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My Articles

These are articles written by me, Jimi Wikman. These articles are written on a wide range of topics. The main focus is of course on Atlassian, but as I am also very much interested in other areas that I have worked, or are just interested in you will also find other categories here. Under Ways of Working you will find articles relates to the build process management, design, requirements, development, test, operations and support. Under Interesting I write about security, e-commerce and Invision Community. Under professional, I write about work as a consultant, work related health issues, business related news and other topics related to professional work.

France is trying to get Google to pay for links to their news articles

France is trying to use an already confusing and illogical Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market to force Google to pay for links to news articles for french news papers. As expected Google has responded that they will simply remove the news snippets in question to avoid any license fee's. That did not sit well with France who are now trying to sue Google.
To me it is amazing how these things keep popping up from countries like France, Germany and Spain. Anyone who understand Internet and how search engines work would see that asking a service provider to pay for providing service is backwards. For some reason this does not seem to resonate with certain people when dealing with copyright and especially media.
As France now have taken the Directive to become law in France they somehow had the hubris to think that Google, or any search engine for that matter, would actually pay for doing the french news the favor of highlighting their content and drive traffic to them. Naturally Google followed this new law by simply removing the content that require legal fees. For some reason this apparently was surprising to the French, even if the Germans have already tried this and failed miserably.
So what are they arguing about really? Well, it is the so called "rich links", or rich snippets where you will see a small image, the title of the article and a short text. In a blog post from Google they have responded with how they will handle this according to the new law in France.

This has made the French cultural minister Franck Riester angry. For some reason he actually thought that Google would actually start paying for helping the media companies to get quality traffic to their sites. It is illogical in so many ways that I do not think he really understand what Google do or how Copyright works.
If you hold copyright over something you should of course have the control of how others use your creative work, or even if they are allowed to. There is nothing strange about that. It is also in everyone's right to not use or reference that same creative work if I do not want to. That is how Copyright works.
Google is a service provider who collect information about websites and create a database over those sites to make them searchable. This is a free service that anyone can use and as you know Google is not the only search engine you can use. Google make money by allowing advertisement on the search result pages.
So what France now have done is that have made it illegal so show image and text previews in the rich snippets presented in search results. This is done by invoking the right to control Copyrighted material, which is well within their right. What they do not understand is that Google have the right to choose not to infringe on that same copyright by changing what they display in the results.
For some reason France want to force Google to infringe on Copyrighted material so they can be fined for doing so. That is illogical as you are basically forcing criminal behavior by legislation. That is an act that by itself should be illegal if forced, but it seems that Franck Riester do not understand that very simple concept.
We will see how this farce plays out in it's absurdity and I predict that the french media will suffer the same way as their German counterparts did previously. They had to make good with Google and give them permission to present the links without paying, which made that lawsuit pretty useless. I think the french will have the same experience and it's strange that they do not understand this from previous experiments like this.
What do you think?
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Interesting ·

Are you a Manager or a Leader?

It seems that the terms "leader" and "manager" are used a bit casually when you look at role descriptions and titles. The thing though is that they are not interchangeable, but actually have a very distinct definition in my opinion. Leaders lead and managers manage after all and those are two different skill sets.
Are you a project manager or project leader? That is a question almost no one ever ask, because in most people's mind they are the same. I would argue however that it is not because for me there is a very big difference between someone who lead and someone who manage.
 
A manager manage.
"Management (or managing) is the administration of an organization, whether it is a business, a not-for-profit organization, or government body. Management includes the activities of setting the strategy of an organization and coordinating the efforts of its employees (or of volunteers) to accomplish its objectives through the application of available resources, such as financial, natural, technological, and human resources. The term "management" may also refer to those people who manage an organization. "
- Wikipedia
Someone with the title manager is often someone who do not directly interact with the people they manage. They handle things like finances, stakeholder communication and reporting. In many ways managers work upwards to satisfy the need of those higher up in the hierarchy. People are often handled indirectly by managers and focus is on delivery and the promise given to those higher up in the organization.
Henri Fayol have a definition I think is quite accurate:  "to manage is to forecast and to plan, to organize, to command, to co-ordinate and to control."
Managers need strong skills in strategic planning and structured organization. As they often do not directly work with the people they manage they don't need strong charisma or empathic abilities. That is not to say that managers have these abilities, just that it is less required than for leaders.
Managers focus on the promise of delivery.
 
A leader lead.
"A leader is one who influences or leads others. 
Leadership is both a research area and a practical skill encompassing the ability of an individual or organization to "lead" or guide other individuals, teams, or entire organizations. Specialist literature debates various viewpoints, contrasting Eastern and Western approaches to leadership, and also (within the West) United States versus European approaches. U.S. academic environments define leadership as "a process of social influence in which a person can enlist the aid and support of others in the accomplishment of a common task"
Someone with the title leader is someone who directly interact with the people they lead. These are people who manage day to day activities within the team to ensure that the team are doing well. Leaders work downwards towards the team they lead and will shield them from the demands from those higher up in the organization.
Unlike management, leadership cannot be taught, although it may be learned and enhanced through coaching or mentoring. Erika Andersen, author of "Leading So People Will Follow," says, like most things – leadership capability falls along a bell curve. So the fact is that most folks who start out with a modicum of innate leadership capability can actually become very good, even great leaders.
We can define a leader and someone who possess a degree of leadership. Leadership can be defined as "The act of inspiring subordinants to perform and engage in achieving a goal."

In order to have others follow you, you need leadership skills and the respect of those that you lead. Empathy is a crucial skill as is charisma and compassion. As a leader you are also responsible for the promise of delivery and need organizational and strategic planning skills. It is just less required than for a manager.
Leaders focus on the promise to take care of the people.
 
