Scale, governance,and global visibility with Jira Software and Jira Product Discovery at Ashley Furniture
Table of Contents
From tool migration to global operational transformation
Ashley Furniture, a major American manufacturer and retailer of home furniture, began a journey to modernize its operations with a focus on scalability, governance, and predictability.
With support from Nimble Evolution, the project started with the migration from Azure DevOps to Jira Software, but quickly evolved into a broader operational transformation, connecting processes, strategy, and visibility on a global scale.
The challenge
Before the project, Ashley Furniture faced operational challenges that impacted predictability and traceability of work. The main issues included:
- Lack of governance and standardization in the previous model, making consistency across teams and departments difficult
- An inflated and disorganized backlog, with no clear prioritization or planning criteria
- Low work traceability, with tickets lacking minimum required information to move forward in the workflow
- Issues in bug management, with incentives distorting the volume and quality of records
- Complexity of global scale, with teams distributed across the U.S., Canada, Europe, Taiwan, China, and India
"The most significant challenge was a lack of standardization across teams. This inconsistency made it extremely difficult to establish reliable reporting, measure delivery performance, or create a shared understanding of progress across the organization”
The solution
To enable a more scalable, traceable, and data-driven operation, Nimble led the creation of a new working model based on Jira Software and Jira Product Discovery, connecting strategy and execution in an integrated operation.
The initiative established a new end-to-end workflow, from intake and validation of demands to delivery and monitoring, with clear standards for usage, governance, and predictability.
As part of this evolution, an advanced layer of visibility and metrics was structured using eazyBI, and time tracking discipline and capacity management were strengthened with Tempo Timesheets, ensuring more reliable data for decision-making.
"The tool migration was just the starting point. The real value was in redesigning how Ashley organizes work, makes decisions, and connects strategy to execution”
Implementation process
The implementation was carried out with daily proximity and continuous adjustments based on real team usage, progressing in short validation cycles and gradual expansion:
Cycle 1:
Understanding and diagnosis
The project began with an intensive listening and analysis phase to understand teams’ real pain points and identify process gaps.
Cycle 2:
POC with a few teams
The recommendation was to start with a small group—around three teams—to build workflows, test dynamics, and validate the model before scaling the migration.
Cycle 3:
Migration and process “rebuild”
With the model validated, the project advanced to the migration from Azure DevOps to Jira Software, alongside a reconstruction of Ashley’s operational model. At this stage, a more complete workflow was structured, including intake, validation, and execution steps.
Cycle 4:
Strategic management and governance
With the introduction of Jira Product Discovery, the project evolved to a more strategic layer, organizing portfolio and initiative management, and connecting discovery to execution.
"Jira Product Discovery became the strategic engine of the company’s innovation, allowing ideas to evolve in a structured way until they become initiatives with real business impact"
"What started as a review of tooling quickly evolved into something much larger. We needed to redefine how work was structured, measured, and executed across the organization"
Cycle 5:
Advanced metrics
and BI
A robust analytics layer was implemented using eazyBI, including around 400 reports, dashboards, and metrics related to cycle time, bottlenecks, and throughput.
Cycle 6:
Adoption and culture
The evolution also required an important cultural shift. With Tempo Timesheets, a new time-tracking model was implemented, in which teams began recording only development effort, ensuring greater data consistency.
Cycle 7:
Global training
To ensure sustainable adoption, a four-week global training cycle was conducted, with leaders trained to scale the model to more than 800 users.
Our role goes beyond technical implementation. We work to ensure teams take ownership of the processes and have autonomy to continuously evolve”
Results
At the end of the project, Ashley Furniture consolidated a more structured and scalable operation for managing and executing work globally.
Migration and large- scale adoption, with more than 800 users and dozens of teams operating on Jira
Strengthened strategic governance, with Jira Product Discovery structuring the intake and maturation of ideas, initiatives, and portfolio
Greater predictability and traceability, with rebuilt processes and a more consistent flow from intake to execution
Migration and large- scale adoption, with more than 800 users and dozens of teams operating on Jira
Strengthened strategic governance, with Jira Product Discovery structuring the intake and maturation of ideas, initiatives, and portfolio
Strengthened strategic governance, with Jira Product Discovery structuring the intake and maturation of ideas, initiatives, and portfolio
Advanced visibility for decision-making, with around 400 reports in eazyBI, along with dashboards for different organizational levels
Cultural evolution in time tracking and operational discipline, supported by Tempo Timesheets and a new model focused on development effort
Structured global enablement, with four weeks of training and leaders prepared to scale the model
Migration and large- scale adoption, with more than 800 users and dozens of teams operating on Jira
Greater predictability and traceability, with rebuilt processes and a more consistent flow from intake to execution
Strengthened strategic governance, with Jira Product Discovery structuring the intake and maturation of ideas, initiatives, and portfolio
Advanced visibility for decision-making, with around 400 reports in eazyBI, along with dashboards for different organizational levels
Cultural evolution in time tracking and operational discipline, supported by Tempo Timesheets and a new model focused on development effort
Structured global enablement, with four weeks of training and leaders prepared to scale the model
Structured global enablement, with four weeks of training and leaders prepared to scale the model
Now, we have real-time visibility into performance and are able to connect strategy to execution with much greater clarity. This has significantly improved our decision-making capabilities”
