Implementing Agile Management for Small SaaS Teams Using Kanban Boards and Atlassian Tools

"You can't manage what you don't measure" – Peter Drucker. Effective project and agile development require data visualization and measurement.

This article uses a SaaS product example to show how a small team implements agile practices.

Why Implement Agile Management

Unclear requirement progress.

Frequent requirement delays.

Uncertainty after release.

High communication cost among RD, FE, QA, PM.

Arbitrary, frequent requirement insertions.

Unclear workload distribution.

Balancing limited resources with strategic needs.

Tools Used

The tools you use shape the way you work.

Reference articles for setting up the tools:

Atlassian Confluence

创业公司基础设施如何搭建（三） -- Confluence（Docker版本） https://www.jianshu.com/p/bda2638fdbc2

Atlassian Jira

创业公司基础设施如何搭建（四） -- Jira（Docker版本） https://www.jianshu.com/p/093cf14361ed

How to Do It

Requirement Review → Design Review → Development → Testing → Acceptance → Release → Post‑evaluation.

Four Kanban boards are used:

Public Requirement Board (Kanban)

Collects market feedback and creates a visible demand pool.

Requirement Board (Kanban)

Visualizes the demand lifecycle: Backlog → Review → Scheduling → Design → Development → Release.

Task Efficiency Board (Scrum)

Sets release dates, alerts overdue risks, and enables real‑time communication.

BUG Board (Kanban)

Shows BUG counts during iterations.

Public Requirement Management

Sources include key customers, user feedback, sales, market, internal planning, and user experience. Requests are filtered, prioritized, and moved through stages such as "low value" to completed or "needs analysis" to further discussion.

Product Development Requirement Management

Requirement Classification

Two types: Product requirements (PM‑driven) and Technical requirements (stability, scalability, maintainability).

Requirement Levels

Product: P0 (urgent), P1 (critical), P2 (important), P3 (normal). Technical: T0 (major performance/vulnerability), T1 (scalability/performance risk), T2 (design/general performance).

Product Requirement Management (Requirement Board)

PRDs are created and archived in Confluence; templates include background, business goals, and linked stories. The board shows lanes for P0‑P3 and technical demands.

Technical Task Management (Task Efficiency Board)

Tasks include development, self‑testing, test case creation/execution, originating from product or technical demands. Tasks are organized under parent items on the Requirement Board and tracked in the Scrum board.

BUG Management (BUG Board)

Workflow: Open → In Progress → Resolved → Closed. Bug types: functional error, UI improvement, feature improvement, performance issue, security.

Summary

The team uses four boards (Public Requirement, Requirement, Task Efficiency, BUG) and two templates (Product Requirement, Test Report) to manage demand and performance lifecycles, continuously adapting the process to team and project changes while focusing on rapid, stable product delivery.