workflows, workflow statuses, or view an issue status using custom fields.

In your workflow, you can:

• Use statuses like "In progress" or "Under review."
• View status items on lines for transitions.
• See issue resolutions.
• Check conditions that restrict assignee roles in bumping up issues to the following stage.
• Use validators to limit who can make transitions.
• Link further changes with transitions.
• Use triggers for automating transitions within specific parameters.
• Set workflow properties for transitions.
• Establish a link between the simple or complex workflow and issue types using workflow schemes.

As the agile team goes through the product lifecycle in a series of sprints, they need a tool to guide their journey.

With the free Easy Agile Scrum Workflow for Jira plugin, you can move Jira issues between the "To do," "In progress," and "Done" sections. You can also use the top right button to drag and drop specific issue types in the "Backlog" and "Selected for development" areas on the board.

More features from the Jira workflow plugin

In terms of automation, plenty of tools are available. You can use Easy Agile’s free Jira workflow plugin as valuable support for agile project management. This can help you create complex workflows and save all the details in the Jira cloud, ensuring nothing is ever lost. The free Jira workflow plugin also includes your burndown chart and sprint report.

Add the Confluence wiki tool to your Jira software for greater team collaboration. Also, use the Team Calendars add-on for better team collaboration.

Automate your Jira workflow now

Don’t wait for providence to come knocking on your door. Automate your Scrum workflow today with software that works.

We design agile apps for Jira with simple, collaborative, and flexible functionality. From team agility with Easy Agile TeamRhythm, to scaled agility with Easy Agile Programs, our apps can help your agile teams work better together, and deliver for your customers.