Jira Align Reviews

We generally use it for reporting. It's to have transparency, to get to the incremental values. We do have value streams built up on Align and we get the metrics, how the program works, or the dependencies, not just between the teams, between the programs, or between the portfolios.

What you have in Jira are the scalability and the agile approach. It's all about getting to all the stakeholders or the enterprise users so that they can see what is happening from the bottom to the top or from top to bottom and how it's happening. 

When it's all other agile tools, you could just view what each team is doing, and how the work is delivered within the team. However, it is going above and beyond the teams. When you are doing a scaled agile, when it all involves the whole enterprise, you use the Jira Align. It's a combination when you try to do the scaled agile combining the teams, combining the programs, and combining the portfolios, that is when the Jira Align is of most use.

We use Jira Align on top of Safe 4.0 right now. They're not supporting Safe 5.0 yet, however, they are using it as VR; I used it on top of the framework as Safe 4.0.

We brought it for a very big program. Before that, everything was all silos. The teams were independently working and there was a lot of dependency from one team to another team, which was either tracked in Jira in the roadmap, and it was all over the place. Once we bought the two and tried to combine the teams, depending on what their objective is or what they're working towards, combine the teams and make them into our programs and combine the programs and make into our portfolios, what we saw was a huge value-add. It was transparency. You could see the vision, and the transparency is what was the most beneficial thing - that, and dealing with the dependencies.

.For example, if you have so many teams working towards one goal, not everything can be understood, done in silos. You have to group them in a value stream so they can work towards that one value, and even when they're working towards that one value, you would see a lot of dependencies between the teams and between the programs. Managing that and delivering that on time is what when we push it towards a scale agile with the Jira Align as the thing that holds everything together is what we saw most beneficial

Of course, after that, you would get further enterprise agility, business agility, et cetera, when you start using it more and more.

We're creating a centralized place for our stakeholders and sponsors to have shared access to project details. 

My partners are normally the architects, engineers, and product owners. I work as a senior project manager and program manager. I have the scrum role added to me when we don't have any since I'm a scrum master too. I've been on the engineering side as an engineer, like onboarding and monitoring and creating all the meetings, and meeting with our customers more. I'm able to use Jira to help facilitate tasks related to various projects.

It's easy to set up.

The solution is user-friendly, and it's very easy to use once you go through the guidebook. There's lots of great documentation. 

We can integrate with other solutions, like Azure, GitHub, Slack, et cetera.

Mainly, we use the solution to maintain our backlogs, scrum processes, and project management. So, we create the entire structure. It is a brief project management tool. Regarding backlog management, the solution includes features apart from using the product for the product backlog, sprint planning, experiments, and defect management.

Jira Align is an intuitive tool that features a roadmap view. This allows users to see the entire program they have set up, following sprint planning. The portfolio summary view provides a user-friendly interface for operational users such as the scrum team, the scrum master, and the product team. In addition, it provides a management dashboard for leadership to monitor progress. The tool enables viewing the entire roadmap for an epic, and users can drill down to the lowest level, the product backlog item.

Jira Align is primarily used in our environment to align our teams at scale and to connect strategy to execution, while ensuring teams are working towards achieving the same goals. It helps to determine the scope, roadmaps and dependencies easier and thus  accelerate enterprise agility and better business outcomes.

Jira Align has helped to improve provide more more optimized and predictable delivery with fully aligned organizations across every level of scale. It bridges the gap between business and technical delivery. Leading across the organization and innovation with agility.

We use Jira Align primarily for IT service management (ITSM), including incident, change, and problem management processes.

One of the key benefits of Jira Align for our organization is its ability to help us maintain compliance with various regulations related to incident and change management.

We are primarily managing larger portfolios. In this case here, I'm currently with a bank and this solution is used for larger portfolios of initiatives that are current within the bank. From there we're determining the course of action as it pertains to the work that is then performed by the individual departments.

Before we had no ability to even manage projects that we ran in Jira. These are software projects, including infrastructure work, and now everything is happening in one tool. The ability to use Jira Align now to bring these projects into a common portfolio is something that we otherwise had to do with spreadsheets prior to this.

We have a group of several teams, each working within agile teams. These teams are organized into various solution levels, and we also have portfolio-level views that we manage. The product has facilitated alignment between our business strategy and all teams by enabling strategic planning and backlog creation at a high level. We've implemented lean portfolio management, which involves lean budgeting and brainstorming on various epics. These epics are then assigned to the respective value streams. 

Jira is one of the most widely used tools in the market, and it has a vast amount of data already stored in it. Jira Align is crucial in orchestrating this data and providing valuable views and insights. However, it's essential for tools like Jira Align to offer configurable features. While complete customization might not always be feasible for enterprise-level tools, configurable features allow organizations to drive transformation accordingly. 

The feature I've found most valuable for improving my team's productivity is the Gantt chart view. It helps organize our backlog and track our progress toward achieving our goals. Additionally, the ability to connect dependencies within the tool has been very beneficial for us.

Jira Align offers a one-stop solution for managing projects and platforms. However, its biggest competitor could arguably be considered an Excel sheet.

I've encountered limitations in using Jira Align for certain aspects, particularly in implementing OKRs. Jira Align's highest hierarchy is Epic, which may not always align perfectly for specific initiatives. Additionally, while Jira Align offers functionality for tracking OKRs and generating dashboards, I've found that it lacks in some areas. As a result, we've explored alternative solutions that better meet our needs in these areas. Its Kanban feature is also limited. 

I use the solution for task reporting. 

In our workflow, we utilize a dashboard. Our product development backbone relies on two-week sprints. At the beginning of each sprint, we conduct a planning meeting to discuss and challenge the backlogs. Throughout the sprint, we conduct daily sessions to review code, ensure alignment with coding standards, and address any issues. Once all tasks are completed, we proceed with the deployment process.

We conduct daily requirement meetings to facilitate communication.