Are you using your PM tools enough?

We are surrounded in life by artifacts: todos, stories, bugs, high level plan items, mid level plan items, deliverables, tasks, risks, issues. All of these things tend to be created, owned by one or more people, and then completed. In almost all cases, in a shared/consistent manner across the team, being able to track history, prioritize, and visualize status are useful goals.

Sometimes with traditional software project management tools, like Atlassian’s JIRA, we tend to assume those tools are only useful for core software development artifacts like bugs and stories. A lot of the other items above tend to be captured in spreadsheets, documents, or wiki pages. A project management tool can help us do so much more though. The gist of it is to not be afraid to use something like JIRA for simple “todo list” requirements. Avoid overly complex, rigid standards about JIRA workflows and lower the barriers to creating simple JIRA projects. Atlassian itself has made this easier with team managed (aka next gen) projects and templates that focus on work management, operations, finance, etc.

You also don’t need JIRA to do this. Trello, ADO, and almost any artifact management system can be used this way. Just remember perfect should not be the enemy of good. Use the tools at your disposal to make yourself better!