Jira Review

Jira Software’s Kanban boards, also known as Scrum Boards, are an excellent tool for mapping tasks and workflows related to software development in one place. Jira’s Scrum Boards function like a Kanban board where cards hold task details and can be moved around freely between workflows such as “To Do”, “In Progress”, and “Completed”. The Scrum Boards can be customized and configured to match all kinds of Agile processes, including sprint planning, user stories, and product backlog.  

Project managers can also add in task descriptions, assign tasks to team members, label and categorize cards, and filter cards by users.

Jira Software enables teams to manage multiple projects and Agile development through powerful task management features such as task history, custom attributes, and reporting. Project managers can create tasks, update task details, assign tasks to multiple employees, and break down tasks into subtasks. 

Team members can also update task labels, change task types, and add due dates. Last but not least, there are a few ways of adding additional content to a task to provide a clearer picture, such as attaching files and images and linking to Confluence pages.

Setting up workflows is a reliable way of transitioning tasks between statuses. Jira Software allows users to use pre-built workflows or create customized workflows using Jira’s workflow designer. The workflow designer is a visual tool that allows teams to see the layout of their workflows and the relationships between them. Teams can edit and configure different workflow stages, including triggers, conditions, properties, and more. These customizations can be toggled on or off depending on a team’s needs and empower them to have full control over their workflows. 

Teams also have the option of importing workflows from the Atlassian Marketplace.

Monitoring the progress of a project helps teams to project their goals and keep deadlines in focus. Besides displaying a progress bar for each item, Jira also enables project managers to view and track a project’s status via time-based progress tracking, resolved issue count progress tracking, and story point progress tracking. 

Time-based progress tracking measures time spent on a task against the estimated time needed to complete the rest of the task, whereas resolved count progress tracking calculates the number of resolved issues. Story point progress tracking assesses project progress using sub-tasks. Project managers can also set story points to estimate the size of a task and break it down into sub-tasks if necessary.

Jira Software’s file-storage capabilities start at 2GB on the free plan and increase according to the different pricing plans. A team on the Standard plan has a 250GB file storage, whereas a team on the Premium plan has unlimited storage. Project administrators also have the option of customizing attachment settings such as file size limit and ZIP support.  

Additionally, teams can integrate Confluence with Jira to enjoy greater file storage possibilities. Confluence allows teams to export uploaded content to other formats such as DOCX, PDF, and much more. 

Teams using Jira can give external collaborators access to project resources in three ways: permission schemes, issue security schemes, and workflows. The permission schemes allow project managers to decide who can see a particular project inside Jira by assigning them project roles. 

Teams that need to restrict the visibility of issues within a project can achieve this with the issue security schemes. It allows internal users to create and comment on issues that external partners cannot access. Finally, through the use of custom workflows, project managers can also route and divert issues to the appropriate audience without having to explicitly grant permissions.

With Jira Software, team members can subscribe to real-time updates by clicking the “Watch” button and provide detailed feedback on an issue. Content can range from simple text updates and images to code snippets, tables, and more. The Jira text editor also supports markdown formatting and automatically converts links and code into readable paragraphs. 

If a comment applies only to a specific audience, a user has the option of limiting it to the relevant individuals. Teams can also react to comments with emojis and mention teammates with the @ symbol.

Jira’s time tracking tool helps development teams better understand how long a product will take to develop and is essential for Agile reporting. Jira Software provides the team the ability to record time spent working on tasks and issues. Time tracking in Jira can be configured in the following ways: working hours per day, working days per week, time display format, and default time unit. 

All logged time appears automatically in the issue and can be edited and deleted if the user has been granted permission. Though time-tracking is enabled by default, project managers can switch it off any time.

Built specifically for Agile processes, Jira Software supports the Scrum framework via a set of advanced tools. A development team can use the Scrum board to plan sprints, estimate user stories, check velocity, and prioritize urgent issues. With a drag and drop interface, a user can quickly move issues around and reorder them in the backlog. 

Jira’s story points feature also enables teams to track tasks better and estimate how much time is needed to complete them. Project managers have access to version management, giving them an overview of a product’s versions, status, development data, and potential problems.

A bug tracking tool is essential to track and record reported bugs in a piece of software. Jira Software allows teams to capture and log bugs by creating an issue and adding relevant details such as description, severity level, screenshots, version, and more. Project managers can also assign and prioritize bugs and configure a custom workflow for each issue type. 

Capture for Jira, a tool that snaps screenshots and lets users annotate them, is also a great add-on for teams testing their product. It records details such as browser type and operating system and attaches the information to a Jira ticket.

Jira can be used by IT teams as it offers the necessary tools for structured sprint planning, ticket system, request management, status tracking, issue tracking and moreJira Software facilitates Agile development by helping teams manage their IT projects and deploy products on-time. With Agile project management features such as Kanban, Scrum Boards, and Agile reporting, software development teams can access a wealth of tools that will bring their projects forward. Jira also boasts developer tool integrations such as GitHub and GitLab, rich APIs, and over 3000 third-party applications. 

Jira Software helps teams become more efficient and productive by providing them with Agile reports and key performance metrics. The types of Agile reports that Jira support include burndown chart, sprint report, velocity chart, cumulative flow diagram, release burndown, control chart, and epic burndown. With these charts, project managers can gain critical insights into team performance and highlight areas for improvement.