Before the introduction of Jira, software development was a tedious task. A software developer wasn’t capable of integrating different teams on a single platform. The software was not of better quality, and development was too expensive.
But as time passed, and agile methodology was developed in the year 2000, things changed quite rapidly. The agile methodologies paced the software development and that too in an iterative environment. However, as the development got walked up, teams required a comprehensive tool to manage all the tasks such as time-tracking, bug detection, and so on to deliver quality results.
So, after two years, Jira was developed. It changed the picture of software development and teams took full advantage of it. This tool is so popular that from a team of 2 to 2000, everyone wants to work on this.
If you want to know more about Jira software, its features, and benefits, then this complete guide on Jira will provide you everything you need to know.
So, let’s start with...
What Is Jira?
Jira is known for its bug tracking and project management capabilities. Atlassian, an Australian company developed the Jira to help the organizations manage its agile and scrum teams, organize project tasks, and find bugs in the build. Based on the usage, Atlassian provides three separate packages for Jira.
Jira Core: People who are from the non-technical background can use Jira Core for task management.
Jira Software: This version is specially designed for software developers.
Jira Service Desk: It’s a key part of the Jira but this is not made for project management. It is widely used for solving customer queries, and it’s a good tool for customer support and IT professionals.
Who Are Its Users?
There is a common delusion about Jira that the software can only be used by the Agile software development teams. However, to some extent, it is true that Jira was designed to help technical people, yet over the years, it has positioned itself as a comprehensive product for the people from the non-technical background as well.
Let’s see what are the most common use cases of Jira.
Software Development: As you know, software development teams manage their projects using Scrum or Kanban boards.
Marketing: Most marketers prefer Jira to manage events and product launches while collaborating with multiple teams.
HR: It can help HR professionals to address their hiring and onboarding process by creating custom workflows with Jira.
What Are the Features of Jira?
Scrum Board: It unites the engineering team to work together to complete a goal. The scrum board reminds the team members to focus on the completion of all their tasks remaining in the sprint. Besides this, it can help teams to assess the workload for a particular sprint. And above all, you can track the progress of the project.
Kanban Board: It’s a simple drag and drop system, which makes the tool extremely easy to use. You can see your tasks in the form of sticky notes which makes Kanban Boards easy to visualize your workflow. Each sticky note shows the status of a single project or task. The status is divided into three categories: to do, in progress, and done. A quick glimpse of these statuses helps you assess the tasks running smoothly or moving slowly. Once you know the status of the individual task, you can explore the reasons for the delay to speed up the process.
Custom Workflows: To complete a task, you need to follow a set of processes that we know as Jira workflow. In the Jira workflow, processes are marked as colored blocks while arrows show the progress. With these workflows, you can track the progress of software development or any other task. The best part of these workflows is, you can also create custom workflows according to your requirements. There are lots of free workflow templates available on the Atlassian marketplace.
Roadmaps: A roadmap gives you a path to advance towards the development of a product. Once you get the roadmap, you can motivate your team to follow that direction. Jira portfolio functions as a great integration tool to manage and share your roadmap with the stakeholders. This portfolio includes a timetable, product backlog, and your goals.
Detailed Reports: While working on a project the team can monitor their productivity with the help of detailed reports. A number of reports include a burndown chart, burnup chart, velocity chart, version report, cumulative flow diagram, and sprint report. These reports give a realtime update on the project’s progress.
What Are the Benefits of Jira?
Manage Agile and Scrum Easily: The primary focus of the Jira software is to help teams in Agile project management. In agile, the software is developed using Scrum and Kanban methodologies, which is a bit complex for novice developers. However, Jira software eases it and helps them to cover every aspect of software development. Be it including user stories, story points, and the sprints it takes care of each thing. Besides this, you can track bugs, reorder product backlog, and software issues with the simple drag and drop function.
Better for Issue Management: The intention behind the creation of the Jira was to market it as a bug tracking tool, and over the years it got better and better. With Jira’s bug tracking tool, a software team can fix bugs at the early stages while simultaneously identifying backlogs. By having a quick look, a team can prioritize their efforts in the direction of fixing bugs or finishing backlogs before the release.
Highly Customizable: The best part of the Jira software is, you can customize it as you need. Whether it’s a project management software, issue tracking tool, or task management tool, Jira provides seamless integration with tons of third-party applications. Apart from this, you can customize workflows, reports, scrum boards, and more, that too for free.
What Are the Various Uses of Jira?
Handles Requirements and Test Cases: More developments are done in a repetitive environment, and to do that you need a collaborative tool like Jira. It takes care of the coding, collaboration, and release stages with ease. For test management, it provides additional features of a variety of add-ons that QA teams can integrate into the software development life cycle. QA teams can capitalize on Jira issues, customized screens, fields, and workflows for manual and automated tests.
Supports Agile Teams: Teams who use agile methodologies can take advantage of scrum and kanban boards. These boards are like task management hubs which can be transformed into customizable workflows. The main benefit of these boards is they can track the team’s performance in real-time. Various tools like burnup/burndown charts, sprint reports, and velocity charts help a team to closely monitor their progress from time to time.
Supports Project Management Teams: Jira software can be used for project management. It is so customizable that every project can be completed with the help of Jira. With its customizable workflows, issues can be transported to manageable workflows. Admins can assign the work to other team members with required permissions. Having all the information at a place, the project management team can ensure everything is covered.
Supports Software Development Teams: Jira software provides planning and roadmap tools to manage stakeholders, budgets, and features in an iterative environment. It ensures seamless integration with multiple tools throughout the software development lifecycle.
Supports Product Management Teams: With Jira Software, teams can build a roadmap with respect to the specific project. The team can assess the long term process as well as the daily progress. Apart from that, teams can share the roadmap with other teams and add more details to the roadmaps and forecast completion date of the work.
Supports Task Management: You can create a task for yourself and for your team. In each task, you can add details like due dates and reminders. Further, these tasks can be divided into subtasks to understand the complete scope of the work. The progress of the tasks and subtasks can be monitored by the other team members, and once the task is completed they can be notified.
Supports Bug Tracking: Bugs can lower down the productivity of the software building team, thus it is important to track the bugs at early stages, and rectify them on time. Jira software makes it easy to find bugs at earliest and once they are detected, it automatically prioritizes them for correction.
Conclusion
As more businesses are powering their organization with technology, it is important to provide the right assistance in less time. With Jira Software, teams can ensure that. It has everything to offer that an organization needs. Be it monitoring team performance, meeting deadlines, sharing reports with the stakeholders, integrating third-party software, and whatnot, it’s a one-stop solution to end all your worries. Earlier it was identified as a bug detection tool, but now it is used in other fields as well.
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