29. 11. 2024 Fabrizio Dovesi Atlassian, Service Management

The Importance of Being…Informed for Finding Your Way across All Jira Products!

This guide will assist you in determining which Jira products are best suited to cover different organizational management perimeters.

What’s the origin of this complexity and why do we need to solve it?

It’s relatively straightforward for anyone to perceive the complexities of effectively managing an organization. However, it’s also evident that it would be a significant challenge to achieve this even for the most experienced of professionals. Indeed, the complexity of such an exercise stems from the need to integrate systems that are, in and of themselves, highly intricate.

It’s essential that the various elements of an organization, including its people, tools, and processes at different levels/in various business functions, be aligned with one another in order to maximize the probability of achieving the strategic goals set by the organization.

In today’s business environment, there are hundreds of thousands of Atlassian customers who are looking to streamline their organization by adopting Jira products. One of the key challenges is identifying the most suitable set of Jira “modules” to meet their specific business needs. This brief guide aims to provide insights to help you make informed decisions.

Focus on what you need, and nothing more!

To begin, it’s first necessary to provide a common reference point for understanding the typical structure of a large organization and how this structure can be broken down. To this end, let’s begin by examining some references from the Project Management Institute (PMI).

In this context, we’ll refer to certain concepts set out in The Standard for Organization Project Management OPM, which is a PMI framework to provide guidance on aligning project, program and portfolio management practices, and the PMI’s Standard for Portfolio Management, where PMI defines the organizational context of portfolio, program and project management together with its relationship with strategy and operational processes as illustrated in the following figure.

From the pyramid above, it’s evident that we have a significant number of connections in place across various roles and levels. This illustrates the relationship and direction that the vision, mission, and organizational strategy and objectives provide to portfolio management, strategic planning, as well as the management of programs, projects, and operations.

The following figure illustrates the linkage between the portfolio and the organization’s strategy, as well as the possible relationships among portfolios, programs, and projects, and between programs and individual projects.

As illustrated in the above diagram, there are no one-way arrows. Instead, there are only bidirectional arrows, which represent a mutual relationship between the elements involved. This is a fundamental physiological process. It’s designed to create loops where strategic decisions made at higher levels are influenced by the outcomes provided at lower levels. Failing to trigger these loops could result in the organization being led in a myopic, or even blind, manner.

The following illustration provides a clearer understanding of the possible interactions across different hierarchy levels.

In large companies, these levels of management have very different needs. They require tools that are specifically designed to manage the verticality of the multiple organizational aspects of companies. At the same time and given the aforementioned factors, it’s also essential to ensure a smooth and constant exchange of information between the different roles.

What is Atlassian’s vision for using Jira products to manage an entire organization?

To integrate these various parts, Atlassian has released different Jira products: all of them share the final goal to manage and organize a specific part of the work you and your team are in charge of; but these products are designed to work at different levels and be integrated with each other.

The Jira Cloud product suite currently comprises the following elements:

Jira Align
Jira Product Discovery
Jira
Jira Service Management

Let’s take a closer look at the specifics of each of these and how they fit into the strategy pyramid: It ranges from Jira Align for managing the work of directors and executives, to Jira Service Management for managing incoming requests raised to the teams at the operational level, such as Incidents or Changes.

The following table delineates the high level perimeter and describes their features.

Application	Perimeter	Application-specific feature set
Jira Align	Corporate/Enterprise Organizational Project Management	Connect strategy to execution Investment versus spend for executives Make all work visible in real-time
Jira Product Discovery	Product Management	Capture ideas to prioritize Inform product roadmaps Determine future work
Jira	Program, Project Management	Project templates for business teams Agile/Kanban boards + Timelines + Plans Release hub for software versions
Jira Service Management	Operation and Service Management	Service Level Agreements (SLAs) A customizable web portal for customers Permission schemes allowing customer access

One of the greatest challenges that many solutions face is the implicit creation of silos between layers due to the adoption of disparate technologies to manage those layers. This can significantly complicate the ability to have:

Users with a single account for access to all systems: In cases where the governance systems are distinct and from different vendors, this may include managing the accounts and related licenses for all such systems
A single-source-of-truth system: When there are multiple systems and the data across them is not properly aligned, users face significant challenges in determining which data is accurate and current

As one would expect, ensuring these two points means establishing a robust foundation on which to develop the solution and selecting tools that are easily integrated. This is a crucial step that cannot be underestimated. If the various levels of the company were to be unable to communicate effectively and if this alignment too laborious and slow, any decisions made and their related outcomes delivered to all levels would be of little value to the company.

Jira offers a comprehensive suite of products that can be leveraged to manage an entire organization, or just a specific Business Unit/Department/Team/etc. Its flexibility allows users to integrate with third-party systems, making it a versatile tool for managing any business process.

Jira’s already robust native functionality can be further enhanced through the adoption of add-ons from the Atlassian Marketplace.

To illustrate, a Portfolio Manager can access using the same account and the same system for a variety of purposes, such as:

Aligning with strategic decisions made at the corporate level
Monitoring the progress of an ongoing project
Opening tickets for malfunctioning corporate devices
Checking resource availability for future months
Consulting roadmaps of various products to understand planned future developments

If you’re new to Jira, we recommend reviewing this comprehensive introduction to gain a deeper understanding of the platform.

While the system and user accounts are unique, the user will only need a license for the forms they utilize as an active user. For instance, in Jira service management, a user who only needs to open or approve tickets does not require a license, they just need to be identified as a customer. However, the same user may require a Jira Product Management license to actively work on defining product roadmaps.

For more details on what individual products can offer in terms of functionality, you can refer to the following links:

Conclusions

In conclusion, this article aims to highlight the importance of having an integrated system across different organizational levels to avoid misalignments that could be potentially harmful to the organization. It’s essential to provide individuals with the ability to gain proper visibility into other business aspects beyond their immediate team, project, business unit, or other designated area.

Atlassian’s Jira products offer a comprehensive solution that addresses these organizational needs while providing the flexibility to adopt and integrate third-party tools, as the platform was designed to be compatible with other software.

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