The name “JIRA” is actually inherited from the Japanese word “Gojira” which means “Godzilla”. Everyone has probably watched this movie with a cult following. So Atlassian’s JIRA is an issue and project tracking tool developed by Australian Company, Atlassian. To put it simply: JIRA allows you to track any kind of unit of work whether an issue, bug, story, project task, etc. All this through a predefined workflow.
JIRA has three major types of versions developed to serve different use-case scenarios. These are:
- JIRA Core – it’s used in general business projects tracking, task tracking, task reporting, Task Management and general process management through workflows.
- JIRA Software – this is basically popular in Software Development, bug tracking, virtual scrum and Kanban boards, Backlog planning and issue assignment, Agile reporting, agile project management, reporting of issue, sprint, and product release progress.
- JIRA Service Desk – this is mainly for Help desk management, service desk ticket tracking, Incident or Problem management, Change management, Customer self-service portal powered with Knowledge Base, Tracking of Service Level Agreement.
What is an Issue?
Reiterating that Atlassian’s JIRA is a project management tool used for issue tracking, bug tracking and project management purposes. A project is simply a collection of issues. An ‘issue’ represents something that needs to be worked on. When we hear about Issues, it is not only limited to bugs as per se. Do not only think that JIRA is used only for logging of bugs. It could be anything. That is the main advantage of this tool. It could be any of the following from a sub task, technical task, bug, new feature to a story or basic task.
Collaboration Kings
Collaboration’s also a big point of emphasis in JIRA. It can be seen with the features which support mentioning, formatted commenting, and sharing issues via email. All to help make your work more visible to your teams. So folks stay on the same page throughout their project, release, or set of tasks.
Issue tracking
Another application of this software is tracking. JIRA’s really good at tracking via detailed, custom reports and dashboards. It does this where all of your project items/issues lie at a company or individual level. For example, what are all of the issues assigned to me, created in the last 7 days? You can also customize the issues as per the project requirement. JIRA gives you flexibility to do all that. This is brilliant in assisting agile teams to plan as well as manage their projects.
Rigorous Issue management
Considered a more precise way to define workflow, manage daily task and track the progress of the work done by team. This software application allows you to record and follow the progress of every problem or “issue” that user identifies until the problem is resolved. Create issues and assign them to relevant tasks. Manage their severity, priority and status to keep everyone on the team updated.
Workflow Management
Both the unit, what you call your item of work and the workflow, the steps that item takes from open to close. Can all be highly customized for your team’s specific requirements, whether simple or more complex. This platform is used by development and technical support teams to get more work done and faster. It’s available on-demand through a monthly subscription (software-as-a-service), or it can be deployed on your own servers for an upfront license.
Product Management
This is an application case where you can create project and create sprints inside those projects. Manage the project by creating stories which the team would work on to deliver the product.
Configurable dashboard with widgets
This allows you to track what is going on in project, can track user work-flows, burndown charts, verify velocity of team
Reporting
JIRA gives best reports to understand the progress of the project. Helps you with total spent verses the estimation, which can help you to understand the budget very preciously.
Scrum & Kanban
JIRA helps you with configurable scrum and Kanban boards. Where you can use a Scrum board for managing your board, and can use Kanban to manage bugs, epics in the system.
Agile project management
This is an iterative approach to planning and guiding project processes. Atlassian’s JIRA handles agile project management with excellence.
Plugins Support
JIRA has a highly customizable workflow, and consists of pluggable integration. It integrates and supports multiple plugins like Freshdesk, GitHub, Zendesk, Zapbook, Asana and so on. That’s in addition to its own apps which can support any tasks you desire to carry out.
Methodical Tracking
JIRA allows you to track the time spent on each task through self-generating time sheets. It allows you to monitor the progress of each project in reference with its weekly activity in simple-to-read Gantt Charts. It enables you create and monitor resource planning as well as project budgets with the use of a simplified Project Planner.
Proficient Risk Management
This project management tool allows you to identify and assess potential risks and their frequency of occurrence. All through features such risk matrix and pie charts
Mobility, Anywhere.
A further benefit of the JIRA software is that it comes with widely available mobile apps. This means that all team members can stay connected not just when in the office or on their laptop, but also via their mobiles and tablets too.