IRA Scrum Board Tutorial: Scrum Handling With Jira For Managing The Sprint

A Detailed Guide to Scrum Handling with Jira: JIRA Scrum Board Tutorial For Managing the Sprint Effectively

JIRA Portfolio was explained in detail in our previous tutorial. In this tutorial, explore more about Scrum Handling with JIRA.

In Scrum or Kanban environment Jira helps in managing the Sprint effectively and efficiently, with its simple UI and easy to use options.

Let’s take an in-depth look at Scrum Handling with Jira now. For complete knowledge about JIRS, read through our Free JIRA training series.

=> Click Here For Complete JIRA Tutorials Series

 

This tutorial will explain about Project, Product Backlog, Time Estimation of Issues, What is a Sprint, Creating a Sprint, Sprint Planning, Daily Stand-up Meeting, End Sprint, Sprint Retrospective etc.

 

Project

For scrum, the project may be called as Scrum Project (Sprint project). In a practical scenario, the user (maybe Product Owner) having admin rights creates the project.

Steps to create a scrum project:

#1) Click on the ‘Projects’ folder (icon) button in the left pane of the page.

#2) Click on the ‘Create project’ button available at the top right-hand corner of the page, which will display ‘Create new project’ page.

Normally the user will be asked to select a project type. Make sure that you chose ‘Scrum software development’ as the project type.

#3) At this step make sure that the template selected is ‘Scrum’. If not click on the ‘Change’ button and then select ‘Scrum’ as a template from the popup dialog displayed.

#4) On the ‘Create new project’ page enter a properly identifiable name for the new project and then click on the ‘Create’ button.

This will show up the newly created project page as shown below:

• As seen in the above image ‘MTP’ is the short name of the project (actual project name of example project = ‘My test Project’) chosen by Jira internally.
• Along with the project a scrum board is automatically created.
  • Like a white/blackboard, which can hold many lines of the write-up, a Jira board displays the issues created for a particular project (it can display issues from several projects too).
  • By presenting the issues as a board, Jira makes it extremely flexible for viewing, managing and tracking the progress of an issue. (We will learn more details specific to Jira boards in a separate tutorial).
• The backlog of the scrum board is empty for the newly created project. Backlog should be filled now with the issues, tasks etc. In a scrum environment, a Product Owner fills the Product Backlog. Product owner may take the help of a Scrum Master wherever required.
  • List of the outstanding issues (which can include feature enhancements, bugs, tasks etc.) for the product is referred as the Product Backlog. A similar list for a Sprint is called a Sprint Backlog.

Product Backlog

• Jira issues (of different types) are created to update/fill a product backlog.
• Product owner receives the requirements (also bugs) from the end customers. Other team members may also suggest some issues.
• Product Owner makes sure that there are sufficient issues for the current sprint as well as the future sprint.

Time Estimation of Issues

• Once the product backlog has issues, it becomes important to determine and update the time estimates on each task.
• Time estimation on tasks, in turn, is important for the Sprint Backlog. It helps to decide the number of issues which can be taken in a sprint depending upon the number of team members in the scrum and their time capacity.
• Each Jira issue has a field called ‘Estimate’ (sometimes referred to as ‘Story Points’), wherein the time estimation in agreed format needs to be filled.

Once there is enough number of issues in backlog and each issue has a time estimate, they are ready to be worked upon in a Sprint. New Sprint needs to be created and issues need to be taken into the sprint.

What is a Sprint?

In a Scrum environment, the respective teams predict to complete a set of issues to be completed in a fixed duration of time, which is referred to as Sprint. The team along with the Product Owner determines the duration of the team.

In most cases, sprint duration is two, three or four weeks.

Create a Sprint

Click on the ‘Create sprint’ button (refer to the above image).

Give a proper decided name to the sprint (E.g. Sprint2018June<Team_Name>). At this step, Jira will display a page as shown below.

Sprint Planning

In a scrum/agile environment, one of the “scrum ceremonies” is sprint planning.

This sprint planning meeting should be called before starting the sprint. Even before that Scrum Master finds out the team time capacity for the upcoming sprint by considering any planned leaves of the team members, or any other time-off like training etc.

