Bittu Sharma

An Introduction to Jira: What You Need to Know

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Bittu Sharma
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6 min read

Jira is like the central command center for your projects. It keeps everything organized and helps your team communicate effectively. Whether you're a small team working on a simple app or a large company managing multiple projects, Jira can scale to meet your needs. Basically, its a software developed by a company called Atlassian. It's a powerful tool used mainly for three things:

  1. Project Management

  2. Issue Tracking

  3. Agile Software Development

Key Features of Jira

Customizable Workflows: Workflows in Jira define how tasks move from start to finish. You can customize these workflows to fit your team's needs. For example, a workflow for fixing a bug might look like this:

  • Story

  • Story Point

  • Epic

  • To Do

  • In Progress

  • In Review

  • Done

  • Sprint

  • Velocity Chart

Detailed Reporting: Jira provides various reports to help you understand how your project is Train With progressing. For example, you can see how many tasks are completed, how many are still in progress, and how many are yet to be started. This helps in planning and improving future projects.

Robust Integration Options: Jira can connect with many other tools your team might be using. For example, it integrates with GitHub (a code hosting platform) so that code changes can be linked to tasks in Jira. It also integrates with Slack (a communication tool) to get updates about your project directly in your chat.

Story vs Epic In Jira, both Stories and Epics are used to organize work but they serve different purposes and scopes.

A Story represents a single piece of work that needs to be completed within a sprint. It's usually a smaller task or requirement that a team can accomplish in a short time frame. Stories often follow a user-focused format like "As a user, I want to be able to log in so that I can access my account."

An Epic, on the other hand, is a larger body of work that can be broken down into multiple stories. Epics often span multiple sprints and are used to manage more complex projects or features that require substantial effort and time to complete. For example, an epic might be "Implement user authentication system," which would then be broken down into stories like "Create login page," "Set up database for user credentials," and "Implement password reset feature."

Sprint

  • Definition: A sprint is a time-boxed period, typically 1-4 weeks, during which a specific set of work must be completed and made ready for review.

  • Purpose: Allows teams to break down their work into manageable chunks and deliver increments of value regularly.

Process

  • Sprint Planning: Define what can be delivered in the sprint and how that work will be achieved.

  • Daily Standups: Short meetings to discuss progress and obstacles.

  • Sprint Review: At the end of the sprint, review what was accomplished.

  • Sprint Retrospective: Reflect on the sprint to identify improvements.

Velocity Chart

  • Definition: A velocity chart tracks the amount of work a team completes during each sprint.

  • Purpose: Helps predict how much work a team can realistically achieve in future sprints.

Components

  • Velocity: The average amount of story points completed in previous sprints.

  • Displayed: As a bar chart showing story points completed per sprint.

Usage: Teams use the velocity to plan sprints by understanding their capacity

Story Points

  • Definition: Story points are units of measure for expressing the overall effort required to fully implement a product backlog item or any other piece of work. Purpose: Helps estimate the complexity, effort, and time required to complete a story.

Assignment:

Relative Estimation: Compare stories to each other to assign points.

  • Common Scale: Fibonacci sequence (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc.) is often used.

Example: A simple task might be 1 point, a more complex task 5 points, and a very complex task 13 points.

Dashboards and Gadgets

Jira's Dashboards provide a customizable interface to display key project information using various gadgets. Dashboards help in visualizing data and tracking progress at a glance. Gadgets include:

  • Issue Statistics: Show statistics on issue types, priorities, or custom fields

  • Sprint Burndown: Visualize the progress of a sprint.

  • Pie Charts: Display issue distribution by status, assignee, or other fields.

Pe remissions and Security

Jira provides robust permissions and security settings to control access and ensure data integrity. Features include:

  • Project Roles: Define roles and assign permissions based on team members' responsibilities

  • Issue Security: Set security levels to restrict access to specific issues

  • Field-Level Security: Control visibility and editability of custom fields based on user roles

By leveraging these additional features and concepts, you can maximize the potential of Jira for your project management and agile development needs, making it a comprehensive tool for tracking, planning, and collaborating effectively.

Account Creation

Creating a Jira account is a straightforward process. Here's a step-by-step guide to help you get started:

  1. Sign Up for Jira

Visit the Jira Website

2. Create an Atlassian Account

  • Step: If you don’t already have an Atlassian account, you’ll need to create one. Enter your email address and click on Sign up. Follow the prompts to fill in your details and create your account.

3. Set Up Your Jira Site

Step: After creating your Atlassian account, you'll be asked to choose a name for your Jira site. This will be part of your site URL (e.g., https://yoursitename.atlassian.net). Enter a unique name and click on Continue

Initial Configuration

1. Choose a Template

  • Step: Jira will prompt you to choose a template based on your project type. For software development, you can choose between Scrum or Kanban. Select your preferred template and click on Use template.

Example: Using Jira in a Project

  1. Assign Tasks: Assign these tasks to team members. For example, the designer gets the "Design Login Screen" task, and the developer gets the "Develop Login Functionality" task.

  2. Track Progress: As team members work on their tasks, they update the status in Jira. You can see which tasks are "To Do," "In Progress," "In Review," and "Done."

  3. Use Reports: Generate reports to see how the project is progressing. Are most tasks on track? Are there any blockers?

  4. Integrate with Other Tools: Connect Jira with GitHub so that when the developer commits code for the login functionality, it automatically updates the task in Jira. Or integrate with Slack to get notifications about task updates.

2. Create Your First Project

  • Step: Enter a name for your project and optionally a key (a unique identifier for your project). Click on Create. Let's say you're developing a new webapp Wanderlust. You create a project in Jira called "Wanderlust Deployment."

3. Explore Jira

  • Step: After setting up your project, take some time to explore the Jira interface. Familiarize yourself with the dashboard, backlog, boards, and other features. Also use QuickStart Panel for better step by step guidance.

4. Edit or Add Columns:

Break down the project into smaller columns, like "STORY", "READY", "TO DO", “IN PROGRESS”, “REVIEW” & “DONE”.

  • STORY: High-level tasks or epics.

  • READY: Tasks that are ready to be picked up

  • TO DO: Tasks that need to be started.

  • IN PROGRESS: Tasks that are currently being worked on

  • REVIEW: Tasks that are completed and need review

  • DONE: Tasks that are completed and verified

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