ZERO TO HERO WITH JIRA/CONFLUENCE
From teams of two to corporations of hundreds, Jira and Confluence are paving the way for teams of all shapes and sizes to work together in a more timely fashion that’s not only more efficient but enjoyable as well. As fellow Jira/Confluence users, we thought it was time to share why we as a #GSATiFamily chose to make the move, where we came from, and where we’re going.
Life before J/C was a bit abysmal here for us. Want to talk management? On top of using ConnectWise and SharePoint, we used Excel spreadsheets to track everything. Tabs for different projects, tons of files across the board. We had begun to adopt agile development methodologies and needed a way to track sprints. As our company expanded and our team grew, we knew we would need something that could provide a single platform the entire team could worm from, making our projects more efficient. More efficiency means more support for our bottom line —and less stressed Project Managers.
Enter Atlassian, an Australian - based software management company founded with a heart much like ours - full of humble beginnings and appreciation for authenticity and individually crafted support to meet a client's needs. Founded in 2002 by Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar, Atlassian released its flagship product, Jira, a project and issue tracker. Later, Confluence released in 2004, a program that would allow teams to collaborate on projects, content development, and share media and related files. Our dreams come true, in a sense! Thanks to the recommendation of some advantageous team members, we made the decision to migrate our journeys onward and upward.
Thanks to Jira, we were able to fully migrate to Agile and Scrum development methodologies, with the ability to break down tasks into stories and track them in a manageable Sprint, ending in a Burn Down. Today, we use JIRA for all of our development projects. Jira helps keep our entire team on the same page, from Project Managers to Developers and QA. Thanks to Confluence, we're also able to store all relative project documents in one place from Meetings Notes, Client Notes, Requirements, and project discussions. Team visibility has never been better. Our Project Manager, aka our Scrum Master Richard Petrie, doesn’t have to reach out to each developer asking for an update. Instead, he's able to simply look at the project and know the status, as can others. We can run a meeting as teams and collaborate on notes, then build requirements documents and other important information, all generated by Jira stories. Finally, we can manage our development projects from a single pane of glass.
Moving Forward
As always, we're moving forward as fast as we can keep up with the technology industry. As it grows and we grow with it, we look forward to what our future is like with Atlassian's products. With the Stride and Hipchat acquisition by Slack, we're excited for some migration tools and deeper integration with chat tools to further collaboration. We also anticipate the ability to have custom domain names, which will better our clients' experience. As for our ScrumMaster? He's ready for a completely unified system for our Projects, time tracking, and communications, but patience is a virtue. Over the years, we have embraced more of the functionality of Atlassian, but there is always more to adapt, especially as product lines evolve. At the end of the day, we're thankful to have found Atlassian and their support. And from the look of things - we certainly aren't going anywhere.