Blurred lines between manager and leader.
It may seem that I make a hard distinction between managers and leaders. I know that the lines between the two are not as cut and dry as this article may suggest. Many managers are also great leaders and many leaders are great managers. The point I try to make is that the titles are not interchangeable, but they actually have a definition.
I think this is important because as long as we mix these roles when describing what role we actually are looking for, then we will continue to get the wrong skill set. This is even more confusing when adding a role definition based on an ability such as leadership.
Are you a sword or a shield?
This is a question I often ask when someone tell me they are a manager or a leader of some sort. Being a sword means that you will sacrifice the people to fulfill the promise of delivery. A shield on the other hand will protect the people even if it means sacrificing the promise of delivery.
Both of these types of managers are needed in an organization and you can often see the correlation when an organization are over representing one of the two. To many swords lead to a detached workforce and health issues among the teams. To many shields lead to difficulties to grow and economical issues.
In my perfect world we have a mix of both types throughout the organization. A higher focus on swords are at the top of the hierarchy and a higher focus on the shields are at the bottom. If we combine this with good communication and an organization model that focus work, then you have a perfect work environment.
So...are you a manager, or a leader?
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Ways of working ·

Hitting the wall and burn yourself out

Almost every day I see someone posting about stress related illness. I meet people who I see are close to hitting the wall and burning themselves out on a regular basis and it makes me sad. Why do we struggle with this and for what purpose? How can you come back once you hit the wall and what do you do to come back?
25 years ago I hit the wall. I burned myself out and spent a year in rehab. It was so bad that I once went to the store to buy milk, but had to stop halfway home and call a friend to drive me home. I lived 10 minutes from the store. This experience is one of the worst I have ever experienced and the effect of it will never go away.
This is why I react when I see people do the same stupid thing as I did and work yourself to the brink of exhaustion. No one will ever thank you for getting burned out and the road back is very long indeed. The worst part is that it is almost impossible for anyone to understand the way getting burnt out feel, so it is hard to find someone to talk to.
 
How to burn yourself out
Working hard is not the same as burning yourself out. Working hard is for me how you should work. It is when working hard under constant negative stress happen you risk burning yourself getting burned out. The tricky part with this however is that everyone have different things we respond to with negative stress. This makes it hard to know when you are risking your health and when you are just working hard.
Stress is when we trigger our natural defense mechanism called "fight-or-flight" or stress response. This is one of our strongest subconscious mental responses and as such it is often something we are not even aware of. In short it is the way our mind defend itself from harm. What we protect ourselves from varies from person to person and it is triggered differently in different people.
You can for example be a person that handle chaotic environments such as restaurants well, but get stressed over meetings with authorities or economic problems. Other people can be very sensitive to uncertainties and require structure and order to avoid stress. Since this is individual it is very hard to know when you are hurting yourself from stress, or even what type of stress that is harmful. There are symptoms however that you can look out for to help you identify these types of issues
These symptoms are borrowed from WebMD.
Emotional symptoms of stress include:
Becoming easily agitated, frustrated, and moody Feeling overwhelmed, like you are losing control or need to take control Having difficulty relaxing and quieting your mind Feeling bad about yourself (low self-esteem), lonely, worthless, and depressed Avoiding others Physical symptoms of stress include:
Low energy Headaches Upset stomach, including diarrhea, constipation, and nausea Aches, pains, and tense muscles Chest pain and rapid heartbeat Insomnia Frequent colds and infections Loss of sexual desire and/or ability Nervousness and shaking, ringing in the ear, cold or sweaty hands and feet Dry mouth and difficulty swallowing Clenched jaw and grinding teeth Cognitive symptoms of stress include:
Constant worrying Racing thoughts Forgetfulness and disorganization Inability to focus Poor judgment Being pessimistic or seeing only the negative side For me the most common symptom is low energy. I call this "the hole" as it feels like you are trapped in a dark hole mentally. I get this quite often and that is because of my duality in personality where I am both extrovert and introvert. That means that I spend a lot of energy being extrovert at work, but then I need time for reflection for my introvert side to balance that out.
Not having enough time for reflection at work is one of the most damaging things you can have. This is why the word NO is so important as well as the ability to dedicate time for reflection. Many organizations adapt a policy called No Meetings Day, which basically locks time from being used for meetings. This is so time can be spent on work and focused reflection.
I have a theory that the reason why so many poor decisions are made in organizations is because everyone is constantly running. With no time to reflect decisions are made in the fight or flight mode. The problem with that is that when you are in that mode you suppress your prefrontal cortex. This area of the brain is often referred to the "modern brain" since this is where our ability to plan and take long term decision. This area is also responsible for empathy, which is why some managers appear to be assholes.
 
