Welcome to the Jira for Designers series brought to you by Design at Scale™ – Academy. In a previous article, we discussed the relationship between Agile and Design(↘︎Link). This article will explore how designers can define the relationship within the team by using the development delivery method and, let alone, project management tools.

Jira is your ally

In many cases, Jira has been often classed as overwhelming with respect to simple stage and gate design delivery. Thousands of designers struggle to join the development teams and departments and search for clues of how they can navigate their day-to-day product design delivery.
In many cases, designers need to be able to filter all design tasks, user stories or epics that directly impact what needs to be delivered for the existing sprint and the following sprint. 

Two things might happen here: first, you are under the spell of a very protective CPO(↘︎Link) or SCM(↘︎Link), and therefore, you might not be able to even touch the Jira setting or have no permission to amend it. And that is ok, do not worry about it. Second, you are in an environment that is fairly flexible and open to improvements. This way, you can set a few things that put you and your design colleagues in charge. 

Duck in the row – get organised

Look at the clues; for a brief moment, try to be a Sherlock Holmes. Try to find anything that is design-related, including anything the design has written on it, whether it’s an epic, story, task, or even the label on the left-hand side.

Before you move anywhere else, try to filter the clues that you have found to see the classes of information that your product owner has defined prior to your arrival. Then only then approach your CSM(↘︎Link); if there is none, grab your CPO(↘︎Link) for a coffee and with a set of questions that will most likely have the following goals:

• How do we schedule the design work?
• How do we prioritise design work?
• How do we link existing research to current user stories?
• How do we test our designs against the acceptance criteria?
• How do we share the designs with our engineering team? 

At the Design at Scale™ – Academy(↘︎Link), we go into greater detail about these questions not only in the reflection of delivery but also in how these questions strengthen your arrival to the team and establish your position as a thought leader in the design space.

Communicate 

I know we designers can not help it! If this is your first design development intervention or you are arriving at a new development team, instead of throwing a bunch of opinions and broadcasting your misunderstanding of the current environment, prepare a set of questions that will help you to unearth the real quality maturity of the team, real challenges they are facing and lastly the foundation of your allies. Conversely, try to avoid questions like “why didn’t you …” not that it hurts, but it usually derails the conversation beyond recovery. People start focusing on protecting their past decisions instead of sharing the pain points. While working with the current setting, you will observe and record what does and what does not work for the design delivery. Please make sure that you take note, clearly visualise, and communicate the challenge that you or your team are facing in this very specific development environment. 

I have seen a dozen designers joining the Development team and throwing their opinions into something they have little to no understanding – myself included. The feedback came from the arrogance and misconception of the complex delivered environment instead of the dependencies we designers often do not see. Make yourself comfortable; everything set up before arrival has a reason, whether it’s in the benefits of design delivery or lack of understanding. Design altogether gives you the power and full control over the influence of the design in this specific development unit by making yourself visible in Jira – and that fact. 

Ditch opinions and have the data.

After usually 3 to 5 sprints, you realise how your team operates with the main design challenges you might have. If you settle in Atlassian Jira(↘︎Link), you will have enough evidence to put together a short yet very powerful presentation on product design delivery. This is not a time to critique. This time, you should show the gap where you can do a better job. Your understanding will bring a better context and more profitable solutions closer to development than trying to solve the design in a vacuum. Being visible in Jira also shows respect and the ability to broadcast the changes by informing the team about upcoming changes. 

Self-managed Design Teams

At this point, you are reaching a self-managed unit within your development team, and you have been fully recognised as a part of the delivery cycle(↘︎Link). This will give you the opportunity to be prepared for every single retrospective, usually happening biweekly, where you can clearly articulate and often debate what we can improve in terms of the design delivery. 

That way, you can clearly influence not only the development team delivering the product or service but, inevitably, you can certainly influence the product itself and its positive impact on the customer. It will give you a better chance to talk to the client, let alone have a better relationship with the product owner, and start the building of the designer function that will respect it and be fully integrated within the product or service. 

Whether your team is on-site or fully remote, your communication happens through Jira(↘︎Link) and Confluence(↘︎Link), allowing you to clearly mark and communicate with all of your colleagues on all interactions that design requires in order to fulfil the task. One of the most profound impacts that I have seen, especially in the remote teams, was designers embracing the power of these environments and investing their time to become the voice of a customer in a very heavy development environment. 

Feel free to join our Design at Scale™ – Community(↘︎Link) for more information and details on the settings in these environments. 

Happy scaling through design!

Hey, I’m Jiri Mocicka.
London-based Design Director, Trusted Advisor and Author of Design at Scale™. The method that empowers individuals to shape the future organisation through design.
If you have a question, join our Community and reach out to like-minded individuals who scale design propositions. An online Academy can help you to find your feed in teams of 01, 10, and 100, supported by Grid Magazine and Supply section, where we weekly bring more insights on how to become a design leader in your organisation.