Presentation delivered @Atlassian Summit 2012. Balancing the coordination of many Agile product delivery teams on the same major release cycle -- and still allowing these teams to self-organise -- is a craft Agile Enterprises must master. JIRA, GreenHopper and Confluence provide a rich platform that accommodates cross team co-ordination and the flexibility required for teams to self-organise. In this talk, David will walk the audience through the process of breaking down a Kanban value chain into steps and transitions, mapping out compatible workflows, and building the combined board. David will also share details of how Constant Contact provides visibility into the progress of teams and the release cycle. Constant Contact was able to deliver 15% more often in 2011 than prior years by refining their Agile practices.

2. Scaling Kanban in the Enterprise
with Jira/Greenhopper
combining multiple work items and spanning agile teams
with a common delivery schedule
David Jellison
Director, Quality Engineering
Constant Contact, Inc.
djellison@constantcontact.com

3. • “Engagement Marketing” company with a suite of SaaS
applications, serving over 500,000 customers.
• Employs ~1000 people, with ~300 in Engineering &
Operations, covering 4 locations.
• Has ~20 agile product delivery teams 8-12 people per
team, and a ~3:1 ratio (Dev:QE).
• Scrum major release cycles, Kanban software
development practices, and TDD in new teams

4. Our Needs
• Sprints were feeling like
mini-waterfalls
• Too many systems (project,
defect, requests)
• Impediments and
bottlenecks persisting to
next sprint

5. Game Plan
• Kanban key ideas • Applying to
Jira/Greenhopper
• Agile enterprise
• Program Management role
• Jira/Greenhopper solution
• Breaking down the Kanban
value chain into workflow
steps and transitions

6. Why Kanban?
• Football 3 yards at a time => far better odds
Rush 3 yards at a time
Hail Mary Pass

7. Kanban Key Ideas
• Pull work from queue, based on capacity constraint
• Streamline completing work (bottleneck visibility)
• SLA (service level agreement) classes of service
Scheduled
Queue Done
Backlog
• Card • Card • Card
• Card • Card • Card • Card • Card • Card
Unscheduled
• Card • Card
WIP WIP
Backlog
WIP Limit WIP Limit

8. Agile Enterprise
• Balancing self-
organizing agile
teams with
enterprise
governance

9. Agile Enterprise Challenges
• Prescriptive structure
• Managing work dependencies across teams
• Measuring progress and readiness to deploy
RISK
team team team team

10. Product Roadmap & Priorities
Release 1 Release 3
Release 2
Priority 1
Priority 2
Priority 3

11. Kanban Task Board

12. Electronic Dashboard Needs
• Represent value chain per team
• Combine different types of work
• Share across teams
• Common structure
• Extensible with plug-ins
• Aggregate visibility

13. Greenhopper Task Board
• Mimics the physical board

14. Enterprise Steps
1. Declare common defect workflows
2. Suggest common card workflows
3. Declare shared statuses (must appear in each project
workflow)
4. Declare constraints (e.g. all Defects have a priority)

15. Key Statuses
• ToDo / User Story
• Create event
ToDo /
• Project backlog (scheduled) User Story
• Start throughput
• In Development
Throughput
• Start cycle time
In
• Closed
Cycle Time Development
• Close event
Closed
• Ends cycle time, throughput

16. Defect Resolution Field
• Jira system field
• Required when
visible *
• Resolved event
• Configurable values

17. Defect Workflow
Each of these statuses become shared set

18. Defect Workflow
Resolution
Set
Resolution
Cleared
Use post functions in transitions to set and clear Resolution field

19. Defect Workflows
_Defect Workflow Steps 1 _Defect Workflow Steps 2 _Defect Workflow Steps 3
ToDo / User Story ToDo / User Story ToDo / User Story
Ready for Dev Ready for Dev
In Development In Development In Development
Ready for Test Ready for Test Ready for Test
In Test In Test In Test
Test Done
Closed Closed Closed