How to avoid getting burned out
Balance you energy
The first thing I suggest you do right now is to make a list of things that give you energy and what drain you of energy. This is your balance list. This list will help you understand how you are doing mentally and you should update this often in the beginning. For me for example it cost energy to go to parties and I gain energy from writing or watching movies. For you it can be that it give you energy to go to parties and it cost energy to write reports. It all depend on your personality and there are no right or wrong answers.
Do you have time to do your work?
The second thing you should do is to look at your work. Do you have enough time to do your job? If the answer is no, then you will burn yourself out sooner or later. This is why many people in stressful jobs jump between employers as the time constraint trigger the fight or flight response. You either get into conflict with your employer or you leave if the stress get to much. So if you are in a situation when time is not enough, then you should talk to your employer to reduce the workload. If that is not possible, then find new employment if possible.
Do not forsake reflection due to social demands
Thirdly, and this is mostly for my introvert peers out there, make sure you do not forsake reflection in order to be socially accepted. I know many introverts who feel obligated to go to parties or be social when they should spend time reflecting. This is especially problematic when you are young or when you invest heavily into social media. Do not be afraid to shut down, even if you feel that people think you are weird. You are not weird and everyone that actually matter will not only understand, they will support you in that decision.
Reflect and listen
This is important, because it is when you stop to reflect that you can see the signs of you being in danger of burning yourself out. For me I write things like this and as I write I reflect on my own state of mind. For you it can be a walk in nature, mindfulness or just having a cup of tea on the terrace. Also listen to what others are saying. If people ask if you are ok, then stop and reflect instead of instantly respond that you are ok. I actually had members of my team ask me this a coupe of years ago and it led to me taking a few days off as I was getting burned out
 
What do I do if I burn myself out?
Ask for help!
This one is the most difficult one for many. Asking for help is for some strange reason considered to be a weakness, but it is in fact a strength. The ability to ask for help prevent many, many issues in life and I think it is also a prerequisite for personal growth. So do not be afraid to ask for help if you start to feel some of the symptoms above. Go talk to a doctor and also consider talking to a therapist as the injury you have sustained is a mental one. Only the symptoms are physical.
Accept that you are injured
Being burned out is not something you can "get over" or "snap out of". It is not you being lazy or weak. It is a mental injury as well as a physical one as your long term exposure of stress hormones have damaged your central nervous system. You need to treat this as a physical injury and by this I mean that you need to give it time to heal. Just as you would not keep running on a fractured leg you should not continue working in the same stressful way with a stress related injury. Let it take the time it need for you to heal.
Talk to someone who understand
This is extremely difficult to do, not just for you, but also for the people around you. Many who get burned out are people that naturally work very hard. To these people it is difficult to handle the situation as it conflict with their self image. As people around you do not understand and tell you to "get over it", that affect your self image even more. For this reason you should find someone to talk to who has been in the same situation as you have. Understanding that you are not alone and that this is not something you can just get over will help with those feelings.
Fill up on positives and cut away all demands
Nothings feels as heavy as having things that you must do. It can become paralyzing to the point of giving you panic attacks just to meet someone for coffee. So try to cut away on all things that you feel must be done and focus on things that fill you with energy. If you feel like meeting someone or doing something social, make sure that you give yourself a way out if needed. When I meet with people who have suffered a stress related injury I always tell them that if they need to cancel they just send a text. No explanations or excuses are needed. I also advice them to tell others that they are meeting that if they can not make it they will send a text and that they don't need a text back. Most people will understand that and it reduce a lot of the stress.
Drugs is not the answer!
When stress related injuries happen your instinct is to avoid the pain it brings. Most turn inwards naturally and avoid people to protect themselves. For some this is either not enough, or they can not handle the social demands. So they turn to drugs to take the edge of the pain and to hide from the world in a sense. An increase of substance abuse, regardless if it is alcohol or drugs is not actually helping however. In fact since your mind is already experiencing depression and low self esteem combined with a reduced capacity of your rational thinking adding drugs and alcohol will only increase the risk of self damage such as suicide.
Know that you will be ok
Depression often comes with stress related injuries. Self doubt and the sense of being worthless is common. These things can lead to thoughts of suicide as you see no way out of your situation. This is why it is important to get help early because no matter how bad your situation is and how deep into the darkest corners you find yourself I promise you that you will be ok. Just like all injuries they will heal in time and just like all pain it can become unbearable if you carry it alone. So ask for help and know that the pain you go through is temporary and will eventually fade. 
You will be ok.
 
Take care of yourself out there
Getting burned out is becoming more common these days as we sacrifice empathy on the altar of efficiency. So take care of yourself and balance those energy levels. Talk about it often with friends and family and reflect on your current state of mind regularly.
No one will ever thank you for working yourself into the wall. Surprisingly enough most people will appreciate you for saying no if you have to much to do. Saying no takes courage and it has nothing to do with weakness.
You are an amazing person and you deserve a wonderful life. So take care of yourself and make sure you never hit that wall.
 
 
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Professional ·

SAFe for Lean Enterprises 5.0 - what is new and what is the impact

SAFe 5.0 can be previewed on a preview section of the Scaled Agile For Enterprise website. The suggested changes takes several steps forward towards a lean organization type of frame work. With that comes challenges for companies who see SAFe as a development framework and not an organization one. Will this make it easier or harder to have organizations adapt to SAFe?
In SAFe for Lean Enterprises 5.0 comes with two new competencies and updated to five competencies. It also pushes pretty hard towards the business side with new business agility and SAFe for business teams. The biggest change is probably the merge of the teams level and the program level into one single level called Essential. While it is good to involve business more and I agree with the arguments for merging team and program levels I fear that this will make SAFe less attractive. That is because now it require a complete transformation of the company, while before you could have it living along side other frameworks.
 

 
New Focus on Business Agility
"Business Agility is the ability to compete and thrive in the digital age by quickly responding to market changes and emerging opportunities with innovative business solutions. It requires that everyone involved in delivering solutions—business and technology leaders, development, IT operations, legal, marketing, finance, support, compliance, security, and others—use Lean and Agile practices to continually deliver innovative, high-quality products and services faster than the competition."
This sounds amazing, but I would say that less than 1% of all enterprise companies are even close to having a lean approach to their organization. Almost all companies have some areas, but as a whole I would say almost every enterprise company still have a waterfall and project based approach to their organization.

