Jira is a project management software for team planning, tracking, and project management. The platform allows for better project transparency and collaboration through tools and integrations that are designed to boost team and project efficiency.
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Deployment | Cloud / SaaS / Web-Based, Desktop Mac, Desktop Windows, Mobile Android, Mobile iPad, Mobile iPhone, On-Premise Linux, On-Premise Windows |
Training | Documentation |
Languages | English |
I think that they originally thought Jira as an issue tracker but it grew beyond it to become a great tool to manage projects. The addition of products such as Jira Agile brought the product to the new methodologies, along with Confluence, it is a very powerful option to manage the project lifecycle. The permission model is a bit complicate to learn at first, but once you get it right, it's very powerful. The same goes for almost everything is Jira, everything can be extended, via configuration, development or plugins acquisition. The marketplace is full of applications that extend the features of the system.
The way that you have to set individual permissions is cumbersome. They use to have other option that allowed bulk assignments but changed it. The pricing model seems complicate at first, but it's mostly due to the lack of info that you can get directly from Jira sales reps, at least that was my case, and it made me go to another product, Samanage, for Service Desk. What I don't like about the licensing model is that everything is managed by Jira, so if you buy a plugin in the marketplace, you always tie the licenses to the Jira licenses. e.g. Tempo Planner is a plugin to do, among other things, capacity planning. You won't expect to have too many people there doing the planning, at least not as much as your Jira license base. You end up paying for every Jira LIcense you have. So if you have 2 planners and 100 developers, you end up paying for 102 licenses for the plugin.
We are solving the problem to manage almost the entire project lifecycle and some support processes: project planning, Scrum, Kanban, issue tracking, time tracking, capacity planning (using plugins), documentation. The benefits that we have are many, from which I can mention that you have a centralized document repository per project (using Confluence) and a way to manage the different types of client engagements we have: Fixed Bids Projects, Scrum, Kanban.
I'm a big fan of JIRA. For years, our company has used an internal bug tracking system that was first created in 2007. As a result, it has seen some major browser compatibility issues within the past few years. We are looking at JIRA as a possible long term replacement, as I have utilized the product in the past with specific larger clients who disliked our internal system. I enjoy the customizable dashboard as well as the issue tracking, and the amount of addons you can get in the marketplace is overwhelming!
The price is obviously a downside, but it isn't that big of an issue overall. Other than that, I'm pretty happy with JIRA.
We're trying to solve browser compatibility issues and integration with TFS with JIRA. It seems to be working pretty well. The biggest benefit is having a system with graphs and charts that can accurately track progress.
Having used a variety of issue tracker applications in the past, JIRA was how I always hoped other products worked. What comes "out of the box" is already easy to use and works well in most company workflows. Best parts of JIRA: * Intuitive UI that offers a variety of ways to show issue and project status * Multiple levels of taxonomy and organization for each issue type * Customizable workflows * Web-based app * Integrations with other Atlassian products * Markdown compatible * Ability to tag others in comments
The major issue I have with JIRA is a common one across this whole eco-system, which is the inability to share tickets across more than one assignee. While this is a contentious workflow, since some people feel that there is no way for people to work on the EXACT same issue, I personally see a value in being able to assign a ticket to multiple people. At the very least, "epic" style issues should be able to be assigned to multiple people. For JIRA specific issues, I am not satisified with their small-screen design. The majority of the functionality is not there, and the overall view is buggy and hard to use.
Using JIRA I have been able to not only keep track of all the things that I, and members of my team, are working on, but it is a great tool to organize the thought process when tackling large projects. Our agile workflow is easily parseable by using the built in agile view, which helps keep our burndown on target and our velocity on track. Overall, using JIRA helps us to be able to know who is working on what, how much effort is required, and what is top priority across teams. We have noticed an increase in productivity and cross-team knowledge transfer from integrating JIRA in all our workflows.
