Today’s employees find themselves juggling a number of different tools – answering emails, managing projects, running meetings, communicating – all of which are essential. However, the proliferation of these tools can become an obstacle to effective collaboration. Jira, the market-leading project management tool thanks to its vision and functional maturity, is part of the problem, but Jira is first and foremost a database that needs to be intelligently connected to its environment. For routine actions in Jira, the connector with Slack makes collaboration easier, reserving access to Jira for specific management actions (planning, reporting, etc.). So, how do you use the Jira/Slack pairing for Scrum purposes?
Increase Jira’s conversational uses with Slack
Having a conversational space alongside Jira makes collaboration between team members easier and more fluid, as it encourages real-time communication, particularly for teams working remotely.
For a Scrum team, for example, team members will be exchanging, discussing, holding their daily meetings and sharing documents and content throughout the project, and the Jira/Slack integration will enable them to take advantage of Slack’s communication features. When properly connected to a Jira project, Slack can be used to add more conversational collaborative uses. Slack will make it easier to share documents and resources in the broader sense around a project. In line with agile principles, Slack facilitates team collaboration.
Channels are instant conversation areas in which it will be possible to connect a Jira project using the command: “/Jira connect”.
Having a Slack channel for each Jira project centralises exchanges and documents in a single place, enabling project information to be managed and accessed. By connecting a channel to the Jira project the team is working on, it becomes possible to create tickets directly from Slack, eliminating the need to switch to Jira each time.
Feeding Jira from Slack
To avoid going back and forth from one solution to another, Slack gives you the option of creating Jira tickets from the discussion channel for the desired project and choosing the type of ticket.
Several actions on Jira tickets can be carried out directly from Slack, such as commenting on the ticket, assigning it to a person or even changing its status.
Project progress and task updates are tracked in real time in the collaboration space.
Tracking Jira activity in Slack
Thanks to the Jira/Slack integration, you can receive Jira notifications in Slack. These notifications apply to tickets, comments, status changes, etc.
However, receiving notifications that don’t directly concern the person themselves can quickly become intrusive. To avoid this, Slack allows users to customise their notifications and choose which actions they want to be notified about.
With Jira automation, team members can create rules tailored to their needs, enabling them to receive the information they need. For example, Scrum team members can receive a notification when the sprint starts.
A powerful connector to configure properly
On paper, the Slack/Jira connector can streamline exchanges, feed data into Jira and monitor activity. It means you can be more responsive and keep your Jira database up to date, with reliable data. However, it’s important to choose the right channel creation (beware of the volume involved), and to configure the notifications as closely as possible to the real need, or risk making this promising integration unproductive.