 
Continuous Learning Culture New
"The Continuous Learning Culture competency describes a set of values and practices that encourage individuals—and the enterprise as a whole—to continually increase knowledge, competence, performance, and innovation. This culture is achieved by becoming a learning organization, committing to relentless improvement, and promoting a culture of innovation."
This is where I think many organizations dedicated to implement SAFe will get uncomfortable. Continuous learning cost a lot of money. We are talking several millions a year and a dedicated workforce for coaching and educating the organization. In most of the companies I have see this is very uncommon. Most if the time there is a small central team and then a multitude of initiatives throughout the organization that is not very structured or large enough to support everyone.
I would love to see this implemented, but the cost for it will surely give a lot of resistance.

 
Organizational Agility New
"The Organizational Agility competency describes how Lean-thinking people and Agile teams optimize their business processes, evolve strategy with clear and decisive new commitments, and quickly adapt the organization as needed to capitalize on new opportunities."
This makes sense, unless you consider that most enterprise companies are not Lean-thinking in their mindset and the sheer complexity of their operations makes Lean-thinking difficult. Again most companies still struggle with Agile where it mostly become an Ad-hoc stress trap due to poor adaptation and support.
Again this require a huge commitment with an almost total organization transformation. The cost alone is monumental and the effort to move your entire organization, as well as changing the tool set, towards this goal makes it a big obstacle towards a SAFe implementation for many companies. If they can afford the cost and can see the change management through however this would be very interesting indeed. I know of no company today that works this way on an organization level and I am not sure it is even possible at an enterprise company.

 
Team and Technical Agility Restructured
"The Team and Technical Agility competency describes the critical skills and Lean-Agile principles and practices that high-performing Agile teams and Teams of Agile teams use to create high-quality solutions for their customers. The result is increased productivity, better quality, faster time-to-market, and predictable delivery of value."
This description has been updated, but unfortunately it still does not define teams as product based. It also does not give any focus towards work satisfaction or team health, which is important factors to consider as some teams should not use an Agile methodology as it is damaging to their health. Not really much news here other than some updates to to the merge of team and program level.

 
Agile Product Delivery   Restructured
"The Agile Product Delivery competency is a customer-centric approach to defining, building, and releasing a continuous flow of valuable products and services to customers and users. This competency enables the organization to provide solutions that delight customers, lower development costs, reduce risk, and outmaneuver the competition. The DevOps and Release on Demand competency has been renamed to Agile Product Delivery."
Again not much news here. Some additional emphasis on customer centric design thinking, which is a bit amusing as most organizations are very far from customer centric in general and still very new to the concept of design thinking. Hopefully this will increase the demand for UX and CRO as user testing and A/B testing is a rather rare occurrence in today's enterprises. On the DevOps side I still do not see this working, even after 10 years of "implementation" on many organizations. In fact the trend is to separate dev and ops more than uniting them...

 
Lean Portfolio Management   Restructured
"The Lean Portfolio Management competency aligns strategy and execution by applying Lean and systems thinking approaches to strategy and investment funding, Agile portfolio operations, and governance. These collaborations give the enterprise the ability to align strategy to execution, to meet existing commitments reliably, and to better enable innovation."
This is the one thing I wish every enterprise organization would focus on right now. In to many organizations there are barely any strategic portfolios and contracts are all written as fixed price engagements that kill any chance of agility. There are few, if any, enterprise architects and overall the structure and control on portfolio levels are pretty bad. Not much news here, but an improved description and a slight alignment towards organization agility.

 
Enterprise Solution Delivery   Restructured
"The Enterprise Solution Delivery competency describes how to apply Lean-Agile principles and practices to the specification, development, deployment, operation, and evolution of the world’s largest and most sophisticated software applications, networks, and cyber-physical systems. The Business Solutions and Lean Systems Engineering competency has been renamed to Agile Product Delivery"
This section has been rewritten and again aligned a bit with the merge of teams and program. It still promote a microservices solution and continuous deliver system that is not really aligned with the complexity of large scale system development with multiple teams of different cadence. Despite that this is a good section with many good descriptions that would make life easier if followed.

 
 
Lean-Agile Leadership  Restructured
"The Lean-Agile Leadership competency describes how Lean-Agile Leaders drive and sustain organizational change by empowering individuals and teams to reach their highest potential. They do this through leading by example, adopting a Lean-Agile mindset, and lead the change to a new way of working. The result is more engaged employees, increased productivity and innovation, and successful organizational change."
This section is updated and rewritten a bit. The SAFe implementation roadmap has been updated a bit as well with 2 new courses. One for Lean Portfolio Management and one for Agile Product and Solution Management (APSM)

 
Overall these are good changes, but I fear that the extent of the new changes can make organizations feel that SAFe is becoming increasingly difficult to implement. On the other hand it can also be the leverage certain part of the organization need to push the change that they see is necessary. It also makes it more attractive from a strategic perspective to have a framework that will actually transform all aspects of the organization.
So there are some good things and some, potentially, bad things in SAFe 5.0.
I like it, how about you?
 
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Ways of working ·

How will large organizations handle next-gen projects in Jira Cloud?

