JIRA is an Incident Management Tool used for Project Management, Bug Tracking, Issue Tracking, and Workflow. It is a collection of agile work management solutions from Atlassian corporation, an Australian firm. “Jira” is a truncated term from “Gojira,” a Japanese term meaning Godzilla. It’s not an open-source tool but rather a proprietary tool released back in 2002 that powers collaboration across teams, helping from the conceptual stage to delivering solutions to the customer. Jira offers purpose-built products and deployment options for business, software, IT, Ops teams, etc.
Jira helps various teams plan, assign, track, report, and manage work and eventually brings all the teams together. From customer support and agile software development to smaller companies, start-ups, and big businesses. In addition, to forward your career get ASM certified. The Agile Scrum Master (ASM) certification training course by Invensis Learning will help you learn to facilitate, coach, and enable cross-functional and self-managed teams as a Scrum Master and apply this knowledge in practice.
Software teams can build better innovative, efficient products with the help of Jira tools through the Agile philosophy. So let’s dive right into the Jira tool to understand it better to begin immediately.
Why Do We Need Jira?
Initially, Jira was designed as an issue and bug tracker. Today, Jira has evolved into a potent work management tool designed for all types of use case requirements and test case management to agile software development. We will discuss various use cases for which Jira is essential in being efficient and productive.
Jira in Test Case and Requirements Management
Today, numerous teams develop their solutions iteratively, so Jira Software has become the central hub to code, collaborate, and during release stages. This tool seamlessly integrates with many add-ons that the QA’s testing slides into the software development cycle for test management use cases. As a result, teams can test much more effectively and through several iterations. These teams manage manual and automated tests using Jira issues, customized screens, fields, and workflows.
Jira for Teams Practicing Agile
Jira Software provides Scrum and Kanban boards for teams practicing agile methodologies straight out of the box. In addition, real-time performance reports like burn-up/down charts, sprint reports, velocity charts, and time tracking capabilities help teams closely monitor their productivity over time.
Jira for Project Management Teams
Teams undertaking any project could use Jira Software. They can start with a project template or generate a personalized custom workflow. With the help of customizable permissions, admins of the project could determine who can see and perform which actions based on the permission that the admin has set. With all project information appropriately placed, reports are generated to track progress and productivity and ensure nothing slips.
Jira for Software Development Teams
The Jira Software helps in planning and roadmap tools so teams can manage stakeholders, budgets, and other feature requirements right from the first day. In addition, Jira easily integrates with a wide variety of CI/CD tools to ensure transparency throughout SDLC.
High-performing teams can save time and avoid mistakes with the DevOps template, which integrates numerous tools in a single location.
Jira Software for DevOps Teams
The DevOps methodology is built to break the barrier between the Operations and Development team through automation and process integrations so that the team can churn out solutions more rapidly that are less prone to error. The Jira Software is capable of integrating with both first- and third-party tools. Therefore, open source tools like Bitbucket, GitHub, and Gitlab, documentation and knowledge management tools like Confluence, and monitoring and operating tools like Opsgenie are supported, among many other tools.
Jira for Product Management Teams
Using Jira Software, product management teams are efficient in building a roadmap for each project. This roadmap allows the teams to sketch out the longer-term view of their tasks and track and share progress related to the roadmap.
Jira for Task Management
This Atlassian tool helps you create tasks for all team members to work upon, along with all the encompassing details, the due dates, and reminders. In addition, you can utilize the subtasks feature to break down larger work items into smaller chunks. You can also allow others to watch the assigned task’s progress and be notified once it’s finished.
Jira for Bug Tracking
Bugs are just another name for to-do’s that stem from the software development life cycle. Teams must view all the tasks and bugs in the backlog because they can only prioritize the bigger picture. Jira’s powerful workflow engine assigns bugs automatically and prioritizes them. The entire team can then track a bug through to completion.
