Introduction
The project management is key for a successful project delivery and JIRA is the tool which is used to plan, track, release and support world-class projects with confidence. The JIRA can be used as the single source of truth for the entire development lifecycle. This popular tool is owned by the company named Atlassian.
The JIRA is flexible enough to create and update issues and keep track of bugs, features, tasks, and more. It supports the project work from day one – no matter the project or distributed team’s size.
The advantages of using JIRA are –
- Highly customizable
- Amazing integration with other tools
- Plenty of Add-ons to add functionality.
- Suitable for small companies as well as big enterprises
- Simple licensing – per user
- Very good support and community
- Support REST API to write a custom interface to push/pull data.
- Intuitive to use.
JIRA Features – The features are shown down below:
Project – A project can be defined as a collection of tasks that need to be completed to achieve a certain outcome. The projects can be found in the top navigation in the “Projects” drop down.
Board – This feature helps teams plan, visualize, and manage that work. In JIRA Software, the board displays a selection of issues in columns, each representing a step of the team’s workflow for completing work.
Image Source – https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/guides/getting-started/introduction#what-is-jira-software
Timeline – The timeline is a planning view available in JIRA that allows one to plan work, track progress, and map dependencies within a single team and project.
Image Source – https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/guides/getting-started/introduction#what-is-jira-software
The child issues can be directly created and linked with the parent issue into the timeline.
Image Source – https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/guides/getting-started/introduction#what-is-jira-software
The dependency between multiple issues can be addressed into the JIRA which may indicate that there’s a potential blocker that the team needs to act on.
Image Source – https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/guides/getting-started/introduction#what-is-jira-software
Issue – If the desired functionality is not working then the issue can be raised and tracked into the JIRA. There are different types of issues that help to identify, categorize, and distinguish between different types of work.
The different types of issues are –
Fig: JIRA Issue Hierarchy
Image Source – https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/guides/getting-started/introduction#what-is-jira-software
To capture the test results, the test plan needs to be created first and multiple test cases will be associated with the test plan. There are multiple test steps which will be involved in each test case. If there is any test step which has an error, then the bug needs to be created against the test step and needs to be assigned to a responsible person to take action on it. The sample test plan is shown below:
Image Source – https://community.atlassian.com/t5/App-Central/How-to-create-a-Master-Test-Plan/ba-p/1146918
Reports and Dashboards – There are 4 types of reports readily available in JIRA, they are – Agile reports, DevOps reports, Issue analysis reports, Forecast and management reports.
The dashboard is a collection of gadgets which represents the real-time status of a project. The dashboard can be customized or created based on the project’s needs. The sample dashboard is shown below –
Image Source – https://community.atlassian.com/t5/Jira-Software-questions/The-Perfect-Dashboard-and-Report/qaq-p/1598130
Jira is a vast tool and can be integrated with an automation tool which will maximize the tracking and reports in a real-time basis.
JIRA is gaining popularity for all the right reasons. This blog is just an overview of the JIRA, to get hands-on experience the free version can be explored.