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Update makes JIRA Software more Agile

Phill Fox
Phill Fox
4 February 16 Jira
Update makes JIRA Software more Agile
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Update makes Jira Software more agile

Atlassian has announced that permission handling in JIRA Software has been updated so that users can fully participate in Agile ceremonies without needing to have full access rights to an instance.

Making JIRA Software more Agile

It's a conceptually simple but crucial change to permissions in JIRA and something we've long seen a need for. In the past, only users with project level permissions could create, amend or delete sprints, creating a bottleneck that's contrary to the, well, agility needed to successfully be Agile.

Adding sprint permissions to the model

The main challenge this created was that you would need to give all users an inappropriate level of access to JIRA. You would be giving them Project level permissions when all they need is the ability to change day-to-day elements.

Permissions in JIRA Software

Atlassian's solution is to add a new permission level Manage Sprint that makes JIRA even better for running Agile processes. Permissions in JIRA work on three levels:

  • Global permissions that apply to whole JIRA Software instance rather than individual projects
  • Project permissions that organised into permission schemes and control who can see, create, edit or assign issues
  • Issue permissions that refer to the level of visibility individual issues to have to certain teams or roles

To date, sprint permissions were missing from this list and were part of the project or global administrator's permissions. The result was that teams would need someone in a development manager, product manager or team lead role to create new sprints, reorder future sprints and delete sprints.

Avoiding blockers to Agile success

One of the key aspects of Agile is the idea of cross-functional teams and shared ownership. Needing a team leader to make these day-to-day changes can easily become a huge blocker. In fact, the idea that this type of sprint admin couldn't be done by every member of the team is almost ridiculous.

Enabling teams to better manage sprints

The new Manage Sprints permission level empowers team members to manage the process and fully embeds the trust and respect of Agile into JIRA. The Manage Sprint role can:

  • Create sprints
  • Start sprints
  • Complete sprints
  • Edit sprint information (name and dates)
  • Reorder future sprints
  • Delete future sprints
  • Reopen sprints
  • Move the sprint footer

Of course, the flexibility of JIRA means that you can apply the new Manage Sprint permission to specific users and roles. So there's less burden on team leader and product owner roles to make admin changes and the whole team is more empowered to proactively manage the sprints and remove blockers. It's also an opportunity to think about how you run sprints and how you could be doing it more effectively.

The new functionality is being rolled-out to the Atlassian Cloud first and the Server version will follow. For more information or to discuss how this might affect your JIRA installation, comment below or contact us.

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