What Is Jira Software - A Beginner's Guide

Table of Contents

What is Jira Software?

Jira software is a popular tool which is developed by Atlassian and is used for project management, issue detection, and bug tracking. It is widely used in the process of software development to plan, organize, track, and release those software projects to the audience. Jira software is a centralized platform that allows you to manage your tasks and prioritize your work as per the requirements. The tool helps to maintain collaboration among team members, making it an essential software in many developments of software.

JIRA also allows you to create and manage issues and tasks efficiently. Each issue can be tracked through its lifecycle from creation to completion, this can be done by the reporting and dashboard features of JIRA that enable teams to make data-based decisions. It is a platform-independent tool that supports various languages including English, French etc.

What is Jira Used For?

As we discussed in the introduction part of JIRA software, its features of providing a centralized platform for managing tasks, bugs, and other types of issues make it an appropriate choice for developers. The key features of JIRA software are:

Bug and Task Tracking: As we have already studied the basic functionality of JIRA includes creating and managing issues and tasks. Each of these created issues can be tracked through its lifecycle from creation to completion.
Integration with Tools: Jira software integrates easily with many other tools such as Bitbucket, GitHub, Slack, etc. This feature makes it easier to streamline your development workflow.
Project and Task Management: JIRA software provides a centralized platform that allows teams to create, organize, and divide tasks among themselves with the support of various other integrated terminologies.
Agile Project Management: Jira software supports Agile methodologies, including Scrum and Kanban. It also provides tools like boards and backlogs that help teams manage and prioritize their work in an Agile environment.
Reporting and Dashboards: JIRA has various reports and dashboards incorporated within itself that help teams get a real-time view of their work and make changes to enhance user adaptability.
Advanced Search and Filtering: Jira software also includes powerful search and filtering capabilities with its Query Language (JQL). This helps in efficient data analysis and promotes better data handling.

Steps to use Jira Software

This section will be a step-by-step guide to understanding the usage of Jira software from scratch:

Step 1: The process starts with creating an Atlassian Account.

One should go to Atlassian’s signup page, enter the required user details and credentials, and then click the SignUp button.
The step will be completed after clicking the verification link in the email box.
Now finally set up your Atlassian account.

Step 2: We would now move further by creating a new Project

Log in to your Atlassian account by filling in all the necessary credentials.
Answer some basic questions asked there to set up JIRA software personally for your team.
Now we will finally select a name for our project and template framework like Scrum or Kanban.

After following these steps, we will finally unlock our access to the JIRA software. Now, there will be four main sections:

Roadmap: It is an action plan or say blueprint for how our project will evolve.
Backlog: This defines the list of issues that the team might face during the project.
Board: This shows the summary of the entire work done, in progress, and future commitments at a glance.
Code: This is where we can create an automated DevOps workflow.

A project is divided into several parts and one part can contain multiple sprints these sprints contain multiple issues like user stories. A sprint is a fixed period in a development cycle where the project team completes work from the product backlog.

JIRA Scheme

A JIRA software scheme is defined as a set of configurations that tells how different aspect of projects, issues, workflows, and permissions works. This can be defined as the framework for all the functionalities undertaken while implementing JIRA software. There are several types of JIRA software, in this article, we will discuss about a few important types. These are:

Issue Type Scheme: This determines the types of issues (e.g., Bug, Task, Story) that can be created in a project. The issue type schema allows you to specify issue types available in a Project along with setting default Issue Types and orders for the same. The administrators in charge of the project can group issue types into issue-type schemas to make it easier for teams to select the right type while working on a project.
Permission Scheme: This type of JIRA software defines what users can and cannot do within a project i.e. what is permitted and what is not. Adding on, it controls permissions for creating and editing issues in a project. This also maintains specific permissions for different roles and users.
Notification Scheme: This provides an answer to the question of who receives what email when certain modifications are made. This type of JIRA software scheme defines who gets notified about different events related to issues. We can also customize notifications for different events as per the role of an individual.
Issue Security Scheme: This mainly deals with the security controls regarding the visibility of issues. This allows us to define different security levels for issues, restricting access to specific users or groups. One must be a JIRA Cloud administrator to configure issue-level security.

