Framework & Process: Jira Align Governance, Part Three
This is the third in a series of articles regarding governance around Jira Align:
To provide context, the first three articles will explain the responsibilities and areas of focus for each role making up the Platform Team. The final article will explain how each works collaboratively with the other two to effectively support the rest of the organization. While each article will be informative on its own, we highly recommend reading all of them in order to get the big picture.
What is Jira Align governance?
Governance involves a set of formal controls designed to monitor the business value, technical value, and process value the organization derives from its use of Jira Align. It includes strategic record keeping and analysis but also involves the triage of challenges that may erode that value.
Effective Jira Align governance involves three important elements:
- Voice of Business Value
- Tool Administration
- Framework & Process
Depending on circumstances, these roles may be filled by three specific individuals, teams, or a combination thereof. They should include stakeholders from across disciplines who have expertise in the role, not exclusively tool administrators.
Whether or not the organization sees a worthy return on its investment in the software and successfully achieves business agility will depend largely on the decisions made and solutions adopted by those individuals charged with governing Jira Align.
Why does Jira Align require governance?
Unlike many other software solutions the business may adopt, Jira Align does not exist in silos. Instead, it touches every level of the organization: enterprise, portfolio, solution, program, team. Its purpose is to project a plan from the near-term to the long-term roadmap. So, it serves as a digital simulation of the enterprise strategy which should be the driving force behind the company’s every decision. Something that powerful takes a governing body to manage it.
Additionally, Jira Align is expensive. Most companies will spend several hundred thousand dollars implementing Jira Align because they can rightfully expect an ROI in the millions over the long term. But that’s only going to happen if it’s used and governed effectively.
What is Framework & Process?
Jira Align offers strategic visibility across portfolios in near-real-time, which allows agile organizations to affect positive change. That visibility can reveal opportunities to improve delivery practices and create efficiency so more value gets to the market more quickly. That’s how companies become market leaders.
The Framework & Process role should be filled from the body of coaches and practitioners that support, train, and evolve the framework, principles, and practices aligned to deliver on the enterprise’s highest-level strategies.
What situations will Framework & Process be most focused on?
The Framework & Process role in the governing body is responsible for creating, implementing, and optimizing the workflows and processes users will use to maximize that value. They will also identify gaps or inefficiencies that threaten that value, and work to resolve those challenges in collaboration with Tool Administration and Business Value.
Those in the Framework & Process role are looking at strategic execution, framework, planning, team execution, and communities of practice.
Since their main focus is ensuring the organization gets the most use out of Jira Align, other areas of concern include:
- Meetups and guilds
- Retrospectives
- Measurable data
- Assessments
- Team and organization configuration
- Practice alignment
- Training and enablement
- Reporting
How will you know if Jira Align governance is handled properly?
If Jira Align is used and governed properly, complete alignment and true business agility is the likely outcome.
To learn more about Jira Align and whether it’s right for your organization, check out our free resources. Be sure to read the final article in this series, Intake and Triage: Jira Align Governance, Part Four.
