The Jira Effect: Jira Implementation for Startups

Almog Regev’s professional journey began at Booking.com, taking on the role of customer support and second-tier support agent, managing projects and teams. She advanced to operational excellence — a role that bridges customer-facing teams with product teams, emphasizing business process definition. Today, Almog is in Product Operations at HyperGuest, a travel tech startup, where she leads a cross-company transition to Jira with the purpose of enhancing efficiency.

This article offers valuable insights into Jira configuration and implementation, guided by Almog’s experience and expertise.

The organization has approximately 90 employees, including 50 in the Commercial department, 20 in R&D, and a small Product team.

At this stage of the company’s growth, it became evident that the R&D and Product teams required a more cohesive approach in their processes, Agile ceremonies, thereby ensuring transparency across functions. Almog states, “It’s important to understand our team’s velocity, resource allocation, and effort concentration for effective project planning and predictability.”

Almog explains that to address these organizational needs, the company has chosen to integrate Jira into the operational framework. Jira is a project management tool developed by Atlassian. It is widely used by development teams for issue & bug tracking, progress monitoring, creating reports and improving collaboration.

Key Benefits of Jira & Reasons for Adopting it in a Startup Environment

• Agile Methodology — Jira’s Scrum and Kanban boards enable effective Agile task management.
• Transparency and Predictability — Jira provides visibility into team activities and project statuses. In addition, data analytics and performance tracking can be presented to stakeholders with an overview of the project, enabling predictability in planning and execution.
• Workflow Alignment — Jira allows creating a custom workflow or using a template to ensure that every task passes through the necessary workflow steps. This creates seamless workflow alignment for all teams.
• Communication and Collaboration — Jira promotes collaboration among team members with easy task assignments and sharing updates, which are essential in a dynamic startup environment where team communication is vital.

Although Jira can be very beneficial, there’s a common misconception, particularly in teams experiencing chaos in processes. People often think, ‘Let’s organize everything in Jira and it will fix all our problems.’ This expectation that Jira will resolve all operational challenges is misplaced. Almog explains “In my experience, the root of many issues often lies in the organization’s business processes, which are not directly linked to Jira itself.”

Jira Configuration: Getting Down to Work

Almog was responsible for introducing, implementing, and configuring Jira, starting bottom up. This is typically carried out by Product or Engineering Operations.

In-House vs Third-Party Configuration

Almog outlines the two approaches to this task. “The first approach is to dive headfirst into configuring Jira myself and learning as I go. This hands-on method means navigating uncertainties and making on-the-spot decisions. Understanding that each choice I make impacts the entire organization. It requires resilience to handle potential errors and the backlash that might follow. The alternative is to seek the expertise of an external company like Methoda, to guide the setup process”.

Almog chose the hands-on approach for configuring Jira, opting to, as she says, “get my hands dirty”.

Her decision was driven by the dynamic nature of startup environments, where processes evolve quickly. Therefore, a setup done by an external company might become outdated and irrelevant, leading her back to square one. Handling the configuration internally allows for more agile adaptation. “From my perspective,” she adds, “the configuration should reflect the organization’s unique dynamic and culture. It’s important to consider the developers’ experience levels and collaboration styles, as well as the specific needs of each team leader. A successful implementation depends on the deep understanding of these aspects.” Moreover, by managing the setup herself, Almog has a comprehensive understanding of the system enabling her to provide information, solutions and make adjustments as needed.

Project Types and Quantity

The initial step in configuring Jira involves choosing between a company-managed or a team-managed project. While both types share core functionalities, there are key differences. Team-managed projects offer simpler configurations and potentially allow any team member to maintain them. On the other hand, company-managed projects, ideal for teams collaborating on multiple projects, require a more complex setup and maintenance by Jira admins.

