What is Jira?

What Is JIRA?

JIRA is a software product that provides issue tracking. The product is developed and maintained by Atlassian and facilitates agile project management and bug tracking. The software comes in three packages – JIRA Core, JIRA Software, and JIRA Service Desk – intended to serve three different purposes. The JIRA Core facilitates project management; JIRA Software includes the base software, and agile project management (previously JIRA Agile); and JIRA Service Desk is to be used by IT or business service desks.

Why It Is Used?

JIRA software is written in the Java programming language, uses IoC containers, WebWork 1 technologies stack, and Apache OFBiz entry engine. JIRA has been used by world-renowned organizations for bug tracking and project management such as NASA, United States Department of Defense, Twitter, Skype, and more.

Key Features of JIRA

Although JIRA is used in a wide range of projects, it was developed as an agile project management software for formulating plans, tracking the progress of the project, and the release of the software. Following are the key features of JIRA:

Agile Project Management

The Scrum boards within JIRA allow teams to develop features with iterative and incremental value. The Kanban boards provide the teams with real-time visibility of the task and the flow of work. The platform provides the team with access to reports that help them assess the progress of the project. The Portfolio tool in JIRA provides agile portfolio management. It facilitates the team with planning and setting roadmaps, making informed decisions, and keeping the team updated.

Intuitive Interface

JIRA is highly intuitive; every member of the team can access any aspect of development with ease. The sidebar in the software allows the teams to immediately access information about planning, tracking and releasing. The software provides the flexibility to create tasks and stories from any screen. With the drag and drop function, the user can easily create epics and springs in the backlog.

Product Integration and Mobility

JIRA allows the user to integrate useful tools that make the development process effective and efficient such as Confluence for knowledge management, Bamboo for continuous integration, Bitbucket for workflow in development, Stride for collaboration in real-time, and thousands more. Users can leverage a wide range of software from the Atlassian Marketplace. The JIRA app is compatible with iOS and Android allowing the users to access the project from any location.

Benefits of Using JIRA for Business

JIRA is an ideal software if you are looking to improve the productivity of your software team operation. Here, we have listed the top six benefits of using JIRA for your organization:

Better Visibility across the Project

The primary reason that contributes to inefficiency in a project or anything in our life is the lack of visibility as to what needs to be accomplished in a given period. JIRA addresses this problem by synchronizing the tasks within the team. It provides real-time information on the ongoing tasks and when it should be completed. This helps each member within the team to keep a track of the project’s progress, contributing to the timely completion of the project.

Setting Better Priorities

JIRA helps a team complete the important tasks first by prioritizing the tasks. This is especially helpful when you are working on a deadline and some things need to be done before others. It is also highly useful when you are working across multiple deadlines.

Increases the Productivity

While working with JIRA, team members can view the next task ahead in the list of completion. With the ability to view tasks in advance, there is a reduced downtime between tasks as the next task is ready while they are working on the current task.
Downtime may seem negligible, however, in an organization where there are thousands of employees and each takes a break of say an hour, it all sums up to a huge productivity loss for the organization.

Always Stay Connected

JIRA allows the team members to always stay connected, not just when they are on the site or in front of the laptop but also while they are on the move using their mobile devices and tablets. This is highly effective as the team members can be reached even when they are not on the location for urgent tasks. This can greatly increase the efficiency of software production.

Certified Training & Consultancy

For Gold Partners, JIRA provides training and consultancy including the full suite of Atlassian products. It ensures that you receive the best training and are adept at using the software.

More than 10,000 Add-ons

JIRA comes with more than ten thousand add-ons that are highly useful for agile teams. GreenHopper and Bonfire are two of the most used add-ons.

Who should use JIRA?

With its lineage embedded in development, JIRA is primarily used in software development; however, any division dealing with project management can utilize its capabilities. This software is suitable for teams needing to collaborate and work through issues in a planned manner. Here are some examples on who should use JIRA.

• Marketing: A company may be in need of new marketing collateral such as a brochure. JIRA can be used to communicate the responsibilities to the copywriter, graphics designer, and flag the finished work to be approved by the CMO.
• Compliance: Accurate workflow tracking is required by any organization be it your annual auditing or the documentation required by the compliance department.
• Remote Companies: JIRA is also suitable for companies that are entirely remote or work with freelancers to get the tasks complete. It facilitates easy and seamless collaboration.

JIRA is a highly effective tool used for project tracking. Although, initially developed for software development the software now as implication in all businesses. It is a simple to use tool that helps the team achieve its goal in time.