Product Review for Atlassian JIRA

What do you like best?

For you it is a central source of information, progress and communication. For your team it is an invaluable tool that let's them focus on their tasks. For your bosses it provides up to the minute project status and reports. And for your customer it can provide transparency and foster confidence.

JIRA offers a lot options to extend the product natively, and with the addition of plug-ins. This gives your organization a lot of flexibility in how you want to use JIRA. You can build very robust workflows and if you are able to use Power Scripts from CPrime you can add automation and more.

What do you dislike?

If you live by the sword... Plugins add extra licensing costs and using too many will lead to possible conflicts between them, making upgrading a nightmare.

Also, like anything else with technology, remember that we did used to use index cards. Sometimes people can get locked into thinking that a project is run a certain way because of the project management software that they use. JIRA is one of many project management software products available, it is not always guaranteed that the next client or project will use it. While JIRA is above and beyond their competition in many ways, it is also far more expensive, and that can have some organizations turning to other solutions. I think it is important to know the basics of your methodology to recognize how applications like JIRA are providing assistance.

For which purposes do you use the product?

Web and mobile app development projects.

What is your primary role when using this product?

I have used it as a project manager and as a developer. I found that it was easy to learn when first introduced and the ability to customize and add functions and features to project and task profiles and workflows, when done correctly, can be a real helpful time saver.

Are you a current user of Atlassian JIRA?

Not at the moment. In the past, it has been on a per employer/contract situation. This is why I would echo my above statement that JIRA is just one product that is being used right now.