Atlassian is continuing to push for their cloud services and many new and innovative features for Jira Cloud are added to the new next-gen project type. This is the most open and flexible project type ever created for Jira cloud, which can cause serious headache for large organizations.
"In next-gen, projects are entirely independent from one another, meaning you can change something in one project and it won’t impact anything in another. In next-gen, workflows live within projects and will be tied to specific issue types. So for example you could have a specific workflow for your bugs and another workflow for your stories. Because the projects are entirely independent from one another, it gives teams more autonomy to adjust and continuously optimize their workflows without impacting other teams or having to bother administrators." - NextGen roadmap
The total freedom to create your own workflows and customize the way you work is a dream come true for many project owners. For method and process offices however they are a nightmare unless you are one of the few enterprise companies that actually work with work processes in Jira on a daily basis.
Many of the companies I meet struggle to even maintain a common way of working with a strict workflow policy. The idea of letting every project getting the power to create their own way of working could be a nightmare for those companies. So what can you do to control the way of working so people can work cross projects and still allow for freedom and autonomy within the projects?
I believe in education and freedom under responsibility.
That being said I think that next-gen should not be treated any different than Jira in general. If you have a defined way of working, and I do not mean what words you should use based on methodology, but an actual way of working. Then teach the users. As long as the way of working makes sense to the users, then they will naturally follow it.
You also need coaches to support the teams. This is important, not just because we want to give the teams the best possible chance to succeed, but also so we can capture new ideas and improvements to the way of working. This way we can continuously improve the way we work together.
If there is one change I would like to see in large organizations, then it is to have a proper center for way of working: The WOW office. Many have similar offices, but they almost always follow a top-down approach where they focus on processes and methods. The concept of defining a method rather than asking the users how they want to work is for me a complete waste of time.  I see so many companies focusing on defining words instead of describing what is actually done. So I would suggest a bottom-up approach with each capability having it's own organizations.
If you have proper support for the teams and you have a healthy WOW office that can train the teams on how to use the tools in your organization, then you are going to have a great time. If you on the other side do not have a WOW office with a defined way of working that is aligned with the users or a support organization to train and support the teams....then do not allow the creation of next-gen projects in your organization.
Next-gen projects have the potential to fracture your organization, or form mega projects with thousands of users. It can form barriers making working cross projects impossible and lead to customizations that will quickly make life hard for everyone. This is the same issue many organizations face when they have a loose policy for customizations, but with next-gen projects you will loose any possibility to control the way each and every project will define their work processes.
With the push from Atlassian towards Cloud and the changes to licensing models for large organizations this is not something you need to look at in the future. This is a reality now and you better prepare for it before you end up in a bad situation.
Next-gen projects is the future. With right preparation and investment I think it will supercharge your teams to a productivity and creativity that you have never seen before. Make sure you have a plan for it and how to align all that power to a common way of working without crippling the teams autonomy.
Are you prepared?
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Atlassian ·

Why are Requirements so difficult to master?

Requirements are very important. In fact I would say that 95% of all failed IT projects can be traced to a poor requirement process. This is baffling because requirements are really not that complicated and yet I see people fail in organization after organization.
After I started to look into the different flavors of Requirements I start to understand why things are so very hard to understand for many. There are such confusion about what type of work you should actually do, who you actually work for and what you actually should deliver.
So let us define what a requirement is first:
 
"A Requirement is a legal agreement between the requester and the performer."
 
That statement alone will surely get a few people raising their eyebrow for the simple reason that it does not fit in their job description. Again this baffles me that we have so many different work description for a single discipline. My only explanation is that people are confused on what different levels you work with requirements.
If we simply break down the three most common way of working I have seen: Facilitate, Investigate and Document. Then add it to the three common areas of work: Business, IT and translation between the two, then we can make a nice matrix. From there we can see what actual roles people have.
 

 
For me I think that anyone working with facilitating meetings as their primary function is a manager. Anyone who just document the need is a secretary. Those two types of "requirement analysts" I see frequently and in my opinion we should make sure that we call them for what they are so people do not think that this is requirement work.
In the investigative category it is common to work in all 3 areas depending on who you work for. Business analysts help business to define their need and IT analysts help IT define their need. This is however not requirements as their final product, but need. That comes BEFORE requirements. In this matrix we can see that the only role that actually work with requirements as the final product are the Requirement Analysts. This makes sense since the definition of requirements as a final product is:
 
"The outcome of a Requirement is a translation between need and realization of that need."
 
This is where many fail. I see many, many requirements that are nothing more than a granular break down of a need, but lacking the translation.  Many are often either to undefined and border on a business need, or other times I see technical specifications instead of the need. My theory is that people do not understand what requirements are and who they are for.
We can see this in the delivery of requirements as well. I do not know how many times I have seen people claiming to work with requirements simply dump a bunch of documents on the development team and move on to next project, or next iteration of the project. This way of working when you build walls and throw packages over it is NOT a proper way to work with requirements.
As we can see in the matrix above a requirement analyst sit between business and IT. There she function as a bridge between the two, translating need in both direction to ensure everyone understand and agree on what should be realized. This can only be done with active communication, person to person, and you never deliver a requirement, you make a handover.
I think that this is the key for making requirement processes work: handover and asking development and test to take over the responsibility of the requirement. To ask the most important question there is: "do you understand what business want and can you realize that need with the information you have been provided?" If the answer is no to that question, then you are not done with the requirement.
If you just understand your place in the requirement process and you understand what a requirement is, then the requirement process will be easy for you. If your organization understand that as well, then life will be great for everyone.
 
So do you still think requirements are difficult?
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Ways of working ·

Procreate 5 - five new features

Procreate 5 has been announced and with it comes some cool new features such as brand new cutting edge graphics engine and the new brush studio. I will try to tell you about five of them that I think is pretty cool and that i think will really make this upgrade worth while.
Procreate 5 is built on a new graphics engine called Valkyrie. This will not only improve performance, but will also allow new features such as importing Photoshop brushes and customizable brush options.
"the new cutting-edge graphics engine designed to elevate Apple Pencil and iPad Pro to new heights."
 
