JIRA

A Jira 'issue' refers to a single work item of any type or size that is tracked from creation to completion. For example, an issue could be a feature being developed by a software team, a to-do item for a marketing team, or a contract that needs to be written by a legal team.

Tip: Other commonly used terms for issues are 'requests', 'tickets' or 'tasks'. We recommend using 'issues' to help your team stay on the same page when working across the Jira product family.?

Projects

A project is, quite simply, a collection of issues that are held in common by purpose or context. Issues grouped into projects can be configured in a variety of ways, ranging from visibility restrictions to available workflows.

Jira Software projects are flexible working spaces that allow you to group like issues by?team, business unit, product, or stream of work.?Projects don't need to be tied to the same delivery date.?For example, if you group your issues by team, you could have a marketing project, a development project, and a legal project, all of which would track ongoing work of those particular teams.?Every issue would be represented by an issue keys?(specific to a project) and an issue number, i.e. MKT-13, DEV-4, LEG-1.

Boards

A board in Jira software is a part of a project that displays issues giving teams a flexible way to view, manage, and reporting on work in progress. Simply put, a board is a visual representation of a team’s workflow within a project.In this case, Open, Done, and the labels in between represent the status an issue can take, while the arrows represent potential transitions from one status to another. Workflows can be simple or complex, with?conditions,?triggers,?validators,?and post functions.?We'll dive deeper into these advanced configurations later in this guide. For now, it is recommended for novice Jira Software admins to keep their workflows as simple as possible, until business needs to determine the requirements for complex workflow configurations.?

Agile

Agile is not a Jira Software-specific term. It's a work philosophy that originated in the software development field and has since expanded to a variety of other industries. While we won't belabor the definition here (there are great agile resources for that!), agile emphasizes an iterative approach to work informed by customer feedback where delivery occurs incrementally and continuously. The ideal agile team can move quickly and adapt to changing requirements without missing much of a beat.

So why are we bringing up agile here? Because Jira Software has major feature sets designed particularly for agile, including scrum or kanban. So, when you see terms like boards, estimation, or cards, it's time to start thinking about how agile fits into your work practice.

It's important to note that because agile is a?philosophy and a culture of work, simply using Jira Software won't make your team truly agile. That said, it is a tool built to help your team get there.