20. Defect
Workflow
• Linked Status
key fields
• Step Name
alias
• Transitions as
allowed actions

21. Apply Workflows
• Assign to issue types in a workflow scheme

22. Transitions as Buttons
• Defect: Ready for Dev
• Defect: In Development
Clear Resolution:
transition back to itself
& post function to clear
field value

23. Applying Transition Constraints
• Exclude versions

24. Applying Transition Constraints
• Restrict patterns

25. Applying Transition Constraints
• Set Resolution

26. Team Steps
1. Diagram team value chain (tune „queue/work‟ pattern)
2. Reduce steps when issue types and fields make more sense
3. Flow diagram (white board) key steps and transitions
4. Map shared statuses to steps in the flow diagram
5. Create new workflow(s) in Jira/Greenhopper
6. Transitions named as action taken (button labels)
7. Map step columns in Task Board and Rapid Board to statuses

27. Feature Workflow Steps Feature Statuses Components
• Marketplace
ToDo / User Story • Community
• Dev Website
Ready for Dev • Experts
• Blog
In Development
Custom Fields
• Stakeholder
Ready for Test • Stakeholder Review
• Reject Reason
In Test • QA Required
Test Done Issue Types
• Dev Forward
External Dependency • WIP Defect
• Defect
User Acceptance • Subtask
• Automated Test
Closed • Prod / Expedited
• Programs / Promo

28. Feature Statuses Defect Statuses
Statuses ToDo / User Story ToDo / User Story
Ready for Dev Ready for Dev
In Development In Development
• Match up the same
steps in different Ready for Test Ready for Test
workflows with In Test In Test
common Statuses Test Done Test Done
External Dependency
User Acceptance
Closed Closed

29. Task Board Column Mapping
• Add column headings from whiteboard steps
• Status selected from combined workflows list

30. Task Board Columns
• Steps and transitions match expectations

31. Rapid Board Column Mapping

32. Rapid Board Columns

33. Program Manager
• Scheduling and coordinating • Leading post release point
routine releases releases and hot fixes
• Gathering readiness and risk • Coordinating continuous
assessments from teams improvement exercises
• Leading deployment procedure • Metrics
• Coordinating cross-functional • Coach Kanban & workflow
meetings design

34. Aggregating Issue Types
• Cross-project team search

35. Benefits: Consolidating Issues
• Issue tracking {Features, • Dependency management
Defects, Requests} across teams
• One platform with multiple types • Common roll-up of progress
of work
• Metric aggregation
• One board for team to see all
work together
• Linking like things together

36. Cumulative Flow Diagram

37. Cycle Time (Control Chart)

38. Defect Dashboard

39. Defect Reduction
• Defects as failing tests or
subtask WIP Defects
• If escaping, promote from
WIP Defect to Defect issue
type
• Track Escaping, no more
than can count on 2 hands

40. 2011 Results
• Migrated separate {Defects; Stories; Requests}
=> Jira issues ranked in task board (team visibility)
• Tracking {WIP Defects; Escaping Defects}
=> defect debt reduction (cut defect backlog by ½)
=> preventing defects (far less escaping)
• Cycle time (Start Dev <> Closed)
=> improved metrics drove cycle time reduction
=> 15% more delivery per year

41. What we covered
• Kanban key ideas • Applying to
Jira/Greenhopper
• Agile enterprise
• Program Management role
• Jira/Greenhopper solution
• Breaking down the Kanban
value chain into workflow
steps and transitions

42. Thank you!

43. References
• Practical JIRA Administration, Using JIRA Effectively:
Beyond the Documentation; Matt Doar, O‟Reilly Media,
May 2011
• Kanban football analogy, Gil Irizarry, Constant Contact,
Inc.
• Agile Defect Prevention (WIP Defects)
http://davidjellison.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/agile-
defect-prevention