Skip to main content

Where do people interested in the UX / IA of Work Management Software gather?

Last post 03:04 pm October 15, 2021 by Daniel Wilhite
5 replies
12:17 am October 9, 2021

Hi all,

I'm looking for a community of practice/ discussion group centred around the User Experience and Information Architecture of Work Management Software (e.g. Jira, Leankit, ...) 

I'd love to hear from anyone on this topic.

Here is what I'm interested in working on with others ...

It is my belief that all popular work management platforms impose work (cognitive load) on Kanban Teams, Scrum Masters and Project Managers that could be taken care of by the platform. 

Taking Jira as an example, it is non-trivial to keep issues consistent. One simple example is the partial and ad-hoc support in Jira for coherence of nested Epics/Issues/ and Sub-tasks. There is lots of bespoking of Jira Automations and Workflow steps to increase the level of coherence between the levels of work breakdown.

Just to be clear, my interest here is not to criticise Jira. Give me a popular work management solution, and I'm pretty sure we can find a set of user actions that will render the information inconsistent.

I'd like to join a discussion with people thinking about the common use cases required by Scrum Masters and Project Managers and applying #ux and #ia to their tool use. My thesis is that we can increase the UX of Scrum Master and Project Managers to the extent that the work management platform offers them operations with guarantees. The operations update the issues/tickets/ projects (or whatever) AND guarantee to leave the information coherent and consistent. 

Hoping to find others of like mind.

All the best,

David


05:19 pm October 14, 2021

I'd like to join a discussion with people thinking about the common use cases required by Scrum Masters and Project Managers and applying #ux and #ia to their tool use. My thesis is that we can increase the UX of Scrum Master and Project Managers to the extent that the work management platform offers them operations with guarantees.

We can discuss these matters right here if you like.

I'd suggest, for example, that no work management solution or platform presents a use case for a Scrum Master at all


07:29 pm October 14, 2021

I agree with @Ian Mitchell.  You put Scrum Masters and Project Managers into the same category when they are polar opposites.  Scrum Masters do not manage, and in most cases do not care about, the process.  That is up to the people doing the work.  


08:33 pm October 14, 2021

Thanks Ian and Daniel, you raise good points.

I'm curious about the day-to-day experience of Scrum Masters and scrum team members.

What information do Scrum teams gather and interrogate about the deliverables being created by their team? Could you point me to any resources that discuss common use-cases?

More broadly, Scrum team members, what deliverable-related information do you depend on and what use-cases do you have for capturing, and interrogating information about the flow of work in your team? 

David


07:35 am October 15, 2021

Hi David, you may wish to run through the SM learning path that this site provides, as that will give you a good grounding knowledge on what an SM is and does. 


03:04 pm October 15, 2021

What information do Scrum teams gather and interrogate about the deliverables being created by their team? Could you point me to any resources that discuss common use-cases?

To answer the first part, they gather whatever information that they feel is needed to understand the problem being solved and to be able to create a solution.  Every problem is unique and can be handled differently.  This is one of the base premises of agile. Not all problems are the same and each requires a solution for the current need.

To answer the second part, I can't because I would not trust any resource that tried to create a standard for solving problems in an agile environment.  

I do not claim to be an expert and I do not speak for everyone, especially those that are involved in the creation and upkeep of this website and the Scrum Guide.  I am still struggling to understand what you are looking to solve. You originally stated that this was about "User Experience and Information Architecture of Work Management Software " but you keep asking about "Scrum Masters and scrum team members" using Jira and other tools.  What I don't have a grasp on is whether you have ever worked in a Scrum environment. Your use of "Work Management Software" indicates that you may have a misunderstanding on the dependency on self-managed, self-organized teams in an agile environment.

I admit that I googled you to see if I could get an understanding of your background. I found an article you wrote in 2014 for the Project Management Institute Sydney Chapter's December newsletter.  Your article made references to the PMBOK so it is obvious you have a background in Project Management.  But agile is less about managing projects and more about delivering incremental value.

Can you please explain what you are actually wanting to know and for what reason?  It would help me, and I think it would help all of us, to give you some better insights and point you towards learning resources.  @Scott Anthony Keatinge gave great advice for ways to learn more about Scrum from the people that created the framework.  


By posting on our forums you are agreeing to our Terms of Use.

Please note that the first and last name from your Scrum.org member profile will be displayed next to any topic or comment you post on the forums. For privacy concerns, we cannot allow you to post email addresses. All user-submitted content on our Forums may be subject to deletion if it is found to be in violation of our Terms of Use. Scrum.org does not endorse user-submitted content or the content of links to any third-party websites.

Terms of Use

Scrum.org may, at its discretion, remove any post that it deems unsuitable for these forums. Unsuitable post content includes, but is not limited to, Scrum.org Professional-level assessment questions and answers, profanity, insults, racism or sexually explicit content. Using our forum as a platform for the marketing and solicitation of products or services is also prohibited. Forum members who post content deemed unsuitable by Scrum.org may have their access revoked at any time, without warning. Scrum.org may, but is not obliged to, monitor submissions.