Rovo: your best project management helper

Most of you already know Rovo, you might have even tried it, and you are surely already building your own agents. But if you still haven’t found out how it can help you... here are some hints to make Rovo your best helper when it comes to managing projects.

Structure Work

First, let's focus on organizing the work to make the new project a success. You surely know that moment when you are starting a new project and suddenly you put on your detective hat to try and locate all the information scattered across a thousand different places. Usually at the start of a project, requirements are often hidden everywhere: in emails, on physical post-its or whiteboards we have in the office, in meeting recordings... and I think we all agree that it’s better to organize that information well at the beginning, before truly embarking on the project.

How does Rovo help us in this initial phase of project planning?

1. Starting with the ideal case: you already have all the requirements for your new project unified and detailed on a Confluence page. From Jira, ask Rovo to look at that page and recommend exactly which tasks need to be created for the project. It will not only put a title, but also coherent and detailed descriptions, and dates within the scope you have set.

2. If, on the contrary, the information comes to us through a Chat, for example, instead of manually copying the context into Jira, Rovo reads the conversation and generates the task directly with all the details.

3. And the same thing, for example, from an email. You've surely been part of an infinite email thread, where it takes you a while to read all the responses and see what is actually being requested. Rovo is also capable of taking the action items from the thread and automatically creating the tasks in Jira. It generates a title and description that makes sense, based on the information shared in the thread.

Kick off work

Rovo also helps us when we get down to business, when we start with our project and the activity truly kicks off.

Because creating tasks is only the beginning. Once they are created, Rovo also helps you improve them and expand the context to make them more understandable for the entire team.

1. On the one hand, if the person who wrote the description wasn't very inspired and didn't give many details, Rovo transforms it into concrete and well-formatted instructions. It also automatically translates the text so that another person on the team, located in another country, can pick up the task.

2. On the other hand, a common recurring need is to know how many blocked tasks we have in the project, or which colleagues we are blocking. There is no longer a need to generate the JQL, no need to have the knowledge to do it; you simply ask Rovo, and it gives you the answer to any query. (If you already know how to create JQLs, I also recommend using this functionality to improve your queries).

3. Rovo also helps us set clear objectives. If you work with weekly Sprints, you plan which tasks you are going to do each week, but often the Sprint goal is not included. Rovo also takes care of this. With the information from the planned tasks and the comments that have been left, it proposes the most appropriate objective for the Sprint. This way, you can review with the team whether the objectives were met, or analyze if the Sprint planning made sense based on the goals set.

Solve challenges

Throughout the project lifecycle, we encounter many challenges. For example:

• Duplicate tasks and two people who have started doing the same thing.

• Tasks that have no information whatsoever to be able to start them.

• Tasks that have gone months without being updated.

These are just a few of the most common examples that significantly complicate life for those of us trying to ensure projects are delivered on time and in proper form.

How does Rovo help us here?

1. Issue organizer (or work organizer) Agent. This agent finds all those issues (work items) that have become orphaned: for example, because they are not linked to any Epic, or because they are not part of any sprint... and places them in their correct location. It also searches Confluence pages or blog posts where those tasks are being discussed to link the content, and if we confirm it, it deletes issues that have not been updated for more than 1 year.

2. If you have also encountered the problem of having duplicate tasks, Rovo can help you identify similar or clearly duplicate tasks before you start working. This helps detect these overlaps from the beginning, keeping your Jira more organized and free of duplicated effort.

3. Rovo doesn't limit itself to waiting for you to ask for help. If you simply tell it to improve the project plan you have made, it will take care of things like suggesting subtasks, if the work blocks are too large and difficult to manage. Or updating the status of tasks that are clearly already in progress, but no one has done it... actions that make it easier to keep your project tasks updated and following the plan a little simpler for everyone.

Communicate progress

And finally, we must be very clear about the status of the projects and communicate it correctly so that all stakeholders are also informed.

It is common for stakeholders to constantly ask "what is the status of this task?", "when will this development be available?". Wouldn't it be great if Rovo also helped us better communicate what is happening in our projects?

1. There is an out-of-the-box agent called Progress Tracker that gives us all the information in real time on the project's progress in the last week, what the next actions will be, what the risks are, what the blockages to other teams are... We can ask it to directly document this on a Confluence page and you will only have to forward it to the relevant party (or tell Rovo to send it for you with the frequency you want).

2. Another thing you can do is remind people to use the search bar, that's all. They simply write to Rovo asking about the project's progress and Rovo will take care of providing all the information they need.

3. And also thinking about the burden of follow-up and update meetings, there is also something very valuable Rovo can do for us. After the meeting has been held and recorded, pass that recording to Rovo (made with Loom, of course). With the information from the recording, Rovo will update the information for you: task assignments, creation of new tasks if necessary, updates to dates or descriptions... everything that was discussed in the meeting, which you would normally do manually, Rovo can now do for you.

And this is only a part of the actions Rovo can do for you regarding project management. All these functionalities are natively available in your Atlassian Cloud environment (or about to be deployed, depending on when you read this). But remember that you can also create your own agents with the use cases that make sense in your organization.

Get encouraged to work as a team with Rovo, leave all the tasks that you currently do manually and that take up a lot of your time, and gain that time for all those where you truly add value. Any questions? We're here to help, contact us!