All Things Jira
Tools Talk
One question organizations explore is “What tools should we use to manage our work?”?They explore workflow tools, project management tools or productivity tools to answer this question. For many organizations, the answer to that question is an Atlassian product called Jira. Jira has been around for quite a while and has evolved over the years. To better understand current use, I connected with our resident Jira expert at Plaster Group, Janette Ng, about how this tool is used and when best to use it. She provided the following helpful thoughts to my questions (like many of our Plaster Group team members, Janette is both a seasoned project manager as well as having expert-level tool administration experience).
When do you advise organizations to use Jira instead of other tools to manage and visualize their work?
I always advocate to use the right tool for the right job.?Jira is a very powerful tool that captures and reports metadata on any group of items that need to process through a workflow. Organizations that need to track and report on the relationships and statuses of items as they progress through their various workflows should use Jira. Also any organization that still uses Excel and Outlook as a primary project or program management tool is a candidate for Jira.?Both of these software are excellent for their intended purposes but can be a challenge when accessed by more than one person or for reporting metrics.
What are some key guiding principles or core functionality when using Jira for work management?
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What is the biggest mistake you’ve seen organizations make when they implement Jira?
Planning is key to the success of any Jira implementation.?Jira is a highly configurable solution and this fact can lead organizations into not taking advantage of standard out-of-the-box functionality that can be lost later if customized too much.?With good planning, the implementation can provide the correct relationships between items, with the correct fields to capture the right data…which feeds directly into the correct reporting solution.??
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What is your favorite visual that Jira provides?
I have a couple of favorites. For organizations that use Sprints, there are a handful of very useful reports available.
Average Age Report (Found in the Board Reports).?It comes with a graph and a table of supporting data.
?Two Dimensional Filter Statistics Gadget (Dashboard Reports). Pick any two drop-down, selectable fields and show the relationship between the dimensions.
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?What types of work should be tracked in Jira? What types of work is not ideal for Jira?
Jira can be used to create and prioritize a backlog of software features for development, send alerts to be processed and linked to problem management tickets, manage change control records that need to link back to the software development, as well as intake items that are submitted and need to be processed in the order received. Specific parts of the software include:
o??Initiatives, Epics, Stories, Bugs, etc.
o??Backlogs, Sprints, Demos, Retrospectives, etc.
Jira should not be used as a document repository.?If an item does not flow through a process workflow, then it just becomes items to wade through to find the items that do.?Documents can be attached or linked to related items but should not be tracked as individual issue types.?Jira is also not a communication management system.?Although Jira can send email when triggered by changes in the tool, it is not an email client and cannot send messages to distribution lists.
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Other thoughts?
Jira has data connectors and integrations with many other tools.?These Add-ons greatly increase the power and potential of the tool.?When considering a Jira implementation, these integrations can be a deciding factor between Jira and other Project Management tools.?However, many of them come at an additional cost.