Review - Jira 8 Essentials (Packt)

There are a lot of great project management tools out there to use, but one I have spent the most time with is the Atlassian suite, including Jira.? The Sixth Edition of “Jira 8 Essentials” Packt by Patrick Li provides a great starting point for learning and implementing Jira for local project management.? One of the main advantages is Jira 8 uses cloud support to set multiple nodes and projects within the same environment.? This allows customized construction as well as integration between different teams.? The first section covers the administrative configuration, the next project basics, and the final element with advanced user practices.? Along the way, a consistent sample project is used to build skills.

The first section only covers two chapters and quickly discusses loading the Jira Platform into the system and starting the basic configuration.? This is rapidly followed by the meat and potatoes in setting up project spaces and creating work-based issues.? One especially useful chapter was the segment of field and screen management.? If you’ve used Jira, you know it can be a sticky spot to go from project and project while making sure that the right fields go with you.? This can include items like version control, unique project labels and other methods to standardize metrics and controls.??

The author follows those basics with an introduction to creating workflows and automating notification procedures.? Workflows are one of the central tools of Jira, and customizing these items can create significant observability, one of my soapboxes, across multiple items.? If one cannot see how a program is progressing, it can be difficult to compare, resulting in more apples to oranges than apples to apples when managing where to assign resources.?

Chapter 9 dealt with securing Jira and administrative rights.? This element would have been better included in the first section on initial permission than later in the book.? Jira 8 uses an RBAC implementation primarily, allowing admins to decide which fields, projects, and properties are assigned to each element as a user, group or project-level consideration.? Projects can be assigned to a group or an individual. One key element missing was walking through Jira custom automation, like automating customer security down to the individual level.? For example, one can create a security group for certain individuals to allow viewing of a particular issue, like a contract, and then automate that the security tag will be automatically assigned based on a field within the ticket.? It would have been nice to see more in this particular lane.??

Finally, the work deals with using Jira queries, either the basic model or writing your own Jira Query Language (JQL)? It then discusses the reporting mechanisms that can be tied to these unique queries.? Again, this is a favorite Jira strong points is that one can build a unique query and then display customized graphs to management.? There are a number of reports available, but these often are not sufficiently customizable to show exactly what one may be looking to display.

Third-party apps are also discussed, as, unfortunately, many of the truly useful graphs are not accessible in the baseline Atlassian application.? This also highlights another missing section, Plans.? Plans in Jira describe a function where items can be shown in a hierarchy from high-level issues to individual tasks, mapped over time, and tracked with dependencies.

Overall, this is an excellent beginner book on Jira.? It covers all the basics that one needs to know to get started. However, several of the key strengths, such as automation tasks and planning boards, were left out.? These may be more on the advanced segment but are one of the items that truly differentiates Jira from other project management software available in the market.? I’d recommend purchasing a copy or two of this on the office shelf for any organizations that regularly use Jira for work management