Jira Align Isn’t For Everyone. Here’s How to Know If It’s Right for You.

Jira Align practically sells itself. When people see the top to bottom and horizontal alignment to high-level goals and visibility into the right things at every level that it provides, they’re almost universally sold. Yet, after the first year or so of using Jira Align, not all companies achieve the results they’d hoped for. They can’t account for the things they need to account for or see what they need to see. 

They’re no more aligned than before.

Here’s the thing: they don’t actually want Jira Align—they want the insights and outcomes it produces. And no tool is going to make those outcomes possible—even one as powerful as Jira Align—unless you do the upfront legwork to get there. For Jira Align to be worth the investment, companies must first determine what problems are worth solving and then put the practices and processes in place to solve those problems. They need to be working in the right way to surface the insights they need. That’s one of the reasons Jira Align implementations require ancillary services.

To identify those problems and practices, you also need to invest in change leadership and change management. Change leadership requires executive sponsorship to lead, model, and drive the change, and change management requires support at every level to help teams adopt and adapt new ways of working. 

If you are willing and able to do this–no question, Jira Align can be transformative. If you aren’t, then Jira Align is not the answer for you.

Learn more about key practices to supercharge your use of Jira Align. Download our white paper: Making the Case for Jira Align: What It Is, What It Can Do, and Key Practices to Get You Started.

Not Ready for Jira Align? You Can Still Make Meaningful Progress!

If Jira Align isn’t right for you just yet, or you’re not in a position to make the investment, you can still make meaningful progress toward your Agile and/or alignment goals. You’ll need to do some upfront legwork—making sure you’re solving the right problems and putting some foundational practices in place—but you can do this incrementally and iteratively, one step at a time.

Once you’ve taken these initial steps, there are an infinite number of other solutions available to help you align goals to work and create transparency. Which ones are right for you depends on variables like organization size, alignment maturity, growth opportunities, appetite/tolerance for risk, level of leadership support, urgency, and existing, in-house tools and skill sets.

You may not even need any new tools at all—it may simply be a matter of optimizing your current Atlassian stack or any other tools you are using. Or it may make more sense to augment what you already have. Either way, practices and tools can be put in place with an eye toward setting you up to move into Jira Align when the time is right. 

Will taking these measures give you the same level of visibility into the right things, at the right levels, the way Jira Align will? Not exactly—there’s nothing quite like Jira Align. But they can do a lot to support you as you move the needle toward your goals.

Learn how Atlassian tools can help you drive better alignment within your organization. Download our white paper: How Atlassian Solutions Can Help You Correct Misalignment and Supercharge Business Outcomes.

Just in Time, Right-Sized Guidance 

Whether you are ready for Jira Align or simply looking to create better alignment within your organization, Isos Technology’s Agile Services Master Practitioners can help. We embed in your VMO or LACE, help identify the problems worth solving, providing right-sized, practical guidance around practices, and processes and technology in places to help you achieve your transformation goals.

Interested in learning more about what our expert consultants can do for your organization? Contact us!