The Process:

• Meeting duration: For a two-week sprint, it is normally 2 hours. It is like the number of weeks * 1 hour (i.e. 2*1 )
• The product owner will have a prioritized list of issues in the product backlog.
• Required attendees: Scrum Master, Product Owner, Scrum team.
• Any issues which are not estimated, are estimated
• The team decides which issues can be worked on in the sprint. This is important so that the scope of the sprint is maintained.
• Drag & drop issues in newsprint or change sprint name on the new issues. ‘Start sprint’ button will now be enabled. (refer the below image)

• The team commits to complete the issues in the sprint.

As the team agrees on the scope of the Sprint, sprint is started by clicking on the ‘Start sprint’ button.

Jira will display the next page as shown below:

Enter the required details on the ‘Start sprint’ popup dialog:

• Sprint Name: Enter the uniquely identifiable and understandable name.
• Duration: Select the agreed sprint duration.
• Start date: Select the start date from the calendar control.
  • Note: Some teams start the sprint on Monday and end on Friday. Of course not thumbs rule.
• End date: Jira calculates this end date based on the duration selected.
  • Note: In case a different end date is selected, the duration field is updated as ‘Custom’.
• Sprint goal: This is a non-mandatory field.

Click on the ‘Start’ button after entering the required details. Jira will now display the ‘Sprint board’ as displayed in the following image. ‘Active sprints’ tab becomes active now.

Three columns namely ‘TO DO’, ‘IN PROGRESS’ and ‘DONE’ are shown in the Sprint board, through which an issue will traverse. The columns displayed may vary from one organization to organization. The columns can be configured with the help of a Jira administrator.

Team members then pick up the issues to work upon and move them to ‘IN PROGRESS” column. Once DOD (Definition of Done) of the issue is met, the issue is resolved and moved to the ‘Done’ column in the Sprint board.

Daily Stand-up Meeting

After starting the sprint every day (and till the end of Sprint), daily stand-up meeting (also referred sometimes as ‘Daily Scrum’) is held, typically at the beginning of the day in the morning.

• Intention: To know if there are any blocking problems for any issue being worked upon and also to know how is the progress of each team member.
• Required Attendees: Scrum team, Scrum Master, Product Owner
• Duration: Maximum 15 minutes.
  • Avoid storytelling
  • Avoid sitting down
  • Make sure that each attendee is attentive.
• Each team member speaks:
  • What was completed yesterday?
  • What the team member will work on today?
  • Are there any impediments?

Note: During the sprint progress, the need may arise to add ad-hoc/priority issues in the Sprint. If so to maintain the scope of the sprint, one or more issues will be removed from sprint backlog and added back to the product backlog. Product owner, scrum master and the team should agree upon the changes.

End Sprint

On the last day of the Sprint, sprint should be completed/ended. This is done by clicking the ‘Complete Sprint’ button.

This will display the ‘Complete Sprint’ popup page as shown below:

‘Complete Sprint’ popup page shows:

• Number of completed issues
• A number of incomplete issues.
• Any issues added after the Sprint was started.
• Option to move the incomplete issues either to ‘Backlog’ or to ‘New Sprint’.
  • Typically incomplete issues are moved to Backlog.

Clicking on the ‘Complete’ button on ‘Complete Sprint’ page will end/close the Sprint and will display the ‘Sprint Report’ page. (Refer the below image)

Sprint Report helps in identifying if the scope of the sprint was overcommitted or vice versa.

Sprint Retrospective

This meeting should be held after completing the sprint and before starting a new Sprint.

Duration could be an hour. The main purpose of this meeting is to collect a ‘rapid’ feedback from the team. This meeting helps the entire team to understand ‘what went well’ and ‘what needs to be improved’.

Feedback collected should be worked upon in the next sprint and it is a part of the continuous ‘agile’ improvement.

Conclusion

This informative tutorial explained how various Jira boards are used to manage Scrum.

Hope the step by step process explained in this tutorial would have enriched your knowledge on the concept of Scrum with JIRA.