Jira Software – Issues and Issue Types

An “Issue” can be described as a fundamental unit of task, feature request, or any work item that needs to be tracked and managed. Several types of issues used in JIRA software are:

Bug: This simply is a defect in the software that needs to be fixed.
Task: A specific piece of work or a to-do list that needs to be completed.
Story: A story described by the user about a new feature or functionality from their perspective. This mainly tells about the user’s requirements.
Epic: A large body of work that can be subdivided into smaller tasks.
Sub-Task: A smaller task that is part of a larger issue ( Epic).
Incident: A problem or exception in the system that needs to be resolved.

Jira Software – Issue Attributes

Attributes are like adjectives that give specific information or descriptions of the issues. These contain different types of information, such as text values, numbers, or references that generally help to track these issues efficiently. These attributes are as follows:

Summary: A brief description or title given to an issue.
Description: A detailed explanation of the issue giving information about its specifications and minute details.
Priority: Indicates the urgency of the issue
Status: Indicates the current state of the issue
Resolution: Describes the method by which the issue was resolved
Assignee: The person responsible for working on the issue.
Reporter: The person who created the issue.
Labels: Tags used to categorize issues.
Attachments: Files related to the issue.
Comments: Notes or extra discussions done related to the issue.

Jira Software Statuses

As we all know that, Issues follow a predefined workflow, now while working with JIRA software it uses statuses to track the progress of issues in the workflow pattern. Some of these statuses include:

Open: The issue has just been created and is new.
In Progress: Active Work has begun on the issue while various processes have also been started.
Resolved: The issue has been reviewed and all bugs have been fixed for further testing.
Closed: The issue has been resolved. No further process is scheduled for it.
Reopened: A closed issue has been reopened to fix some more bugs.
Pending: The issue is in the waiting listing due to some resource requirements.
On Hold: The issue has been paused for a short while and will be resumed later.
Done: All the processes are been executed and the issue has been completed.

The status and stages of the workflow can be customized by JIRA administrators as per their specific needs and issue priority.

Issue Priorities

Now, this deals with the urgency of any process and issue. As we have already studied before, administrators can customize priorities according to the importance of the organization and the requirements of the users. The priorities are:

Highest: This includes critical issues that need immediate attention. These issues might block other ongoing processes and the overall performance of the system and need to be resolved at its earliest.
High: These hold the second most priority which include Important issues that should be addressed quickly but are not as urgent as the highest priority issues.
Medium: These include Issues that are important but not urgent. However, these should be resolved in a timely manner as they nay affect progression.
Low: Minor issue issues that are not urgent and can be addressed when the system is free enough and time permits after handling the above priority issues.
Lowest: These include minor issues with negligible impact on progress.

Issue Resolutions In Jira Software

This attribute indicates how a particular problem can be resolved. This helps to track the outcome of the work done on the issue and gives information about the current state of the issue. Normally when the status changes, the resolution is set. These further include:

Done: Work on this issue has been completed. This indicates successful closure.
Fixed: The particular problem has been fixed.
Won’t do/ fix: This issue will not be resolved.
Duplicate: This states that a problem is a duplicate of an existing problem.
Rejected: The issue has been reviewed and stated invalid or not acceptable.

Reporting in JIRA software

As we studied earlier Jira software helps us to visualize data, thus it provides various reports to track project progress, issue resolution, and team performance by using various visual formats. Some of them include:

Burnup Report: This report helps to visualize the sprint’s overall completed work.
Burndown Chart: This is the opposite of the burnup report as it tracks and manages the remaining work in a sprint or project.
Velocity Chart: This shows the amount of work completed and also evolves the future scope of work by reviewing the work done in the previous cycle in each sprint.
Issue Trends: This tracks and observes the number of issues created and resolved over time.
Pie Chart: This is nothing but a pictorial representation of the distribution of issues by with respect to their status, priority, etc.

Become A Project Manager With PW Skills

If you are looking to start a career in Product management then join our PW Skills Product Management with AI Course to start your shining and bright career in Product management. By learning the power of AI, you can master the abilities of AI to make your work more easy and effective.

Learn from industry experts having more than a decade of experience and get perks such as regular doubt-clearing sessions, daily practice exercises, and regular practice assessments, working on industry-relevant projects, assured placement assistance, resume review sessions, and much more only at pwskills.com.

Jira Software FAQs

How does Jira Software support agile methodologies?

Jira Software provides various tools like Scrum boards, Kanban boards, burndown charts, etc. that help us to implement and manage agile practices efficiently.

How do I start a new project in Jira Software?

Creating a new project is very easy, you just have to go to the Jira dashboard, click on "Projects" in the top menu, then select "Create project". Then you must choose a desired project template, enter the project details, and manage the project settings as per your requirements.