If you’re a product manager or product owner who uses Jira, then your inbox must be overflowing with unread messages. And it’s only going to get worse as your team grows and your workload increases. You can easily lose track of important tasks and projects that need to be completed each day and week.

How often do you find yourself single-handedly keeping track of keeping the team up to date on progress? One of the hardest things to do as a product manager is to keep track of what’s in the pipeline. Now, in today’s remote world, product leaders find themselves in more meetings to share updates and manage stakeholders.

Over the last few weeks, the daily Jira digest from enform.io to keep tabs on product delivery, and it’s the most exciting email I receive every day. Each business objective has the epics that contribute to hitting the key results. I’ve found it to be a more effective way of communicating the current state of product delivery, identifying exceptions, and highlighting shadow work.

4 major benefits of receiving the daily digest

1. Save time, stay focused

The daily digest contains all tickets that have transitioned that day in the projects I’m most interested in. The number one mistake I’ve made in the past is to jump into tickets as they come into my inbox. This means that I have to either stop what I’m currently doing or burn a lot of time on tickets that really don’t require a lot of input.

2. Track how initiatives are progressing

When you’re working in a product-based business, it’s important to keep track of your progress in terms of the deliverables that you’re working on. Using enform.io everything in Jira can be tied to your business objectives and initiatives, providing a missing layer of context not available in Jira.

3. Jump into exceptions

With the daily digest, I only jump into tickets that require more detail as they’re being started or check-in on an exception basis. I do this in the final hour or two of the working day and make sure everyone has what they need to push forward.

I filter out Jira notifications where I’m not explicitly mentioned and recommend only jumping into tickets that require more detail as they’re being started or check-in on an exception basis because otherwise, it can be easy to fall into the trap of doing a lot of busywork without generating the type of value in where you want to be focused.

4. Track shadow work

Shadow work is a term coined to describe tasks that you do during the day that don’t directly relate to any of your business objectives. It’s not important work, but it is necessary work. The daily digest is able to shine a light on work in flight that doesn’t necessarily relate directly to any current business objectives which can be a great conversation starter on whether or not you pause that work in favor of accelerating other key initiatives or add context in the future around why objectives were not met.

How is it going?

Since receiving the daily digest, I’ve felt on top of product delivery across 6 different development teams and feel more informed. I’m also spending less time fishing for information, only jumping in where needed, and spending more time focusing on other areas across the business, saving around 3 to 4 hours per week.

The daily digest from enform.io helps product and technology leaders keep track of what’s happening in product delivery. The best thing about it is, it helps identify exceptions and shadow work. Get started within minutes by integrating with platforms such as Jira. If you want to learn more, get started for free or say hi at luke@enform.io

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