JIRA is robust, easy to use, and extremely reliable. In many years of software development, I have never worked with a better issue tracker. I love a lot of things about the product. Here are a few of my favorites: - Notifications: Automatic email notifications on issue activity (highly configurable). You don't have to visit JIRA in your web browser to be notified of important events; they come into your inbox, which then links to the item of interest. - Search: Works great. Search over multiple projects and fields and even attached files. Basic search builder lets you assemble searches by combing options from various drop-down menus and controls (very nice); switch to advanced and you can then see the search expressed in a powerful query language. - Reporting: It's easy to build issue reports based on a variety of factors (components, labels, assignee, issue type, etc., etc.). The reports can also be exported to a variety of formats such as Word and Excel. - Commenting: The ability to comment on issues is what builds a history of knowledge, which when searched later can provide valuable answers when you need them. - Agile: The Agile view allows us to manage issues in the Agile method. You don't have to practice Agile to get great value from this interface. It makes everything very visual and easy to work with using drag-n-drop. It also allows for quick editing of issue in card views without having to open and post individual forms. - Dashboards and Widgets: You can configure multiple dashboards for projects with visual widgets that help summarize key information. - Configurability: Setting up a project with defaults is quick and easy and usually good for starters, but as you go, you can customize notification schemes, issue types, fields, components (like tags), security-per-project, and the like. If you can fit JIRA into your budget, I'd go so far as to say there's not a very compelling reason to evaluate against anything else. For the job it does, JIRA is the quintessential leader.
While JIRA is great for task assignment and tracking in the context of Project Management, it doesn't allow you to work with tasks like you would a tool like Microsoft Project. You can schedule issues. You can setup linkages and dependencies, but because you can't view these things in a linear timeline or gantt chart, it's not great for the actual planning exercise. As a consequence, I often find myself manually wrestling to keep tasks in my MS Project plan in sync with issues in JIRA.
My company is a software design and development firm, and as such, we have numerous uses for JIRA. It serves us through the entire software development lifecycle. Each project that we start gets its own JIRA project. For most projects, we configure the security so the project's client also has access. We offer this to our clients as a value-add to our service. In the early stages of a project, we use it mainly for project management - task assignment and monitoring, to be specific. Each project task gets represented by an issue, is assigned to a person, and can build up its own searchable paper-trail of related comments, notes, and attachments. We use Components and Labels to classify and organize issues, which helps when browsing, searching, and building reports. When we get to User Acceptance Testing, it morphs into a bug tracker. Testers create an issue when a defect is found, the project manager is automatically notified by email, and the issue is assigned to the appropriate developer. Once resolved, the developer re-assigns the issue to the tester and the tester can validate and close the issue. What's great about the workflow is that people get these activity notifications in their email inbox. After a project is complete, or when it goes into maintenance mode, it morphs into a help-desk tool. Over time, it adds a lot of value to the application management process as the central mechanism through which issues are recorded and tracked and through which work gets assigned. What's more, as knowledge is gained about certain issues, it is recorded in a way that can be easily searched. This helps us to build a valuable history and repository of knowledge.
It's flexibility. It gives so much freedom in your projects and flows you can imagine. A lot of ways to control current state of project/build. Many 3rd party connectors and tools. Great users and permissions access lists. Easy to implement build tools like bitbucket, gurhub, jenkins and so on.
A bit slow and time consuming in the beginning when you setup base project issues flow, workflow and permissions.
Organizing tasks and following correct workflows - improved our work over projects and tasks in great manner.
JIRA, is a great communication tool that is best used between Developers, Project Managers and Quality Assurance.
I dislike the email notification feature which seems to work sometimes and then sometimes it just stops working.
We are solving the problem of issue communication between developers and QA. This tool helps us keep track of issues, enhancements and new functionality that is needed with our products. Use of the JIRA boards is a very helpful tool that can be viewed by all on the team to track/view the status of the project.
capability to create our own workflow, easy to collaborate, very useful for planing Agile scrums easy and fast tool great statistics and easy to create dashboards
bulk changes could be more intuitive, Cant reply on comments, Lack of integration with MS OFFICE import/export to excel, word format required.
