Confluence and JIRAin multi-enterprise projectsJoakim Sandström | #JCN13

How Aktia use Confluence and JIRA across multiple projects. Minimizing the gap between Business and IT, best-practices and tips how to use Atlassian products efficiently.

Agenda

• Intro1• How Aktia uses

Confluence2• Some JIRA tips and tricks3• Wrapup4

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Joakim SandströmAbout me

• Enterprise Architect – Aktia Core Banking replacement project

• Release management, CI, dev(ops), Agile Aktia

• Connect with me:– joakim.sandstrom@aktia.fi

– @sandstromj

– http://fi.linkedin.com/in/joakimsandstrom

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Aktia Bank PlcMy Employer

• Aktia offers a broad range of solutions in banking, asset management, insurance and real estate agencies.

• Aktia operates mainly in coastal areas, in the Helsinki region, and in inland growth areas.

• Aktia has about 350,000 customers who are served at branch offices and via Internet and telephone services.  

• We develop and sell customer-oriented banking and insurance solutions.

• Aktia IT departments– 100+ professionals– From service desk to development and operations

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In the last yearConfluence and JIRA gained momentum at Aktia

• We did a large upgrade– Confluence 3.2.1 to 4.3.7– JIRA 4.1.1 to 5.2.6– Virtualized environment

• Tailored training for business people• Resulted in increased usage by business people

• What’s next– Keeping up the pace and upgrading to most recent versions – Switch database from MySQL to MariaDB

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Who uses Confluence and JIRAat Aktia

Collaboration

Business

Stakeholders

PO’s

ConsultantsQA

Developers

Operations

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LifecycleDream It, Plan It, Build It, Launch It

Ideas & Specs

• Confluence

Roadmap

• Confluence

Use cases

• Confluence

Drawings

• Confluence

Plan & Tasks

• JIRA

Track

• JIRA

Tests

• JIRA

Continuity

• Confluence

• How Aktia uses Confluence28

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Space front pagesalso for sub-projects and teams

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Create new spacesusing a space template

• Every space (project) follows the same structure

• Information in the same place regardless of the project

• Predefined pages with content– Project plan– Architecture blueprints– Security requirements– Testing plans– ..

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There’s a wiki-page for thatand use search to find it

• We encourage people to create wiki-pages

• Meeting minutes are created as blog posts

• And always use page templates to create new pages

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Most frequently usedplugins and macros

• Gliffy– For diagrams

• Excerpt & Excerpt include– To gather small chunks

• Roadmap plugin– pictured

• Balsamiq– UI mockups

• Task lists, mentions– For action points

• Navigation map– List pages with specific labels

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Good enoughtools for everyday use

• Gliffy vs. Visio

• Confluence page vs. Office document

• Email link to Confluence page vs. Document as attachment

• Table plus gives extra juice to standard tables– But Excel is hard to replace

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WYSIWTYGWhat You See Is What You Think You’d Get

• We need to export a lot of pages as PDF’s

• Chrome’s print as PDF works most of the time– but sometimes pictures are cut in half on separate pages

• Tables and page layout in PDF output is broken

• Sometimes export as Word is the best option

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Those attachmentsthat come and go

• People still produce lots of Office documents and put them on network drives – and distribute them to everyone using email attachments

• We try to put all office documents as page attachments– Vendors also provide us with lots of material

• But the best option would be to write everything as Confluence pages

• Maybe Alfresco is the place for large amounts of documents?

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Drawbacks

• Scroll pdf– easier way to get pdf export of a page and it’s children– provides more layouts– but not compatible with math plugin

• Reporting and scaffolding plugin– no one knows how to use it

• Blog posts can’t be restricted (permissions)

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Things i’d like to seemissing things in Confluence

1. Scroll down to the ’middle’ of a Confluence page2. Click edit page3. focus would still be at the ’middle’ of the page

•Working table’s, i.e. as efficient as in Excel

•Offline editing (pages, diagrams & issues)

• JIRA: built-in rich-text editor

• Some JIRA tips and tricks318

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Make issues visible on a daily basis

• List of issues on a Confluence page

• Scrum and Kanban boards

• Separate backlogs for sub projects (squads)

• And of course keep backlog up-to-date Someone once tweeted

” if You wan’t to forget it put it in JIRA”

I personally disagree

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Dashboardsor home page

• PO’s use predefined dashboards to collect material to the steering groups

• Teams use agile boards to make their work visible

• Agile boards are shown on big screens

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Roles in JIRAand usage examples

• 90% of the time we assign either PO or MEMBER role to a user

• We have the option hide security sensitive issues

• Show me only issues that are assigned to business (or IT or external) users

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Efficient JIRA useusing built-in features and additional plugins

• Jql tricks– extends JIRA’s search capability

• JIRA Time Tracking And Billing Report...– track consultant work hours and internal billing

• Obviously Agile – i.e. the new Greenhopper

• Mention JIRA issues in Git commits– Link to source code changes

• Linking JIRA issue to a detailed specification in Confluence

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Issue Collectorsfrom JIRA into JIRA

• Easy way to submit issues (or feedback)

• Expose a link on a Confluence pageor in a web app

• Only mandatory fields visible

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Agile boards

• At least one board for every project (and squad)

• Sub-project is a custom field on issue level

• Shared components across projects

• Also boards based upon specific components

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Agile Board Template

To Do

• Blockers

• Tasks

• Stories

Analyze In Progress

Deployable

Quality Assurance

Done

• Wrapup426

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Some numbersof our JIRA and Confluence

• 300+ users

• 30+ spaces and projects

• 10 workflows

• 20 issue types

• 5 custom fields

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We also use these toolsat Aktia

• Atlassian Stash – Enterprise git behind the firewall

• Jenkins– THE CI tool

• Puppet– Manages our environments

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Squads and TribesTeams that is truly multi functional

• business• architects• developers

– coders– ux– dba’s

• testers• operations

Crisp: Scaling Agile @ Spotify with Tribes, Squads, Chapters & Guilds: http://bit.ly/UGrXHc

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Thank You

Now any questions?

Joakim / @sandstromj

”There are no silly questions”

Sees a person in each customer