Agile
Agile is a broad term and not just a Jira-specific term. It is a philosophy used within the software development domain and has expanded to various other industries and domains. In simple terms, Agile emphasizes the efficiency of the iterative approach in finishing up works driven by customer feedback, where the solutions deliver incrementally and through a continuous approach. As a result, the teams implementing agile philosophy can move quickly and adapt to ever-changing specifications without huge efforts.
Why are we talking about Agile here? The Jira Software has many major features designed specifically by agile philosophy, including scrum or kanban frameworks.
It’s imperative to note that your team doesn’t become agile just by using Jira software. Instead, Jira helps teams in the process of becoming truly agile. It helps them do or perform what they are better at already.
What Kind of Agile Methodology Does Jira Use?
Jira is an agile project management tool that helps the agile team be truly agile. The teams could use any agile framework of their choice, be it scrum, kanban, lean, or a mixture of different frameworks. Moreover, Jira is platform-independent and is capable of integrating with any agile framework.
JIRA-Products
Several JIRA products are available today. And they are:
- Jira Core
- Jira Software
- Jira Service Management
- Jira Work Management
- Jira Align
Jira Core offers a workflow management system that could be customized to suit team needs and is capable of linking or extending it with other applications. Teams using Jira Software offer better software, as simple as that. Using Jira Service Management, the teams deliver efficient service experiences. Business teams using Jira Work Management can unlock the power of agile and collaborate better. Finally, Jira Align is an enterprise-grade agile planning platform that connects work at scale.
With templates and solutions crafted for every team and Jira as your common language – work moves fluently and transparently across your organization.
JIRA-Issues
An issue within Jira terminology refers to a single work item, irrespective of the type or size, that could be tracked from its initial stages till its completion. For example, a Jira Issue could be a feature that the software team is working on, a list of tasks for the marketing team, or a contract that the legal team needs to write. You can also call Jira issues tasks, requests, or tickets. Teams should use the word “issues” when working with the Jira product family to avoid confusion or miscommunication.
JIRA-Project
In simple terms, A project is a group of issues with a purpose or context. Issues are collated into projects that can be configured in multiple ways. There can be many Jira Projects like Software Development projects, Marketing projects, Migration to other platform projects, Help Desk Tracking projects, Leave Request Management systems, Employee Performance Systems, Website Enhancement, etc.
Jira Software projects are flexible working spaces that allow you to group similar issues of various teams, business units, or products. All the projects don’t need to have the same delivery date. Let’s understand the projects through an example; if you group your issues by the team, you may have:
- Marketing Project
- Development Project
- Legal Project
All of which would track the ongoing work of those respective teams. Every issue in a project has a key and number like DEV-4, MKT-13, or LEG-1.
JIRA-Boards
A board within Jira software is a part of a project that displays all issues, thus giving teams a flexible way of viewing, managing, and reporting work in progress. A board visualizes a team’s workflow within a project in layman’s terms. Therefore, they can observe the pulse of projects through boards. Boards are task management hubs that map tasks to customizable workflows. In addition, it offers transparency across teamwork and visibility into the status of every work item.
JIRA-Workflows
As the term suggests, a workflow represents an issue’s sequential path from its creation to the completion phase. A typical workflow contains Open, Done, and other labels demonstrating issue status. Moreover, these workflows could be simple or complex, containing various conditions, validators, triggers, and post functions.
Suppose your team is in its nascent phase with the agile methodology or using JIRA. In that case, JIRA software administrators should keep their workflows as simple as possible until management requires complex workflow configurations.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Jira is a powerful proprietary tool that empowers teams of various sizes to embark on a journey to become truly agile, churn out better quality solutions faster, and develop a culture of improving constantly to delight their customers. Learn Jira from industry experts to master the tool to help teams maximize their productivity.
Hang tight for the upcoming JIRA tutorial, which will cover everything you need to know to start using JIRA immediately. Invensis Learning, a Global Training organization, has emerged as a market leader in providing professional training solutions to more than 100,000 individuals across many Small, Medium and large enterprises worldwide. Various courses are offered in different categories like Agile Project Management, Project Management, IT Service Management, Quality Management, DevOps, and IT Security and Governance. So, visit our website to find out more about our courses and certifications.
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