Brush studio is a brush editing tool that will let users combine two brushes to create custom Dual Brushes, and features over 150 different brush settings. Users will be able to manually adjust the Apple Pencil’s pressure and tilt settings, and use the built-in texture generator to create their own brushes. This will give you get hundreds of different brush variables to play with.
"Seeking the perfect brush to suit your style? Craft your own from the ground up. Using the built-in graphically accelerated texture generator, you'll be able to make the brush you need in seconds."
 
Animations, which was introduced back in April is given an upgrade as well. Animation Assist has features like onion skinning, (which shows a faint outline of the previous layer, and instant playback.

 
Colors are given some new dynamics options which will allow multiple colors in one brush stroke based on how much tilt and pressure is applied. We will also see support for CMYK, which is great for users working with print, and RGB ICC profiles.
"Enjoy a level of control unmatched by any other platform. Transform colors on the fly with complete control using Color Dynamics and Apple Pencil's pressure and tilt technology."
 
We will also see a new interface where the users will be able to move around the floating Color Picker and the transform and selection modes have been redesigned for better visibility on the canvas. There's also a new Clone Tool so you can  duplicate textures.
"Working in harmony with the entire suite of Procreate brushes, the new Clone Tool and CMYK support will change the game for concept artists and digital painters. There’s something here for everyone."
 
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Ways of working ·

Official integration between Jenkins and Jira Software Cloud

Jenkins is used by many teams around the world and for a while now the plug-in integrating Jenkins with Jira Software has been unsupported. However now Atlassian have announced an official integration with Jenkins.
The integration itself allow build information from Jenkins to be posted throughout Jira Software Cloud. This is similar to other CI/CD tools where you can automatically send build and deployment information from Jenkins and display it across Jira issues, boards and query it via JQL. In addition to this Atlassian also have built in a new way to integrate using OAuth Credentials.
"In addition to the Jenkins integration we also build a brand new way to integrate your behind-the-firewall apps with Jira Software Cloud. You can now generate OAuth Credentials (2LO) to securely connect these tools without having to open any holes in your firewall. The credential is tied to a specific Jira site, can be generated by Jira admins, and is used to communicate between a self-hosted application (e.g. a Jenkins server) and your Jira Software Cloud site."

Using OAuth Credentials is interesting since it will allow for secure connections even through firewalls to connect to Jira Software Cloud.
"You can now generate OAuth Credentials (2LO) to securely connect these tools without having to open any holes in your firewall. The credential is tied to a specific Jira site, can be generated by Jira admins, and is used to communicate between a self-hosted application (e.g. a Jenkins server) and your Jira Software Cloud site. The OAuth credential is currently scoped to only send build and deployment information via the Jira APIs."
This is great news for all Jenkins users and good news for all Jira Software Cloud users.
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Atlassian ·

Dependency and progress for roadmaps in Jira Software Cloud

The roadmap feature in Jira Software Cloud's NextGen templates is getting a bit of an upgrade. In the new version we have two new features and soon we will get one of the features I am waiting for most.
In this new update for Jira Software Cloud we get two new features. Dependencies allow you to quickly link two epics together to indicate that they are dependent on each other. This is a great feature that allow you to visualize dependencies in your timeline.
The second feature is to indicate progress for child issues. This is shown below the epic name in the different status colors: grey, blue and green. This is not really as useful as if you could drill down on the items themselves in a hierarchy as you can in Portfolio for Jira. Still it is useful to quickly get a glance of the current status of things.

In the next version we will see the addition of roadmap hierarchies. This will allow us to open up the child issues so we can see them in the tree. Unfortunately the child issues does not seem to be shown in the same way and in the first iteration we only seem to get this for one level of the tree. Sub-tasks will not be seen in the hierarchy as it looks right now.

 
I feel that this is a step in the right direction, but I am concerned about the fact that the road map feature only exist for Cloud users and even more so that it is only available for NextGen projects. The features are much wanted and if we can get a good transition of Portfolio for Jira to a simpler and more useful tool, then I think that will be a great selling point.
For this to to be a replacement for Portfolio for Jira, which is positioned a bit between Jira Align and Roadmaps, then we need to be able to select what level we want to use and we need to be able to extend the parent child hierarchy with new levels. Using Epics in this way kind of annoy me since we are clearly working with features here rather than epics.
It will be interesting to see if Roadmaps will remain a cloud only feature and how it will fit next to Jira Align and Portfolio for Jira in the future. For now I am enjoying the new feature and look forward to the next upgrade.
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Atlassian ·

Atlassian Launches free tiers for all cloud products

Atlassian has announced that a free tier for all of the company’s services that didn’t already offer one is coming. Atlassian now also offers discounted cloud pricing for academic institutions and nonprofit organizations. This is great for smaller companies that want to upgrade from the popular Trello platform, which is also owned by Atlassian.
Jira Software, Confluence, Jira Service Desk and Jira Core will get free tiers in the coming months. Exactly what the limits will be on these free tiers is yet to be seen, but it is safe to assume that the current 10 user tier that is the entry level will probably be free. In addition to this we will also see an extension of the trial version which is very short today. This allow companies to better evaluate before committing to a purchase.
"We’re announcing free plans of Jira Software, Confluence, Jira Service Desk, and Jira Core – available in the coming months. This adds to the existing free offerings already in place for Trello, Bitbucket, and Opsgenie to give teams of all sizes, even small ones, a set of fundamental capabilities for team collaboration." - Reaching new heights in the cloud
For me this is great news as it allow many smaller companies to get introduced to Jira. This allow Jira to organically become a foundation of the workflow as the companies grow. This should multiply the use of Jira quite a bit, especially with the new next-gen features that are very similar to Trello. I like this move quite a bit and I look forward to hearing more about this as the new tiers are published.
In addition to this they also talk about their Cloud Premium offer and the new discount offer for academic and non-profit organizations.
 
