In my experience, Jira is the most popular tool for tracking work amongst teams. It offers a robust suite of functionality including the ability to restrict functionality by role.
For example, only those who have been put into the QA role in Jira can close tickets. This means that work has gone through development and passed all QA tests and can now be considered closed.
Or only those in a developer role can put tickets In Review. Because developers are doing the code review.
Or that only the Scrum Master can be the Administrator of the board. Because, after all, they are the Supreme Master of Boards. Right?
Just because software offers a certain functionality does not mean you should use it.
Every time you go into a tool and restrict its use so only certain people can do certain things, you’re introducing a dependency.
What happens if a team is ready to close work but QA is out that week? We have to wait for them to get back before we can close the tickets and accurate progress of our work can be reflected.
And you’re discouraging cross-functionality.
“Within a Scrum Team, there are no sub-teams or hierarchies.” If there aren’t role restrictions in Scrum, why should there be in Jira?
“Scrum Teams are cross-functional, meaning the members have all the skills necessary to create value each Sprint.” Who’s to say that engineers can’t test or QA can’t code? By creating silos in Jira, you’re reinforcing silos on the team. Everyone on the team pitches in to get work done no matter what it is. Setting up a tool in a way that prevents cross-functionality is a direct impediment to the team’s effectiveness.
As soon as I get access to a Jira project, I set every single person on the team to an Admin role. Because I trust my teams to be self-managing. Nothing has caught on fire (yet). We haven’t incited any world wars. No one has deleted anything important.
The more our tools reflect the transparency and trust that we purport to foster on our teams, the more we can live up to an agile mindset.
And don’t get me started on Supreme Master of Boards.
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