Team capacity planing - was very intuitive as we were able see the current status and workloads Agile Project Planing was very helpfull with help of tags,
I will be synthesize the main features in bullets that for me is important - If are you running a company or some freelance, you need a agile board to control your activities - The total UI/UX is very simple to learn and master. - The process of create new Issues or track it is very simple also. - All issues can be linked/blocked and estimated - The reports of the sprint is very useful for project management, to tune the team to the next sprint. - Kind of Issues -> Bug/New Feature/Improvement
Unfortunately you must to pay to get a Agile Board. Sometimes, the software can spam your email with changes at the ticket/issue but can be configured.
Management of Projects/Persons. The main benefice of this software is to control and monitoring the team speed.
Atlassian JIRA has very powerful permission settings so that we can create workgroups with particular access levels to control who saw what information and what they could do with it. JIRA is a highly customizable tool, almost anything can be adjusted, with a wide selection of pre-installed tools or downloadable add ons, to satisfy various requirements for metrics and charts expected by stakeholders. Configurable workflow allows us to have separate life cycles for each project.
While configurable, JIRA requires a certain amount of effort to extend its data schema with new attributes. JIRA still lacks some important ways of data visualization. Sometimes it's hard to represent all data points of the lifecycle in the same instance of JIRA, especially when it needs to be done "yesterday" or "abruptly". So we have to use Labels, Components, Fix Versions etc., as anything but what it says just to put everything into the required model of implementation. It's not very user-friendly. It took me a few months to start feeling comfortable with the administration settings.
In a very large organization that has a lot of different types of work and different workflows with a lot of separation of responsibility Atlasssian JIRA is a must have tool and it might be required for task management and bug tracking.
Very easy to install and configure. Love the amount of plug-ins you can apply. Great community to visit and share ideas. We use it in an agile environment and like seeing how everything is tied into the Agile process with Sprint boards, and how easy it is to customize the workflow.
Not too happy with the default Editor tool. Old school. They could upgrade that feature since they get lots of requests to do just that.
Accountability, Software Quality Metrics, Traceability. Our Incidents follow our Stories. Stories turn into test cases and reference Confluence requirements/documents. It ties into our test case management system as well (TestRail). I found it to be a great tool to work with and manage your work.
The seamless integration of development planning, issue tracking, code association and team coordination. JIRA is a one stop shop for a development team, but it also appeals to customer support teams and management. It is ready to roll right out of the box.
JIRA is awesome right out of the box, but if you want to achieve 110% you should customize the workflow to match your needs. Customizing the workflow has a learning curve and it can take a little time to become proficient.
Issue Tracking, Task Management, Development Planning
Functionality and use - It helps me drive the task and feature sets that need to be worked.
UI - Color and design - It just looks terrible.
PM
Easy to keep track of bugs and integrates well with Bitbucket. Good for sprint planning.
The way sub tasks works makes it a bit to do sprint planning if the creator of the ticket didn't set up the ticket correctly and used the sub tasks incorrectly.
A way to keep track of time and bugs/features.
I love the fact you can mold JIRA in to anything you want, It isn't just for organisations were there is a software development department but you can use it for just logging holiday or even raising an issue with a race car around a track.
There isn't anything to dislike, the tool is awesome! If you haven't used the tool before get in contact with one of their Platinum experts and ask for a demo, you won;t be disappointed!
We are solving an age old problem, you never used to be able to buy a tool this good for the price you would either get ripped off massively or buy a tool that does nothing you want it too. Atlassian have now solved this problem, their tools are great value for money whether you are a start up or enterprise. What makes them even better is they have some really great platinum expert partners that offer training, consultancy, hosting options and support so you are not left in the dark.
The ability to identify dependencies and thereby create complex queries and save them to filters for use by the rest of the company.
Managing individual screens and fields. Workflows are fine, but screens are too detailed out of the box and require tweaking for low-level users to not be intimidated.
Identifying dependencies within a project both with people and with tasks allow us to understand the project life cycle better.