Jira, the ideal tool to manage your projects

Jira has gradually become a popular application for both SMEs and large companies, an online tool for managing project tasks.

How Jira started

The tool was developed by the Australian company  Atlassian. Jira began as a tool that was used for software development, requirements management and monitoring the status of project development and later for managing errors that the application had.

Its environment

Jira is based on Java EE and the tool also has customizable dashboards, search filters, statistics, RSS and email functions. Applications and widgets with which they have been updating the application.

Its price

If what you want is to start testing this wonderful software, with the free version of Jira You can start to know the enormous power of this tool with a limit of 10 users

JIRA offers us 3 packages, on the one hand the JIRA Core, a generic project management tool, the JIRA Software, includes the software and the agile project management tool, and the JIRA Service Desk used by IT and of customer service.

What Jira offers us.

Jira is supported by the following 3 pillars:

Predisposition to change. The Agile methodology may seem like a complex set of rules and principles whose adoption creates extra work. Agile proposes a framework that allows work teams to respond quickly, creatively and spontaneously to the change that a project has in the start-finish trajectory. The idea is to make interactions dynamic and efficient in a changing environment.

We must currently encourage direct feedback, brainstorming and meetings that allow teams to consult and make decisions quickly. The "daily stand-ups" in Scrum complemented with Jira are of great help to carry out the tasks of the projects that are happening.

Agile consists of taking action, creating and delivering work quickly and agilely, so that we test and perfect the product. Agile offers us dynamism and saves us endless documentation.

Jira step by step

It is impossible to present all the potential of Jira on a single page, but we dare to show you the steps to install it and start working with this powerful software in which thousands of people have begun to trust the management of their projects:

To start, what we need is to register on Atlassian to be able to enjoy our JIRA Cloud Trial period to play with it and get to know it a little.

We invite working members of our projects

After registering through the link that we have provided, we will invite all the members who are going to work on our projects, so that they can access the system.

We configure it to adapt it to our projects

We choose a template

In the free use section we do not have the option to choose between more templates than the one that comes by default, but we do have the possibility of choosing the way to view the project according to the Agile system that we are going to use. In this case, in the example that we propose, we will choose the Scrum option.

Let's give a name to one of our projects

The roadmap

Jira, like software like Microsoft Project, offers us a

Features as software

It is a project planning solution that can be used for task management, when a specific structure, grouping and workflow is necessary.

It has a simple interface that provides the user with sufficient resources to manage activities such as projects, issues, processes, procedures; Attach files and documents, users will receive notifications about project modifications via email.

Keeps managers and team members informed of each project, about what is happening in the project; It is simple to use and allows easy integration and extension with other systems, since it is compatible with practically all databases.

Apart from the fact that it is an affordable tool, it is easily integrated with other development and project management tools, through plugins and extensions available on the internet.

Advantages of Jira over its competitors

• The way JIRA works is very simple and easy to understand. It is not necessary to work on the development of expensive and complex applications, which lead to a loss of time and money that in many SMEs we cannot afford.
  
• It is a tool that works on all operating systems provided with a Java virtual machine and with databases such as Oracle, MSSQL Server, DB2 and MySQL. So we find an all-terrain vehicle compatible with almost all important applications on the market.
  
• Each user can configure their control panel according to the needs they need to incorporate, but the key information is always at their disposal.
  
• It is provided with exclusive functionality to share reports with other users, be subscribed to them and receive results by e-mail. This solution also allows developers to create ad-hoc data fields, integrate with Excel, control times and - among other aspects - use external APIs.
  
• Facilitates collaboration between team members, so they can plan and publish software and track it; monitors the team's work in context and creates a workflow tailored to the way each team works.
  
• Create user stories and issues; plans sprints, distributes tasks among the software team; releases updated information, through secure and reliable reports, and provides visual data, in real time, so the team can improve performance.
  

Disadvantages of Jira compared to the competition

• The interface can get a little slow when multiple users are working on the same task.
  
• Does not have voicemail support.
  
• But without a doubt the biggest criticism that Jira has received is that even though Jira Service Desk is certified as an ITSM tool based on ITIL, in reality it is not.
  
• It is a fairly simple application in terms of processes, although with it you can adapt and build all types of flows, it is true that on the other hand it requires a lot of consultation time to support ITIL processes and only supports 4 simple operational processes.