Scrum and Jira in Practice#

The Scrum framework#

Scrum has a small number of roles, events and artefacts. Work is done in fixed-length iterations called sprints, of one month or less, and two weeks is common.

The parts of Scrum, as described in the Scrum Guide#
Type	Name	Purpose
Role	Product Owner	Owns the product backlog and decides its order. Speaks for the users and the sponsor.
Role	Scrum Master	Helps the team to use Scrum well, and removes obstacles. Not a project manager.
Role	Developers	The people who do the work, whatever their specialism. The team organises its own work.
Event	Sprint	The container for all the other events. Produces a usable increment.
Event	Sprint Planning	The team chooses what to deliver in the sprint and agrees a sprint goal.
Event	Daily Scrum	A short daily check, usually 15 minutes, on progress towards the sprint goal.
Event	Sprint Review	The team shows the increment to stakeholders and collects feedback.
Event	Sprint Retrospective	The team reviews how it worked and agrees improvements.
Artefact	Product Backlog	The ordered list of everything that might be needed. Owned by the Product Owner.
Artefact	Sprint Backlog	The items chosen for the sprint, plus the plan for delivering them.
Artefact	Increment	The usable result of the sprint, which meets the Definition of Done.

Each artefact has a commitment attached: the Product Goal for the product backlog, the Sprint Goal for the sprint backlog, and the Definition of Done for the increment.

Scrum in Jira#

Where each Scrum idea lives in Jira#
Scrum idea	In Jira
Product backlog	The backlog view of a Scrum project, with issues in priority order.
Sprint and sprint backlog	A sprint, which is started from the backlog with the chosen issues in it.
Sprint goal	The goal field of the sprint.
Backlog item	An issue. The usual types are epic, story, task, bug and sub-task.
Estimate	Story points on the issue, or time estimates if the team prefers.
Workflow and Definition of Done	The workflow statuses on the board, and the final status, such as Done.
Daily Scrum	The Scrum board, which shows the sprint’s issues in columns by status.
Progress	The burndown chart and the velocity report.
Release	A version, to which issues are assigned, and a release page.
Reporting and filters	Saved filters written in JQL, the Jira query language, and dashboards that use them.

Issue types#

Epic: a large body of work, such as “Exception workflow”, that is split into stories. It usually runs over several sprints.
Story: a piece of value that fits inside one sprint. A common form is “As a [user], I want [capability], so that [benefit]”.
Task: work that is needed but is not a user-visible feature, such as setting up access.
Bug: something that is broken.
Sub-task: a step inside a story, usually owned by one person.

A good story#

A story needs a clear outcome and acceptance criteria that anyone can test. For example:

As a valuation controller, I want the daily IPV run to flag any position where the desk mark and the independent mark differ by more than the threshold, so that I can investigate it the same day.

Acceptance criteria:

every position with a difference above its threshold is flagged
the flag shows the desk mark, the independent mark, the difference and the threshold
positions with no independent mark are listed separately

Estimating with story points#

Story points measure relative size, not hours. A team often uses a scale such as 1, 2, 3, 5, 8 and 13, and compares each new story with ones that it has done. The total that a team completes in a sprint is its velocity. After a few sprints the velocity gives a realistic basis for forecasting how many sprints the backlog needs. It is a planning input and not a target. If it is used to compare or reward teams, the estimates inflate and the measure stops being useful.

A workflow for a control project#

A simple workflow is enough for most teams. A control project often adds a review step so that the evidence is captured:

Example workflow statuses#
Status	Meaning
To Do	In the sprint, not started.
In Progress	Someone is working on it.
In Review	Built, and waiting for a peer review or a test.
Awaiting sign-off	Reviewed. The product owner or the control owner has to accept it.
Done	Meets the Definition of Done.

Definition of Done#

The Definition of Done is the shared checklist that makes an increment complete. A valuation control team might use:

the code or change is peer reviewed
tests pass, and the results are attached to the issue
the output reconciles to the source, for example the IPV adjustment to the general ledger
the methodology or procedure document is updated
the control owner has accepted the result, and the evidence is stored where audit can find it
no open critical bugs

A team that does not agree on a Definition of Done will find that “done” means different things to different people, and that unfinished work is carried into the next sprint.

Common problems#

Stories that are too large: a story that cannot finish in a sprint should be split. Split by a thin slice of value, not by layers of the technology.
Changing the sprint scope: adding work in the middle of a sprint destroys the sprint goal. New requests go to the backlog, and the product owner decides when to take them.
A product owner who is not available: the team then waits for decisions, or guesses.
Jira as the process: the board is a tool. A team that moves tickets but does not talk, review or inspect the result is not doing Scrum.
Ceremonies without a goal: each sprint should have a goal that explains why the work matters.

A valuation control view#

Jira is also a record. The history of each issue shows who asked for a change, who built it, who reviewed it and who accepted it. This is the kind of evidence that change management controls need. See Sarbanes-Oxley: Internal Controls over Financial Reporting and Governance: Model Risk, Accountability and Data. It helps if the issue links to the change record, the test evidence and the approved document, so that an auditor can follow a change from the request to the release without asking the team to reconstruct it.