During the software development process, Issues can be found everywhere. To keep the project progressing, developers need a tool that can handle and track different types of software issues. Thankfully, an Australian company named Atlassian, developed software called JIRA that can efficiently track any kind of issues that may arise during a software development process, thus enabling developers to manage, track, resolve and report issues.
What is Jira?
Jira Software is a subscription-based software issue tracking tool developed by Atlassian. It can also help developers to handle team coordination, especially in agile software development. The Jira test case management offers a complete suite of issue tracking throughout the software development lifecycle. Jira software helps the developer’s team to work towards their goal and efficiently facilitates tracking, planning, up to the completion, and to release the software. It also provides the project management team comprehensive reports about the progress and performance of the software being developed.
Top Jira Features
The reason why Jira software became one of the best project management tools today is that the software offers different unique features and functionalities. Below we have listed some of the software’s most dominant features.
Issue Templates
Jira software allows developers to create issues by using predefined templates. They can also customize and save their own Jira issue template for future use. This feature will enable them to perform better and faster since the software can automatically prefill the main fields.
Dashboard
The Jira dashboard is the very first thing that welcomes you once you log into the software. The software admin can also customize the dashboard and rearrange everything that was displayed on it. Typically, the dashboard displays gadgets and apps that view essential information to help the Dev team to track their progress.
Agile Development
Agile is Jira’s primary application. The software provides smooth feature utilization, especially for Scrum boards and Kanban boards. When starting a project, Jira software will ask to select the project type either for Kanban or Scrum. Once you selected the project type, the software creates a board so you can continue your project.
Project Tracking
This Jira software tracks any issues from the ongoing projects. By using the Jira query language, it allows the developers to sort and filter issues depending on their criteria. The sidebar provides easy access to vital details about the project’s planning, tracking, releasing, and reporting. With this tool, developers can easily create tasks, sub-task, and stories using any computer. Moreover, it also comes with a drag and drops feature, thus making the software simple to create sprints and epics.
Mobile Apps
To support developers and other project teams working in remote locations, Jira offers a project management tool that is also compatible with mobile applications specifically created for Android and iOS devices. With this, users can stay engaged anytime.
Jira Reports
Jira is famous for being able to provide relevant information. These reports enable developers to have the necessary visibility of the situation. Moreover, these reports offer project statistics of the entire development lifecycle.
Sample reports are as follows:
- Resolution Time Report
- Created Issues Report versus Resolved
- Pie Chart Report
- Average Age Report
- User Workload Report
- Single Level Group By Report
- Sprint Report
- Workload Pie Chart Report
- Version Report
- Cumulative flow diagram
- Velocity Chart
Security
The security settings for this software restrict any access to certain issues to only developers and project managers who are allowed to work on the issue. However, one can set the security level when it is created. Moreover, the permission settings also allow you to create sets of permissions as well as apply the same permission to any new project.
Unparalleled Connectivity
Since Jira software is equipped with Java APIs & REST APIs, one can easily extend its power. Moreover, there are more than 800 add-ons & plugins made available in the Atlassian Marketplace that allows you to customize everything. Below are some of the popular add-ons for Jira software:
- Suites utilities for JIRA
- JIRA Charting Plugin
- Portfolio for JIRA
- JIRA Toolkit Plugin
- ScriptRunner for JIRA
- JIRA Misc Workflow Extensions
- Atlassian REST API Browser
- Tempo Timesheets for JIRA
Product Integrations
The Jira Software offers integration features that make software developers add other tools like Confluence. With this, they can keep the development, and IT team integrated for faster issue resolutions.
Other Jira integrations tools:
- Balsamiq
- Zendesk
- PractiTest
- Salesforce Sales Cloud
- Service Desk
- Tempo
- Atlassian Confluence
- GitHub
- Gantt-Chart for JIRA
- nFeed
- Gliffy
Issue Creation
With issue creation on Jira software, no need to copy anything to the excel sheet anymore. The Jira software is capable of creating tasks or sub-task, bug reports, feature requests, and helpdesk tickets.
Roadmaps
The Jira software project management also provides a roadmap where developers can easily create and handle epic for the team. It enables developers to comprehend what is working and when issues are scheduled to be fixed. Roadmaps are beneficial for planning, especially for large sets of stories.
Real-Time Notification
Also, the Jira software ensures that the required information is updated to all of its users. Developers can set email notifications when any issues are updated. They can also set notifications for overdue tasks.
Extensive Search
In Jira software, you can easily find what you’re looking for in seconds. One can also save their searches if they want to reuse them in the future. Some of the searching methods are listed below:
- Simple Search
- Configurable Search Results
- Quick Search
- Export search
- Advanced Search
- Refine Searches
- Search Status History
Activity Log
Jira software can also keep track of all activities as well as work logged any software issues. For example, issues and updates from the developers are tracked using the activity log. With this, the project managers can have better collaboration, especially with the development teams.
Time Tracking
Jira software implements three colors to track the time spent on a particular issue easily. The color Blue means the estimated time to resolve the issues. Orange means the amount of time left for fixing the issue. And the Green means the actual time that has been spent resolving the issue.