Case Study: Traction Guest’s Friction Free Conversion to Jira

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March 9, 2021
<p><a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://tractionguest.com/" target="_blank">Traction Guest</a> Enjoys High-Speed, Friction-Free Conversion to JIRA and Confluence.</p> <p>Traction Guest is an industry leader in enterprise visitor management, making on-site experiences for employees and guests safe, secure, and effortless. With offices in Vancouver, Seattle, and Dublin, they needed a cohesive cloud platform with the ability to keep up with their agile development process.</p> <p>Al Henry joined Traction Guest in 2019 and was tasked with enhancing the agile approach for their development team, featuring scrums, ceremonies, and sprints. He’d had experience with Jira in a previous organization, but Traction Guest was using a modified version of another work management platform. After realizing that the promised benefits of the current platform didn’t balance out the workarounds necessary to make it effective in an agile environment, and aggravated by a lack of visibility and reporting capacity, Al recommended an upgrade to Atlassian Cloud to take advantage of the power of Jira and Confluence.</p> <div class="wp-block-image"><figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" src="https://wordpress.highwaythreesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Agile-Project-Management-1024x949.png" alt="" class="wp-image-108" width="512" height="475" srcset="https://wordpress.highwaythreesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Agile-Project-Management-1024x949.png 1024w, https://wordpress.highwaythreesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Agile-Project-Management-300x278.png 300w, https://wordpress.highwaythreesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Agile-Project-Management-768x712.png 768w, https://wordpress.highwaythreesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Agile-Project-Management.png 1054w" sizes="(max-width: 512px) 100vw, 512px"></figure></div> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Imminent Deadline</h2> <p>During the decision phase, the team discovered that the incumbent platform’s licensing was due for renewal in three weeks. As Al had a proposal in place with <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://www.highwaythreesolutions.com/" target="_blank">Highway Three Solutions</a>, he reached out to them to see if they could implement the conversion on a highly compressed timeline: he’d need a week to prepare for the migration, leaving only two weeks to install, update, and test the Atlassian cloud installation.</p> <p>Highway Three Solutions responded by having two of their key professionals construct a project plan to convert before the end of the month. Traction Guest approved the plan, opting for a cloud solution to eliminate any on-prem performance concerns, and began the migration preparation process.</p> <p>During the migration, the Traction Guest team discovered that despite having admin access through the previous PM resource, they couldn’t actually see all of their projects, resulting in a few being skipped in the data mapping process. With Highway Three’s help, Al and his team were able to recalibrate and resynchronize, getting access to the previously unseen data without losing essential components.</p> <p><em>“We did have one glitch during the migration, and the Highway Three team took care of it for us,” </em>explained Al. <em>“They contacted Atlassian, submitted and managed the ticket, and helped us recover from the issue. They were very effective in resolving our issues!”</em></p> <p>The Highway Three team implemented the plan, converted the database, integrated with Aha!, and the Traction Guest team was up and running with Jira on the first of the month.</p> <blockquote class="wp-block-quote is-style-h3-blockquote"><p>Highway Three Solutions’ professionalism and attention to detail was evident as the teams worked together to deliver the project on time. Our experience with Highway Three Solutions is a beneficial one as we work together to maintain the new Jira system and look to continuously improve our processes with their assistance.</p></blockquote> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Moving Forward</h2> <p>Traction Guest’s primary focus was getting Jira up and working, integrating it into the development process. <em>“We haven’t made full use of Confluence yet,”</em> shared Al, <em>“but our support structure is now using it to house our runbooks and support documentation for triaging incidents, and our strike teams are using Confluence to house documentation about new-feature implementations.”</em> Confluence provides a central repository, which is much easier to use and manage than Traction Guest’s previous model that relied on Google Docs, Quip worksheets, and local storage. <em>“The searching capability of Confluence makes it a powerful tool for our teams,”</em> said Al, <em>“and we’re working on some training sessions to help everyone get up to speed with it.”</em></p> <p>With six months of experience on the new platform, Al and his team are very pleased with the support, training, and advice from the Highway Three team, sharing <em>“they’re a great consulting team, and I appreciate that it feels like we work together on things, as opposed to us reaching out and merely contracting them to do the work.”</em></p> <div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-layout-1 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex"> <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Challenges</h3> <ul><li>Multiple workarounds to make incumbent project management tool fit desired agile process</li><li>Poor visibility into projects and reports</li><li>Various versions and locations of essential documentation</li><li>Highly compressed window to implement transition to Jira</li></ul> </div> <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="832" src="https://wordpress.highwaythreesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Board-game-1024x832.png" alt="" class="wp-image-109" srcset="https://wordpress.highwaythreesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Board-game-1024x832.png 1024w, https://wordpress.highwaythreesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Board-game-300x244.png 300w, https://wordpress.highwaythreesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Board-game-768x624.png 768w, https://wordpress.highwaythreesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Board-game.png 1255w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px"></figure> </div> </div> <div class="wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-layout-2 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex"> <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"> <figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="904" src="https://wordpress.highwaythreesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Computer-1024x904.png" alt="" class="wp-image-110" srcset="https://wordpress.highwaythreesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Computer-1024x904.png 1024w, https://wordpress.highwaythreesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Computer-300x265.png 300w, https://wordpress.highwaythreesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Computer-768x678.png 768w, https://wordpress.highwaythreesolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Computer.png 1246w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px"></figure> </div> <div class="wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow"> <h3 class="wp-block-heading">Solutions</h3> <ul><li>Implemented a complete migration to Atlassian Cloud, including Jira, Confluence, and JSM</li><li>Migration completed in less than two weeks with maximum communications</li><li>Implemented standardized scrum processes to provide planning and tracking across teams</li><li>Capitalized on Jira’s reporting capabilities to communicate planning and status to management team</li></ul> </div> </div> <h2 class="wp-block-heading">Results</h2> <ul class="h3-checkbox-list"><li>Jira dashboards, filters, and formats to provide a customized view of current projects</li><li>Effective isolation between different strike teams</li><li>Consolidated, searchable repository for all documentation via Confluence</li><li>Seamless integration with Aha! Roadmaps and collaboration tools</li><li>Strong relationship with Highway Three Solutions for training and support for Atlassian products</li></ul> <p></p>