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What is one way that an agile project-management tool (such as JIRA, Azure Boards, or RTC) can help coordinate and increase efficiency within the team? Be sure to consider a  tool and not a Scrum event.

Introduction

As a project manager, one of my favorite things about being on an agile team is the opportunity to work with great people. However, it can be difficult for everyone involved in a project–from developers to users–to keep track of what’s going on. This is where tools come in handy; they help coordinate activities and make sure everyone knows where their efforts are going.

Provide a way to create a shared understanding of the project status.

A tool that can help you track progress reports.

A tool that can help you monitor progress reports.

A tool that can help you track your organization’s activities and make sure they are aligned with the project goals, outcomes, and milestones.

Monitor progress.

There are several ways you can monitor progress on a project. You’ll want to start with the basics, such as tracking time on a task or comparing estimates with actual results. Once you have this information, it’s important to use it in context with other metrics such as velocity and quality assurance (QA).

The first step is simply tracking what has happened so far in relation to your goal for the project. This will help guide decisions about what needs doing next, which could include adding more resources or changing priorities altogether if needed.

Track progress reports.

One way that an agile project-management tool can help coordinate and increase efficiency within your team is by providing a way for you to track progress reports. These are often called “dashboards,” and they allow you to see at a glance how things are going with a specific goal or metric. For example:

• You could create a dashboard showing how far along each team member has gotten on their tasks during the last sprint, so that everyone can keep tabs on where they stand relative to one another as well as what needs attention next (for example: “We’re behind schedule 2 days out from release date”).
• You could also create dashboards showing how much work has been done towards achieving various KPIs (key performance indicators), which will allow everyone in the organization more context about what’s needed for success over time instead of just focusing on daily tasks happening right now like “fixing bugs.”

Provide visibility into the activities of your organization.

A key feature of an agile project management tool is the ability to track activities across the entire project. This can be used for various purposes, from helping you identify what your team needs most and prioritizing those items, to communicating with your stakeholders about the status of their tasks and concerns.

For example: let’s say you have an online course that needs to be delivered by a certain date; if a user has already paid for it, then they will receive access on launch day(s). You should monitor when this happens so that there aren’t any delays due to late registrations or refunds after purchase was made (this way everyone wins!). The same goes for financial matters — tracking how much money was spent on materials versus how much more budgeted was spent during development stages would help ensure that there weren’t any surprises down the line when final production costs were calculated later on down road…

More communication, visibility and accountability are key to keeping teams moving forward on an agile project!

Communication is the key to keeping teams moving forward on an agile project. Communication is what keeps everyone informed and accountable, so it’s important that you have a tool in place that helps you do this effectively.

It’s also important that communication extends beyond just the team members themselves–you need to make sure everyone knows what needs to happen next, when/if something goes wrong, etc., so there’s no confusion about what needs doing next or how someone else should act if they see something happening in another team member’s area of responsibility (like “What should I do?”).

Conclusion

If you’re looking to improve your team’s agile project-management tool (JIRA, Azure Boards or RTC) usage, then one way is to make sure that it’s used as a tool and not just a Scrum event. The best way to do this is by increasing communication and visibility within the team so everyone knows what their responsibilities are and how they contribute to the overall success of the project. With more accountability also comes more motivation which leads us back full circle—better communication equals more productivity, which leads even further towards success!