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Atlassian ·

Working with Invision Power Services is difficult, but rewarding

This site is built on Invision Power services and out of the box it is a very competent solution. As I dig deeper into the CMS however things quickly becomes a bit difficult. At the same time I continue to be amazed on just how powerful this system is.
When you dive into IPS then you quickly start to find areas where you need some guidance. This is when you try to figure out how to adjust a certain piece of data or how IPS template systems work. This is where things get a bit difficult because very little effort is made to support this kind of questions from IPS. They rely on the community to support each other, but unfortunately this works very poorly.
IPS used to have specific areas for each of their modules, but now that is gone and instead there is a generic area. For me who mostly need help with the CMS this is a pain because the CMS barely register as most still only use the forum. So finding the right information is difficult at best and if you ask, then you rarely get any help because so few actually know anything about the CMS. I think that 90% of all my questions are answered by OpenType, one of the few Pages experts on IPS. There are some documentation, but it is rudimentary and is more a base than actual documentation, so you really need someone to help you with the more specific areas.
Once you get through that obstacle then magic start to appear. I do not think i have used a software this powerful...ever. Just out of the box you can do pretty much anything you want. Then there are plugins and addons built by the community to further extent the capabilities. Once you start to understand how things are connected, then you almost get immobilized because there is just so much potential so it's hard to know where to start!
It is annoying ass hell sometimes, but at the same time it's just awesome when you figure out how things actually work and what you can do with it.
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Personal ·

Setup Jira and Confluence for success - Part 3: Defining Jira workflows

In the previous articles we have defined what tool to use for what and what issue types we need. New it's time to define the workflows for those issue types. Before we can do that however we should first define what workflows are and how we should use them in Jira.
Three types of workflows
In short we can narrow down workflows to three types: sequential, state machine and rules driven workflows.
Sequential workflow
This workflow is usually chart based from one step to the next, always moving forward without ever going back. Each step depends on the completion of the activities on the previous step. You can think of this workflow as a connect the dots system: you have to follow the numbers correctly, one after the other, to complete the big picture.
State Machine Workflow
This type of workflow can be considered like puzzle solving, in which you’re constantly putting important pieces in place to complete a project. State machine workflow are frequently used when there are creative elements in the process, or products and services that require extra review or input from clients and management.
Rules-driven Workflow
This workflow is executed based on a sequential workflow with rules that dictate the progress of the workflow. This can be compared to following a blueprint to make one complete structure. Rules driven workflows are very useful when working on a variety of projects with clear goals but varying levels of specifications.
We should also define what a workflow is NOT:
A workflows is NOT a process - A process is more then just a workflow as it includes data, forms, reports, actors and more. A workflow usually span over multiple processes as we hand over responsibility between different capabilities (requirement, development, test, acceptance).
  A workflow is NOT a list of unconnected tasks - Unconnected tasks are task management and not a workflow.
  A workflow is NOT a checklist - Checklists are binary. It's either done or not done. That is not a workflow.
  A workflow is NOT a state diagram - This is probably the biggest issue I see when people try to design workflows. The idea that you need to track every single state in a workflow comes from a misunderstanding of who we actually build workflows for and what they actually need.  
"A state machine (panel (a)) performs actions in response to explicit events. In contrast, the flowchart (panel (b)) does not need explicit events but rather transitions from node to node in its graph automatically upon completion of activities." - Wikipedia


 
Who do we build workflows for?
In order to understand why state diagrams are not the best choice to design workflows in Jira we should understand who we build workflows for and what purpose they serve.
The reason we use Jira is because we  want a good way to define and assign work. We also need a way to oversee, or manage, the work. This means that we want a way to track what work we are doing, what the current status is on that work and who is responsible for completing the work at the moment.
So for developers and testers we want en easy way to see what is ready to be worked on, what is being worked on and and what have we completed. For managers we need the same, but over the whole chain of responsibility. We also want to connect the work to the need so we can follow up when the need is being fulfilled.
So we have two basic need to fulfill:
What is ready for me to work on? Are we on track to fulfill the need or do I need to take action? In the previous article we mentioned transitional and producing items when defining what issue types we need. We can match these theories with these two need as well. #1 is producing as we just need to track the actual work in a fetch and release process. For #2 we use transitional as we want to track all areas of responsibility.
Based on this we can see that there is no need to see everything that happen in the work we do. We need to see who is doing what and if there are any impediments that could prevent us from completing the need in time. This is why we choose to work with flow charts and not state diagrams.
 
"Design for collaboration, not control"
 
If you feel that you must track every single step in the work, then I suggest you take a look at why you need that. Usually it is because you lack trust in your organization due to poor communication or that someone in the chain of management suffer from an unhealthy need for control. Either way you should fix that outside of Jira as we should design for collaboration, not control.
 
What statuses do we need?
So now that we know what types of workflows we have to work with and what the need is we need to fulfill, then it's time to break down what statuses we actually need. We start by defining the different areas of responsibility that we need to track in our workflows.
Development Test Acceptance First we start with adding a waiting status in each so we can fulfill the need of knowing what is ready for us to work on. This will also allow us to get statistics on waiting periods to see where we have resource issues. We name them the same to keep a proper naming convention: "Ready for <area of responsibility>".
Secondly we add a status for when someone is working on something. Again we can track this for statistics, but most importantly we can quickly see what is being worked on and by whom. We name this the same as well: "In <area of responsibility>.
We end the basics with setting a Closed status as the last status. This will allow us to set a resolution and indicate that the development work has been completed and is ready to be deployed. I often see people adding things like resolved or done, but in a workflow you should not have partial closure and there is actually no need for it.
We now have the basics for a fetch and release process and we have fulfilled the first need.
 

