xA Planning and Tracking

The Exceptional Agile (xA) Planning and Tracking app provides best-in-class support for building evidence-based plans, visualizing progress, and making commitments you can keep.

Background

Agile techniques have helped teams to improve speed to delivery, reduce rework, and increase customer satisfaction. But in spite of these advances, many projects still hit a glass ceiling where they struggle to improve performance, quality, and dependability. 

In response, a cadre of agile coaches has curated a proven set of exceptional practices and tools that empower teams to be more agile, revolutionizing software-intensive systems engineering.

xA Tracking Jira App

The Exceptional Agile Planning and Tracking app aims to make these practices easy to adopt and use. A plugin is available for Jira (both Cloud and Data Center), with other platforms to be supported in the near future.

The plugin is currently in limited release, to teams that are willing to partner with us and actively provide product feedback, feature prioritization, and sponsorship. To request access to the plugin, complete this survey.

The plugin is under active development, so new functionality will be released often. We welcome feedback and suggestions on current and future functionality. 

Quick Start

After your Jira administrator has installed the plugin, the xA Tracking report is available on an opt-in basis. To enable it:

  1. Open the backlog for a set of work you’d like to track.
  2. Click the “Board” menu in the top-right, then choose “Configure.”
  3. On the board configuration page, choose the “xA Tracking” category and check the box to enable the report.
  4. Enter the following minimum information for your team:
    • The work schedule most team members follow
    • The percentage of full-time that each team member spends on the work on this board
    • If you use Story Points for estimation, enter your team’s rule of thumb for the approximate size of a story point

Using the Report

Once enabled, the xA Tracking report will appear as the letters xA in your project navigation sidebar.

  • The report uses team capacity and the estimated size of each issue to calculate the optimal dates each item could finish, and displays these in a table.
  • The resulting dates are capacity-driven and evidence based. They recalculate automatically as you groom the backlog and edit team and personal availability.
  • You can align the report start date to the current sprint, release, or program increment; then the Plan and Actual lines will show you how your progress compares to the ideal. 
  • The Replan line repeats these calculations for all remaining work, starting from today. As time passes, it will automatically recalculate based on how far ahead or behind you are.
  • The Forecast line repeats these calculations, but also includes corrections based on the actual rate of progress. (For example, if you’ve fallen behind, it will use the slower-than-expected rate of progress for remaining work.) These improved dates can help you share better insights with stakeholders.
  • The chart uses the estimated size of each issue to compute weighted progress. For example, when you complete an issue that was estimated to take 10 hours, the actual line will earn 10 hours of progress. Progress is only earned when an issue is resolved.
  • You can click the Only My Work button to toggle between team and personal views of the data.

Of course, work never goes exactly as planned:

  • Issues may be bigger or smaller than you thought; and project collaboration needs may limit the amount of time you can devote to the work.
  • If you use Jira’s Log work feature, the report can provide insights that help you distinguish between these two root causes.
  • The table of issues will display a column for actual effort, to help identify specific tasks that took longer than expected.
  • If you log work faithfully, the progress chart will display a Cost line indicating how much effort the completed issues actually took.
    • If the Cost line is above the Actual progress line, it means the work took more time than expected.
    • If the Cost line is far below the Actual line, you may not be logging work accurately.
  • The report will also display a secondary Effort chart to help you visualize the amount of work you’ve logged each day, and how it compares to your planned capacity.
    • If the Actual effort line is below the Plan, it means you haven’t been able to devote as much time to the work as you hoped.
  • Together, these insights help you to understand the root cause behind a schedule slip so you can plan the best course of action.

Continuous Improvement

You can improve the quality of the plans and forecasts by:

Grooming the backlog

  • Ensure each issue has an estimate.
    • The report will use effort estimates in the Time Tracking field if available, followed by Story Points if a team ratio has been provided.
    • If Jira does not show fields to edit these values, your project lead may need to configure Jira’s issue type fields for the project.
    • Issues with no estimate will show a red 0 in the Effort column of the table, and will cause subsequent dates to be incorrectly optimistic.
  • Sort issues in the order the team expects to perform the work, using sprint assignments and backlog ranking.
  • Assign issues to individuals if responsibilities are known.
  • Break large issues down into smaller ones and estimate them individually. 

Refining team capacity

  • Enter the team’s collaboration needs if they are not typical. You can place your mouse over the icon for a detailed description of the currently selected level.
  • Record team holidays on the “Working days” tab of the Jira board configuration page. Team capacity will be reduced to account for these holidays.
  • Click the gear to the right of a team member’s full-time percentage to adjust their capacity:
    • Choose the work schedule an individual follows if it differs from the team.
    • Indicate whether an individual has higher or lower collaboration needs than the rest of the team.
    • Enter personal vacation time and other time off. Personal vacation will be reflected in the calculations for every project this individual is a member of.
  • Record holidays and vacations that occurred in the past 90 days to improve measures of the historical rate of progress.

Collecting actual data

  • Unlike other agile tools, the xA report puts “Log work” data to valuable use.
  • Work logs enable the report to identify the root cause of a schedule delay and apply that insight make better forecasts. 
  • As you log work more accurately, the forecasts will become more and more reliable.

Roadmap

The app is under active development, so new functionality will be released often. These items are on our current roadmap:

  • More charts, reports, and analyses
  • Role-based permissions to ensure sensitive team data stays private
  • Tools for long-range capacity planning
  • Additional ways to capture team and personal availability
  • Additional ways to estimate effort (including T-shirt sizing and #noestimates)
  • Improved visibility into progress based on workflows and definition-of-done
  • Uncertainty ranges based on best/worst case estimates and historical variability