At Far Reach, we use Jira, a SaaS tool for agile project management, for managing project workflows, making decisions about our work, and improving our efficiency. With its built-in tools, features, and integrations, Jira helps our team plan, prioritize, and execute work in a structured and agile manner.
Here’s how we use Jira to track, prioritize, and complete our clients’ custom software development work.
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Project Planning and Dependencies
Jira is a project management tool, which means one of its most valuable features is project planning. It provides a single source of truth for tracking project tasks, timelines, and dependencies, enabling informed scheduling decisions.
The timeline view provides a clear snapshot of start and stop dates for upcoming work so our product owners (POs) can see what’s coming up and whether there’s work that has to be completed in a certain order. For example, sometimes one epic must be completed before another can begin, especially when a particular developer's expertise is required.
The level of planning available in Jira helps us make sure projects aren’t delayed by resource bottlenecks or technical constraints. We can allocate resources effectively and
prioritize tasks based on client deadlines and project goals.
Sprint Planning and Capacity Management
Jira’s sprint planning boards give our planning team visibility into each developer’s workload, ensuring no team members are over-committed or underused. Prior to the start of each new sprint, POs review stories assigned to developers in the upcoming sprint and adjust priorities as necessary. Then the whole team participates in all-team sprint planning sessions to finalize the sprint backlog.
A key benefit of using Jira’s planning tools is capacity management. With built-in metrics, the team can plan the number of stories and points per sprint, balancing workload while maintaining focus on the highest-priority items. Over time, Jira tracks sprint performance, helping the team spot trends in our velocity and make data-driven recommendations for future sprint goals.
Project Boards and Burndown Insights
Jira’s project boards are packed with metrics that help POs stay on top of progress. For instance, sprint burndown charts and real-time insights help highlight any stories that may be stuck or need attention. This transparency enables the team to quickly identify issues that could slow down progress. Monitoring sprint scope and progress is critical for ensuring the team stays aligned with the project’s goals and deadlines.
The use of burndown charts is another great way for the team to measure progress during sprints. These charts track sprint health, scope changes, and overall progress, giving everyone visibility into how the sprint is unfolding. With these insights, the team can adjust resources and priorities mid-sprint, if necessary, to maintain momentum.
Dashboards for Customized Views
Team members can use Jira dashboards to organize their work, with individual dashboards acting as personalized to-do lists for tracking support tickets and managing ongoing tasks. Shared dashboards help the team see project-level updates, including project burndown, sprint health, and support capacity.
Jira’s dashboards extend beyond internal use as well. Some clients are given limited access to their own project dashboards, where they can see updates on the backlog and track progress on work being done. This level of transparency fosters collaboration and keeps stakeholders informed without the need for continuous manual status updates.
Add-ons and Integrations for Streamlined Workflows
Jira's add-ons and integrations offer ways to streamline our decision-making process. For instance, the planning poker add-on is great for estimating work, allowing us to quickly generate more accurate estimates for upcoming stories and epics.
Automations in Jira also play a vital role in optimizing workflows. The team uses Jira’s automated rules to handle recurring tasks, such as SSL renewals or routine performance reviews. Automating these processes saves admin time and helps us feel confident that nothing vital will fall through the cracks.
Integrations with tools like Harvest, our time tracking tool, allow the team to track time against individual stories, further enhancing our project tracking and resource allocation capabilities. We also use Jira to maintain all of our test cases and test suites using the Zephyr scale integration.
Support Ticket Management
Any custom software development team can tell you that support tickets—especially ones that come in mid-sprint—are hard to manage within existing capacity. Jira makes this process much easier by tracking average support points per sprint, allowing us to leave room for high-priority work that pops up after a sprint is already planned and in progress.
We can create, collect, manage, and plan for support work without sacrificing work already planned for a sprint.
Improved Velocity and Efficiency
Tracking our work in Jira has provided concrete analytics on the team’s velocity and efficiency. We know how many story points we’re completing each sprint, which allows us to plan effectively for future sprints—balancing that fine line between enough work and too much work.
In recent sprints, we’ve achieved record-setting point totals, achieving our highest points completed in one sprint and seeing the trends continue to increase.
Continuous Improvement
We’re always working to improve our processes, workflows, and efficiency. Jira has helped us accomplish this with its out-of-the-box tools and reporting. From better sprint planning and project tracking to automating workflows and improving velocity, Jira empowers the Far Reach team to work more efficiently and make data-driven decisions that benefit clients.