 
In order to fulfill the next need we need to add a few additional statuses, but first we should change the starting status. In Jira we have Open as the first status when a  new issue is created. This is a bad status as it is not clear what Open really mean and I have seen whole organizations failing due to this misunderstanding. So we will rename this status to New if we can do that for the whole organization. If not, then we create a new status and use that as our first status.
In order to track when something is blocked or waiting for something we add a status called Waiting/On Hold. Even though we can use the flag function to visualize this I have found that a dedicated status usually make this far more visible in the boards.
We will also add a Reopened status in the event that we need to open a closed status for some reason. This either happen because we close by mistake, but in the event that someone actually revoke a closed issue we want to track that. Adding this is a status allow us to define how we want to handle this situation later.
Finally we will add a status mostly used for defect management, but it can be used in any development workflow. That status is Rejected. While this can sound like a very harsh status it's purpose is to revert something back to the reporter for clarification rather than using the Close status and then Reopen.
With just these few statuses we can manage both need to see what is ready for me to work on (ready for <area of responsibility>), who is working on what (In <area of responsibility>)and if there are any issues that need attention (waiting/on hold). We can not take any issue type and look at what area of responsibility is involved in fulfilling that task and then map the statuses we have defined to that.
All generic workflows will have the same statuses. This makes it very easy to work with boards and no matter what capability you work with you always have only 3 statuses to keep track of: ready for me to work on, I am working on this, ready for someone else.
 
What about release management?!
Another common question is how I handle release management since there is no statuses for release. The answer to that is that we do not need that since Jira has that built into the core system in the form or versions. Every development should be closed with at least one version in the Fix Version field to indicate what code package the code is placed in. Every defect should also have an Affect Version that indicate what version of the code the defect was found in.
By doing this we can map what code is in what package, but Jira should never be master for this information. This information should come from Bitbucket, or similar code versioning tool. This is also the same for deploys, which we do not manage in Jira at all since that is a completely different process. This comes from Bamboo or similar tools.
The idea of managing deploys as a status in Jira quickly become silly as you would have a separate step that happen long after development, test and acceptance has been completed. This task is unconnected to the areas of responsibility. It is not a producing step, just a transportation step that is done not on story level, but on code package level. Like we established above this is not a part of a workflow since it is an unconnected task. We will however keep track of deployment in Confluence, but we will get to that in later articles.
 
Let's build the default workflow
Let us take all the theories above and make it real by designing the workflow in Jira and see if it hold up for real work.

 
Requirement & business processes happen outside of this workflow. The expectation is that the beginning of the workflow comes in the form of a clarified need as a story. Even in Agile way of working the story is clear enough to be worked on once put into the ”Ready for Development” status.
Once a story is clear enough to be worked on and we have acceptance from Development and Test, then we move the story to the status "Ready for Development". Producing items are created for development and we start working on the issue  by transition the store to In Development.
Once done we transition the story to Ready for development to complete the fetch and release process. This is repeated in the test and acceptance steps. In the event that we get a defect, then we create a defect sub-task and block the story from completion. We can use this for all development tasks as they all follow the same path.

Let's see how we set this up in Jira.
 
Building workflows in Jira
In order to build global workflows in Jira you need Admin access to Jira. Go to Jira Settings ->  Issues. Here you will find the two sections we need to configure to build a new workflow and to assign it to a project. Under Workflows you will see the current active and inactive workflows. In the top right corner you will see a button with the text "Add Workflow" Click that and you will get a popup to enter a name for the workflow and a description.

Once you have added a name and description you will come to the design view. Here you use the "Add Status" to add the statuses we want. We create them with global transitions to make the workflow as open and flexible as possible by checking the box "Allow all statuses to transition to this one".
I usually have transitions between rejected and new, as well as for Closed to Reopen, just to make it more clear that the rejection is used in a certain part of the workflow. This way you can't go to rejected or reopened from other statuses than the intended ones. In a proper workforce where the users get education on how to use Jira this is not really needed however so you can skip that if you do not feel it is necessary.

 
Add Workflows to a workflow schema
Now we can go to workflow schemes where you find all your active and inactive workflow schemes. in the top right corner you have a button with the text "Add workflow scheme". Click that and in the popup you add the name and description of your scheme. You will then be taken to the screen where you add workflows to the scheme and map it to specific issue types.
Click the add workflow button and select the workflow we created earlier. In the next screen you get to select which issue types you want to map to this workflow. Select the ones you like, which should be all of our development issue types and then click finish. Your scheme is now configured with a workflow that is mapped to the issue types you want. You can edit this scheme at any time should you add workflows and/or issue types.

 
Add Issue Type Scheme to your project
Go to your project and then click on project setting in the left menu. It should be at the bottom of the list of areas for your project, but if you can not see it then you may not have admin rights for your project and you need to get some help with this step. If you have access then in the project settings go to Workflows.
Here you see your current workflow schema and the workflows attached to it. To change click on "Switch Scheme" and select the new scheme that we created above. Click associate and if needed map statuses on the next screen and wait for all statuses to resolve. Once done you have your new workflow scheme mapped and you can start using your new workflow.

 
We now have workflows setup for our issue types, but we still have a few things to do before they are completely ready to be used. That is to define the screens and custom fields we will use in our setup. That will all be explained in Part 4: Defining Jira Screens & Custom fields that we will look at next.
 
By 💫 Jimi Wikman in Atlassian ·

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