Jira and Confluence ENTROPY
Chaos within Jira and Confluence is what you get when you provide too much freedom to your teams using the Atlassian tools. We call it Jira and Confluence entropy - it's a sign of a lack of workplace process and can be a warning sign of suboptimal output and poor team culture. By addressing it, you will improve your team's quality of work, velocity, output, work satisfaction and you'll even see improvement in how you are managed.
What is Jira and Confluence entropy?
Entropy is the measure of a system's disorder - and funnily enough, in physics, the definition is "the measure of a system's energy that is unavailable for doing useful work" (because work is achieved from ordered [molecular] motion). In other words, you need a state of order to achieve useful work... and this certainly applies to Jira and Confluence.
There is a misconception in our evolving work practice that to create a contemporary workplace, the goal is to unleash your teams potential by removing boundaries and providing freedom. This is often done in the name of "lean" or "agile". The promise of freedom is very attractive and although it is part of the goal, if provided without guidelines and defined work practices, we end up creating entropy...
Here are some symptoms of Jira and Confluence entropy:
- In Jira tickets, you'll see multiple custom fields
- Your Jira workflows have more than 3 columns
- Waaaaaaay too many project boards in Jira
- Tickets contain all the information and are not linked to Confluence
- You have no idea if your ticket type is a subtask, a standard-issue, a story or an epic
- It's challenging to get any sense from the dashboards and reports
- In Confluence, pages and spaces are chaotic
- Confluence is not linked to Jira tickets
- Jira and Confluence notifications become spam in your inbox (either ignored or filtered)
- You have more than 8 marketplace plugins
- Your Jira/Confluence admins are quite close to giving up...
The result of Jira and Confluence entropy is poor quality work that will actually be slowing you down and potentially even costing you money on rework, project delays and even mismanaged licence costs.
How did this happen?
The way that this starts is when in the name of "lean" or "agile" we remove boundaries and give our teams too much freedom. We allow different teams to dictate the tools they use, we empower them to define how they use these tools and allow them to customise their workflows and work methods. This seems great for the end-users and the project managers... at first. I mean, If I'm a project manager or end-user, I'd love to do things my own way!!! The problem is that it doesn't scale across functions and, as we know - it leads to entropy and disorder, which in turn leads to a decrease in the entire system's ability to perform useful work.
"Lean" and "agile" is not only about removing boundaries and granting freedom... There still needs to be clear guidelines for teams to follow. Done right, agile will provide freedom at the level where work gets done: it will provide freedom for teams to collaborate across function, it will enable people to be free to deliver work independently and it will empower teams to be free to choose the right method to accomplish desired value... But there still needs to be order in the system. Process guidelines must be established and followed - particularly in the tools we select to use and how we agree to use them.
What can we expect if we address Jira and Confluence entropy?
1. Improved quality of outcome
Quality of outcome is a function of the quality of culture, quality of the process, and quality of individuals. A team of remarkable engineers working in a culture with silos, and operating with outdated and inefficient process will lead to poor quality work. Entropy in Jira and Confluence is a sure sign of poor processes and perhaps even indicative of problematic culture.
2. On time and on budget projects
Custom fields, inconsistent user story definition, complex workflows with too many status fields, multiple locations for the "source of truth", inconsistent definition of done... All of these issues are slowing you down. We want cross-functional teams moving clearly defined user stories from to do, to doing, to done. Teams who need to customise Jira and confluence because of "unique" circumstances need to be coached away from that. It creates silos which generates entropy which decreases your velocity.
3. Better reporting which means better management
You cannot report on entropy... if every project team has customised methods of working, how can you compare any dashboards or reports against each other?? You can't. Again, cross-functional teams working under the same process means that you can report and compare apples with apples. When management is getting real data, their decisions will get better AND they can empower their teams to do better work.
The above 3 improvements are cyclical. Improvements in 3, lead to improvements in 1 and 2, which leads to improvements in 3.
Jira and Confluence entropy is a symptom of bad workplace processes and perhaps even bad culture. By addressing it, you will improve your team's quality of work, output, and even improve how you are managed.
The misconception that agile or lean means that we give our teams ultimate freedom is slightly misguided and can lead to entropy. Yes we want freedom in the work we do, yes we want the team to be in control of how a user story is addressed, yes we want the team to be empowered to estimate and break down the complexity of work, yes we want teams to be free to collaborate across functions - all of this freedom and cross-function and control and empowerment that agile and lean promises are a result of clearly defined and meticulously followed work practice.
If you are experiencing entropy in your Jira and Confluence, it's time to take action. You'll need someone to take charge who understands the Atlassian tools as well as contemporary workplace practice. You will need to provide them with the authority to be a champion of change, and the champion must be an empathic and confident coach so that they can uplift sometimes stubborn project teams into a better way of working.
If you can do it yourself, that's great! If you'd like some direction, Sentify offer support on varying levels to get you and your teams humming. We can champion the change with you, we can coach your champion, or we can provide regular guidance and admin support as required. Reach out today for a free and friendly conversation.
Have a great weekend!
Best
Kevin