Improving your development process: where do you start?

By Yas Naoi · Pixie Works

“We practise Scrum, but it is hard to tell whether the work is moving forward.” “We introduced coding agents, but reviews take too long.” You may know that something needs to improve without knowing where to begin.

You do not need a finished improvement plan before starting a conversation. Begin by looking at what happened in one recent piece of work.

Turn a general concern into a specific event

“Ticket management is not working” can describe several different situations:

• A ticket is so large that it is difficult to see what has been completed.
• Implementation finishes before the team discovers a mismatch with the requester's expectations.
• Only the assignee knows the reasoning behind decisions, so reviews repeat the same explanations.

These are hypothetical examples, and each calls for a different response. Before deciding to add tools or meetings, look at where the difficulty arose in a recent ticket.

Discuss what information or decision was missing at that point, rather than who was at fault.

Bring three things to the first conversation

You do not need to prepare a large collection of documents. Three things can make the discussion concrete:

1. One recent piece of work. What were you trying to achieve, and how did it proceed?
2. The difficult moment. Where did waiting, rework, or repeated explanation occur?
3. The change you want. What should be possible next time?

For example: “We revisited the completion criteria after implementation. Next time, we want the assignee and reviewer to agree on them before work starts.”

A non-confidential outline is enough for an initial inquiry. If detailed tickets or documents are needed, agree on what can be shared before providing them.

Check whether decisions connect Jira and Confluence

Tasks in Jira and requirements in Confluence can still leave people searching for information if the two are disconnected.

Use Jira to manage assignees, priorities, and sprint work (Delivery). Use Confluence to preserve requirements, design decisions, and their rationale (Discovery). Check whether a ticket links to the relevant page and whether a changed decision is reflected in the work.

The discussion may lead to clarifying where information belongs and when it is updated. It does not always require a new system.

Look at how work is requested and reviewed with AI

Even when a coding agent writes the code, the team still needs to decide what outcome it wants.

Does the request include a purpose and scope? Can completion be verified? Who reviews the generated changes? Where should the agent seek clarification? Start with that workflow.

A difficult review may result from changes that are too large, an ambiguous request, or unclear review ownership. Each needs a different response. AI-DLC discussions should stay grounded in the work the team actually does.

Choose one change to try in the next sprint

One starting point might be: “Before implementation begins on the next ticket, the assignee and reviewer will go through its Why, What, and How together.”

After trying it, discuss whether the team discovered misunderstandings earlier, had the information needed to confirm completion, and encountered any new overhead. Decide together whether to keep or adjust the practice, without assuming it was successful.

Recording what you tried and what you learned makes even a small change useful for the next improvement.

Start before the topic is fully formed

Pixie Works offers coaching and training centred on Ticket-driven development, including Scrum, Jira and Confluence, and AI-DLC with coding agents.

We begin by understanding how the team works and where it is struggling, then agree on the problem to address, the scope of support, and the learning goals.

When you contact us, share what you can about a recent piece of work, the difficult moment, and the change you want. You can also explore our Agile coaching and training.

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