Agile with Atlassian JIRA

Agile teams use “just enough” planning and an incremental approach to accomplishing the work of the team. Every project and every team uses a custom agile methodology. This course discusses common foundational principles and practices used by agile methodologies, providing the student a flexible set of tools to use in any role (e.g. product owner, scrum master, project manager, team member) on any agile team.

Students can use the free plan of Atlassian Jira Software Cloud to complete the hands-on labs associated with this course. By the time you have completed this course, you will have a strong foundational understanding of agile principles and practices, and strong hands-on experience with Atlassian Jira Software Cloud. You will be the site administrator for your Jira account, so you will be able to perform basic administration tasks on your site. You should be able to continuously configure your Jira project(s) to match your team’s custom agile methodology. You can watch the videos and take the quizzes from your phone if you want, but the hands-on labs using Atlassian Jira Software Cloud require you to have a Windows, Mac or Linux computer. This course tries to be as concise as possible. It will probably take you about 6-12 hours to go through, but your mileage may vary. It is highly encouraged that you apply what you learn to managing personal agile projects after the course is complete.

Who Should Attend

• Agile Team members
• Agile Scrum Master or Facilitator 
• Project managers entering the Agile environment
• Managers of teams involved in Agile ways of working
• Consultants looking for a solid grounding in using Jira in Agile Environment

Training Objectives

This course mainly discusses agile and lean principles, the Kanban and scrum agile methodologies, and uses Atlassian Jira Software Cloud as the main software tool to apply hands-on learning of the topics. The course includes instruction on “classic” Jira projects as well as the new “next-gen” Jira projects. By the time you have completed this course, you will have a strong foundational understanding of agile principles and practices, and strong hands-on experience with Atlassian Jira Software Cloud.

Course Outline

Day One

1. Agile Overview I

This module provides an overview of the agile mindset. It introduces Atlassian Jira as a tool used to implement agile principles for team project work. Students will be provided a free Jira Software Cloud license in order to go through the hands-on exercises in this course. We cover the importance of visualizing work, and provide an overview of the kanban agile method. Students will create a custom kanban board.

Learning Objectives

• Describe the difference between waterfall and agile projects
• Identify benefits of agile projects
• Describe the kanban method
• Identify the benefits of kanban work-in-progress limits
• Use Jira to create a custom kanban board
• Describe a cumulative flow diagram

2. Agile Overview II

This module starts with an overview of scrum, including scrum concepts such as increments, sprints, sprint goals, backlogs, estimation, velocity, common scrum reports, roles and events. You will then execute a sprint using Jira. The rest of the module focuses more on the “why” of agile, and provided a foundational understanding of lean and agile principles. The Toyota Production System is discussed, as this could be considered as the foundation of lean thinking. The Agile Manifesto is also discussed in quite some detail.

Learning Objectives

• Describe scrum
• Use Jira to execute a sprint
• Describe a sprint goal
• Describe scrum events
• Differentiate a product owner and a scrum master
• Describe how scrum projects are estimated
• Identify example kanbans used in everyday life
• Describe the benefits of pull systems
• Identify ways to improve the flow of value
• Identify lean and agile principles

Day Two

1. Configure JIRA I

This module focuses on configuring Jira to match your agile process. This is a more hands-on module than the previous module. Every team has a unique, continuously evolving agile process. Their tools need to be able to adapt to these changes. We will start by discussing searching, then discuss Jira Query Language (JQL). A solid understanding of JQL helps with the rest of the course and in your continuing use of Jira after the course. We will discuss creating filters, custom issue types and configuring issues to show the information that your team cares about.

 Learning Objectives

• Use basic search to search for issues
• Use autocomplete to help create JQL queries
• Identify the purpose of functions in JQL queries
• Use different types of operators in JQL queries
• Create quick filters
• Configure a board
• Create a custom issue type
• Describe reasons to create an issue type
• Add labels to issues
• Configure the fields shown on screens for a project
• Create and use a custom field

2. Configure JIRA II

In this module, we continue configuring Jira in order to be able to match the tool to our team’s custom agile process. We will discuss and create epics, which are large issues that may contain other issues. We will discuss and create versions, which are a set of issues that usually make up a product update. We discuss users and permissions. Since you are the administrator of the free Jira Software Cloud that you use for this course, you should know how to invite users to your site and configure permissions so that the right access is granted to users. We end the course with a final project. You will be asked to configure Jira to keep up with your team’s continuous changes to their agile process.

 Learning Objectives

• Describe an epic
• Identify benefits of epics
• Create and manage epics
• Describe versions
• Identify benefits of versions
• Create two-stage and kanban board releases
• Invite a user to your site
• Describe Jira’s permissions model
• Describe project roles
• Identify the benefits of project roles
• Assign project roles
• Configure Jira to keep up with a team’s changing agile process