JIRA is a popular software tracking and project management system used by many companies across the world. Programmed in Java, it is widely used for issues and bugs tracking by remote software teams, it is a clear leader in software collaborations worldwide. Probably the last tool you’ll ever need for agile development with good reason, despite multiple alternatives. So why is JIRA still popular? Why is JIRA boss?
JIRA User Friendliness
Allow me to plead my case by citing the multiple advantages and cool features that give JIRA unprecedented superiority. Some of my favorite features include its user friendly dashboards, saved searches, workflow, labels, advanced search query, linked issues, follow issue, history, batch updates. All of which make life easier when working in JIRA. The administrative headaches of software product management are out the window when JIRA is used effectively.
Workflows
On the topic of workflows, JIRA allows teams to define workflows for any type of a task and helps with keeping that task on track. Additionally, developers can trigger various actions when a task hits a step in a workflow, like automatically re-assigning a task to a specific team member. Which makes task follow up a walk in the park. You can also organize your JIRA dashboard any way you want and you can have as many dashboards as needed. This can be valuable when preparing for team meetings and generating reports.
Cool Customization
As far as customization is concerned, JIRA allows adjustment of software to your needs and not the other way around. JIRA does a great job of providing flexibility for the ticket types. Ticket management using its boards is super effective and makes tracking work very simple. Talk about clarity in tracking firmware development related tasks. It can be used for a large software development project with tons of scope as well as a small software project.
The Ultimate Defect Tracking
Putting into account defect tracking, there may not be a better tool out there. Atlassian JIRA is used to track defects. It flawlessly allows details about the defect to be raised by Quality Assurance, then its review by users to give a go ahead to fix the bug. Developers can also analyze and fix the bug with comments, deploying to Quality Assurance for testing. All with a smooth workflow with JIRA’s project dashboard tracking all the stories and defects.
Visibility is key
Its ability to allow visibility to a team’s engineers, managers, and customers is impeccable. It allows project managers to provide an estimate of time that will be required to complete a task and then compare logged time against estimated time. As we have noted, the nature of JIRA is one of flexibility. Whether you’re servicing technology development teams, help desk, systems administration teams and project managers, it won’t flinch.
The Atlassian Package
JIRA is extremely customizable, especially when compared to Atlassian products like, Confluence. In addition, JIRA interacts fairly well with other products and enables one to build plug-ins into Outlook and Excel for more advanced functionality. It has brilliant cross-platform integration and can be readily deployed on multiple systems and architectures. Since JIRA is almost exclusively website oriented, there is also no need for deploying client side applications onto workstations. This eases the burden on Admins operating mixed-system networks.
Reporting Reputation
One noteworthy addition is JIRA reports well. Chances are that whatever you need for reporting is readily accessible once a user is familiar with the reporting structure. It also has a great way of capturing all the critical attributes of a request being made of engineering. It has a great segmentation features for projects with screenshot attachment features as a huge plus.
Administrative Features
Let us not forget the award winning administrative features which make it easy for an administrator to identify the cause of a configuration error and fix/test quickly. Really undisputed in Agile or Waterfall development. You can enter all important details, group them and track all the phases with fluency. Its frontend is super-fast which promotes users taking even complex tagging actions with ease.
Extra Features
Its in-built labels enable all the benefits of tagging-based organizing. The Webhook with Git feature means you can see all commits per task cited in the commit message. Plus an easy single-sign on integration removes the need to create new accounts. How cool is that? That’s complementary to an easy dashboard for efficient tracking and status reporting. The same dashboard has visual representation to monitor the issues based on the status, criticality, phase, assignee, reporter, etc.
Managing Scrums
In all fairness, JIRA does a great job of managing daily scrums and showing a very clear overall picture of a project status. It also deserves a thumbs up when it comes to linking issues to Stash repositories. This is critical for any technology development project as it also allows teams to see how much work is being performed on each issue.
Production Support
Many companies also use JIRA for production support. It has a functionality in place where a user can hook a shared mailbox to JIRA then transform any email to a JIRA issue. This is great when trying to keep track of your support metrics. Not forgetting its easy integration with other Atlassian products as well as third party version control and authentication systems. Its integration with Fisheye, Stash, GIT, HP Quality Center is second to none.
In Conclusion
Even though JIRA is currently missing an iOS app, though there is a mobile version of the site. It is still the best of the best. Its ability to track end to end progress on changes being implemented makes it seamless in use. The ability to extend the feature set through plugins and custom code as well as the comprehensive workflow settings make JIRA a great choice for any task tracking application. So why not give it a shot.