Introduction

一、 What tool is Jira

JIRA is a project and transaction tracking tool produced by Australian company Atlassian. It is widely used in software R&D fields such as requirements management, project tracking, task tracking, Defect tracking, process approval, and agile project management. Jira is widely regarded as a pioneer in global software development management tools.

二、Jira's main functions

Jira Software belongs to a series of products designed to help various teams manage their work. Initially, Jira's purpose was to track vulnerabilities and issues. But now, Jira has developed into a powerful work management tool, which is suitable for all types of use cases, from requirements and test case management to Agile software development.

1、For agile development teams

For teams practicing agile development methods, Jira Software provides readily available Scrum boards and Kanban. Kanban is the center of task management, where tasks are mapped to customizable workflows. Through Kanban, it is possible to have a clear understanding of the entire team's work and the status of various tasks. Time tracking and real-time performance reports (burn up/burn down charts, sprint reports, speed charts) allow teams to closely monitor changes in their work efficiency.

2、For project management teams

You can configure Jira Software to adapt to any type of project. Teams can start with project templates or create their own custom workflows. Jira transactions (also known as tasks) can be used to track each task to be completed through steps in the workflow. Customizable permissions allow administrators to decide who can see and perform which actions.

3、For software development teams

Jira Software provides planning and roadmap tools that allow teams to manage stakeholders, budgets, and Functional requirement from the start. Jira integrates various CI/CD tools to help improve transparency in the software development lifecycle. After deployment, real-time status information of production code will be displayed in Jira transactions. The integrated feature tagging tool allows teams to gradually and safely launch new features.

4、For product management teams

In Jira Software, teams can build a roadmap associated with each project. With the help of a roadmap, teams can outline a long-term view of their work and track and share the progress of the roadmap. Add more details to the roadmap while displaying dependencies and predicting when the work will be completed. By embedding the Jira Software roadmap into Confluence, you can create a view that highlights the "real-time" roadmap from multiple teams.

三、Advantages and disadvantages of Jira

1、Advantages of Jira

The advantages of JIRA are flexible configuration, comprehensive functionality, simple deployment, and rich scalability. Its over 150 features have been recognized by over 19000 customers in 115 countries worldwide. And:

By default, it defines rich fields to record various information about the problem; Including Issue Type, Issue Summary, Issue Description, priority, assignee, reporter, resolutions, etc;

Powerful custom field function, custom fields come with 22 types to choose from, and can also support more types through JIRAExtension.

Each field can be configured with screens, items, issue types, and other features to easily control where the field should appear instead of where it should appear.

By default, some states of the workflow are defined: new, open, defer, pending, resolved, reopened, and closed. A simple workflow is defined by default, which is open in progress resolved closed.

Powerful custom workflow function, which can define different permissions, fields, and subsequent processing options for different process nodes.

Rich permission management configuration, which can be defined for various combinations of projects, users, user groups, project roles, and Operational definition.

2、Jira's Disadvantages

Although many companies worldwide use Jira for software development project management, surveys such as the Kanban Status Report indicate that although these companies are using Jira, they do not recommend it because it is very difficult to use, mainly due to the following reasons:

JIRA is a Commercial software, and the price of plug-ins is usually millions per year;

Jira is not a tool specifically designed for project management or agile development, so its functionality is not standardized;

The software response speed is very slow, especially as the longer you use it, the more obvious this phenomenon becomes;

Jira is too complex, which increases the burden on small and medium-sized teams or in a short period of time, rather than improving efficiency;

Professionalism also brings complexity to configuration, and establishing a comprehensive set of custom fields, workflow, and permission schemes is not an easy task.

From a usage perspective, JIRA still does not conform to the logic of Chinese usage.

Although JIRA has a Chinese version, during the use of the Chinese version, some pages still have a lot of English and cannot achieve a full Chinese interface.

JIRA provides better after-sales service to domestic users than nothing, and there are some obstacles in time and communication. If you consult with the agent, it will require high agency fees every time.