Tool Administration: Jira Align Governance, Part Two
This is the second 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?
As noted in Part One of this series, Jira Align governance involves a set of formal controls put in place to monitor the business value, technical value, and process value the organization gets out of the tool. Strategic record keeping and analysis are important, but it also includes in-the-moment triage of challenges that could erode that value.
Effective Jira Align governance involves three equally-vital elements that work together to achieve this goal:
- Voice of Business Value
- Tool Administration
- Framework & Process
These roles may be filled by three individuals, teams, or a combination thereof. They should not, however, be made up exclusively of tool administrators — a mistake made by far too many organizations — but should rather include experts in the required roles from across disciplines.
Effective Jira Align governance will go a long way toward determining if the organization sees a worthy return on its investment in the software and whether it can successfully achieve business agility.
Why is governance necessary for Jira Align success?
Jira Align touches every level of the organization: enterprise, portfolio, solution, program, team. It offers the ability to project a strategic plan lasting anywhere from three quarters to three years. Serving as a digital simulation of the enterprise strategy which should be driving every decision being made, its upkeep and proper use is not something anyone should take lightly. Something that powerful takes a governing body to manage it.
Additionally, it’s not inexpensive. The company may spend several hundred thousand dollars implementing the solution rightfully expecting millions in ROI over the long term. But that’s only possible if the software is used and governed effectively.
What is Tool Administration?
We’ve already discussed the role of Business Value in Jira Align governance, and Tool Administration sits just below Business Value in the trio of elements making up a sturdy and reliable governing body.
The Tool Administration role serves as the technical voice on the governing body. They are responsible for deciding whether a given idea for potential business value is technically feasible and aligns with other pieces of the organization’s tool ecosystem. Essentially, they serve as a voice of reason to temper unrealistic requests from Business Value or Framework & Process, determining whether a given thing can be done before the organization invests in trying to make it happen.
Where does Tool Administration focus its time and effort?
This role manages security, user management, organizational modeling, and technical knowledge of the platform configurations. They can be sourced from a larger tools administration team if data connectors are in place.
Since Jira Align is embedded in the ecosystem at all levels, organizations need to have contact in the administrative team of Jira Align back to the administrators of the other tools to make sure that they can quickly take care of problems on their end when the data is not coming through.
Since their main focus is ensuring Jira Align continues to run smoothly and function as intended, other areas falling within their purview include:
- Data loss
- Performance
- Loss of access
- Roles and permissions
- Platform configuration
- Organizational models
- Training and onboarding
- Functional failures/defects
What can you expect if Jira Align governance is handled properly?
If Jira Align is used and governed properly, there is no better solution for complete alignment and operational support for the agile enterprise. It can be a “well-oiled machine” that elevates the work of every level of the organization.
To learn more about Jira Align and whether it’s right for your organization, check out our free resources. Stay tuned for Part Three of this series where we’ll be focusing on Jira Align governance from the Framework & Process perspective.
