What’s the problem with manual assignments?
There are actually a lot. And not only in Waterflow where manager becomes a bottleneck and rock star team members become knowledge silos, but also in many Agile implementations as demonstrated by research https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10664-020-09876-x.
The most prominent issues are:
Idle time between assignments
Bias, leading to knowledge silos and morale issues
Manager overhead
Skewed metrics
Check out our blog post where we explore the subject in more detail: https://medium.com/skills-for-jira/how-to-manage-software-development-like-amazon-manages-their-warehouse-operations-85ef791b32bf .
So how does “Skills for Jira” help?
Once you document skills for each of your users and start specifying skill requirements for each of your tasks, it becomes trivial to identify team members who are well-equipped to handle each of them.
Skills for Jira provides tooling that selects the next best task for each of the users, leaving you in control of the backlog, requirements, priorities and user’s workload. You get full control of task routing through configuring work queues and assigning your team to fetch tasks from one or more work queues. This way you can:
Avoid idle time: your team members no longer have to wait for assignments or other external input and can just get the next task when idle;
Scale and restructure teams easily due to automatic work distribution: no overhead, no negotiations, no human factor, increased quality guarantees;
Reduce dependency on the manager for mundane day-to-day work orchestration, eliminating managerial bottleneck and freeing up their resources for more value-adding activities
Make use of diverse skill sets of every worker in your organization, currently hidden behind their roles and team rooms. Currently, most orgs people are hired into roles and assigned into teams. They then get only the tasks relevant for their team/role. They won't get other tasks even if they are in fact an expert. This is detrimental for the company (overstaffing, idle time, most important tasks that can be done faster, are stalled...) and is detrimental for workers (stale skills, morale, reduced worth).
Build the culture of self reliance and upskilling . With completely objective work assignments and clearly visible skill gaps that get in the way of more important and interesting tasks, team gets motivated to learn and grow, while managers can focus on how to be an effective leader and help their team on their path. This is especially effective when paired with a skill-focused training program.
Self-service assignments
Self-service assignment means that team members get their next task on demand with a click of a button when they have availability. Manager remains in control of the backlog, priorities and workload.
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You can add the “Get next task” button to your existing Jira dashboard or you can use a separate dashboard managed by Skills for Jira (available to your Jira users via the Apps / Skills for Jira - User Console / Assignments menu), tailored to the concept of skills and work queues.
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You can set up multiple work queues and attribute them to users via user groups (i.e. Only users that are both in “Group A” and “Group B” will get tasks from “Work Queue 1”). Pushing the “Get next task” button will yield the best task from across all relevant work queues, using the following rules:
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As opposed to personalized assignments, the “Get next task” approach is simple to use, autonomous, objective, and simply more relaxing for many. It is common preference to be able to do the work that they enjoy\ and be efficient without having to talk to the manager or team members.
Automated assignments
Coming up soon….
Configuration
Before your team can start using Self-service or Automated assignments, you as an Administrator need to configure your work queues and enable Pull support in your Skills for Jira - Administration Console (Manage your apps / Skills for Jira - Administration console / Assignments)
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Administrators can define work queues and assign them to user groups, controlling the scope of work, task order (through the scope JQL filter), visibility, as well as control max user workload.
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You are in complete control of the composition and order of your queue. Through the JQL of the “Scope (JQL filter)” you control:
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Self-Service Assignments are available in Basic and Enterprise editions. |
Self service Assignments help you replace your work distribution process with a single button, eliminating overhead and subjectivity and making sure team is never idle and is always focused on the most important work.
Based on the Work Queues defined by Administrator, Skills for Jira makes sure that the task assigned will always be the most important task that the team member has the skills and knowledge to accomplish.
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User Console / Assignments
Members of groups assigned to any of the work queues gain access to the Assignments dashboard in their Skills for Jira - User Console.
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Tasks in Progress
Here Users will see all the tasks that they pulled by pressing “Get next task” and have not yet completed.
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This section only includes tasks from User’s work queues that are in one of the statuses marked as “In Progress” in the respective queue. |
User’s personal work queue
User’s personal Work Queue is dynamic and is based on user’s current skill set as well as all the queues the user has access to.
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Tasks that require skills beyond User’s capabilities are by default hidden from the queue but can be displayed by disabling the “Only show tasks that match my expertise” toggle if allowed in the queue configuration. Tasks that are blocked by the other tasks are hidden until the blocker is resolved. |
“Get next task” button
“Get next task” assigns the next most important task from the User’s Work Queue to the User and transition it in progress based on the work queue configuration.
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Some Queues may be hidden from Users based on their configuration. While tasks from such Queues are not displayed in the “Work Queue” section, they are considered during assignments |
Skills Demand
In addition to their work queue, User gets to see quantified demand for each of the skill sets used by tasks in their Work Queue along with experts qualified for each skill set. Skills that are not yet mastered by the User will be marked in Red.
Knowing which skill gaps stand between the User and more interesting or challenging tasks in the shared work queue can be motivational and helpful in planning their professional development.
Jira Dashboard Widget
In addition to a full-fledged dashboard, Administrator can add the “Get next task” button in any existing Jira dashboard:
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Configuration
Instructions for configuring Self-Service Assignments can be found here: Configuring Self-Service Assignments