Almog shares that she opted for two company-managed projects. The first, is a project for all developers, using Jira’s out-of-the-box solution that includes boards and filters. It offers a comprehensive suite of features designed to support Agile project management and issue tracking. The second project is dedicated to the Customer Support (CS) escalations and to the Tier 2 technical roles. The purpose of this project is to refine new tickets in the CS workflow before they reach the developers. The Tier 2 agents assess each ticket for clarity, including bug reproduction steps if necessary, ensuring tickets contain all information needed by the developers.

Almog elaborates on her strategy for establishing separate projects. “My leading thought focuses on the input and the expected output. The developers’ project is product-related or technical tasks, with development as its primary output. Meanwhile, the CS project is initiated by inputs from the ticketing system. The output here is a non-development output, enabling Tier 2 agents to resolve issues independently, employing methods like query analysis, log examination, or escalating to further development.

Status Management

Issues, track the work the team needs to get done to progress and meet the project’s goals. Each issue displays information in set fields such as the issue’s status, priority, and resolution. An issue’s status indicates its current place in the project’s workflow. Default statuses are created when a project is initiated from one of the templates, and it’s also possible to add custom statuses to fit the team’s needs.

Creating many statuses may seem beneficial at first for simplifying users’ daily work and gathering data points for reporting. However, introducing too many statuses can lead to more complex workflows and a lack of process definition. Almog notes, “From my experience, developers often get lost amidst all the statuses and the workflow complexities. It’s essential to find the right balance.”

To handle this, Almog proposes, “In Jira, we can streamline issue resolution by adding a screen for user inputs every time a ticket is moved to ‘done’. This would include details about the ticket resolution and the user’s knowledge, helping to reduce the number of statuses and making the workflow more intuitive and informative.”

Implementation and Guidance

Once the configuration of the system is complete, the implementation stage begins. With a smile, Almog expresses her excitement “This is my favorite part of the job as it demands ‘personal connection’ meaning interacting with people.” She continues, “Before being able to solve technical issues, I firmly believe in a people-first approach, where building connections and trust is paramount.”

Almog shares that she organized a meeting, open to the entire company, the session was recorded for reference, and a slideshow was distributed, highlighting the key changes, the benefits of Jira, and the reasons for integrating it. The presentation also included a user guide, outlining procedures like ticket raising, the involvement of team leads, and the escalation process. This effort, she emphasizes, significantly reduced stress, created a better understanding of Jira, and made the organization’s process clearer to everyone.

In the two weeks following the meeting, “I held bi-daily meetings with all R&D team leads. The aim was to better understand their needs, identify any issues, and assist with configuring their boards. During these sessions, I demonstrated basic functionalities like running a JQL query and how leveraging tools like ChatGPT can contribute to creating these queries. I empowered them to manage their board filters, reducing reliance on me, (as my role isn’t a Jira Admin). This approach was designed to foster their confidence in using Jira independently.

Additionally, I established a Slack channel involving myself and managers from the CS department. This platform allows them to reach out directly with any concerns or challenges they encounter, preventing any buildup of frustration due to unresolved issues. I aimed to create an accessible and responsive communication channel for immediate assistance. A similar Slack channel was set up specifically for R&D leads, the CTO, and the Director of Product, ensuring communication and support for their distinct needs.”

Maintaining Communication

Almog emphasizes the positive impact of keeping all teams and the company informed. To facilitate this, she explains,” I provide monthly updates on the accomplishments of the Product team and send out summaries whenever there’s a new release. Additionally, for significant projects involving behavioral changes, I inform the team in advance. Jira supports this effort by including a specific field — ‘Is this a behavioral change?’ When this is marked ‘yes,’ it signals the need for me to communicate these changes proactively so everyone is aligned and updated”.

Closing Thoughts

Almog concludes with a sense of fulfillment, “This role truly enables me to leverage my distinct personality traits; engaging with people, resolving issues, being the main point of contact for many stakeholders, and supporting the organization on an operational level. I thrive on the challenge of stepping out of my comfort zone. The dynamic nature of this industry, with no proper guidelines or a set of rules, encourages me every day to be creative while making a meaningful impact.”

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