Quality check is the key to delivering what was promised. Every manufacturing company be it engaged in machinery, FMCG goods, or even software or applications have a quality control system.
The quality control department in the case of software development companies is responsible for detecting the defects or flaws in the product.
Many companies are therefore engaged in creating software that helps track the bugs.
An Australian Company called Atlassian developed Bugzilla software which was used for internal bug-tracking. With advancements in technology, refinements in the product, and improved R&D efforts, a new product was launched by the company in 2002, called Jira.
Which was initially a bug & issue-tracking software and later evolved into a robust work management tool having applications in varied use cases. From requirements and test case management to agile software development, the tool has found its application in various functions.
The product is named after the Japanese word ‘Gojira’, which means Godzilla.
Let’s take a look at the Jira use cases and its benefits –
- Software development – A software developer uses this tool to plan and create roadmaps to efficiently manage the stakeholders, budgets, and feature requirements. The centralization of data provides transparency and is designed to cater to high-performing teams to save time and reduce errors.
- Agile project management – Just like a score displays the score, run rate, and bowling speed of the players, a scrum board reflects the roles, events, and rules that guide the teams with the functions to be performed and the person responsible along with the progress of the activities. A Kanban board uses cards, columns, and continuous improvement to help visualize the work, reduce the work-in-progress, and maximize efficiency. Jira uses scrum & Kanban to plan tasks, track real-time performance, and track time.
- Project Management – The software can be configured to fit any project, is customizable and generates reports. This makes monitoring the project’s progress, identifying issues and creating reports for analytics becomes easy.
- Product management – The tools enable teams to create a roadmap of their tasks and share the progress with every team member. The tools also show the bottlenecks and estimate the time of project completion.
- Jira Core – This is used by teams like HR, Marketing, Finance, etc. for general tasks and team management.
- Service desk – This software is also used by the customer service department such as call centres, helpdesks or other support providers. They use the software for issue tracking, incident management, email notifications, ticket management, and task management.
Thus the features & resulting benefits of Jira can be summarized as follows –
- Supports Scrum and Kanban Boards
- Business Project Template
- Task Details
- Reports (Sprint Burn down, Release Burnup etc.)
- Issue Tracking
- Dependency Mapping
- Estimation & Work Logging
- Sprint Planning
- Developer Tool Integrations
- Project Backlog
- Project Level Permissions
- Forecasting
It is primarily used for bug tracking and prioritization, but it also helps to plan and track the work to be performed by the teams. Due to the reports generate in the system, documentation also becomes easy for the QA team.
It helps to organize tasks, allocate, and track progress, and forecast bottlenecks to improve the efficiency of the teams.
This helps to deliver quality products and save the time and costs of the company.
It assists in measuring the performance of the team and working on correcting the mistakes or eliminating the problems that drag down the performance.
Thus Jira provides vital functionalities for the effective execution of any project. It is a widely used tool and hence possessing the working knowledge of this tool prior to entering the world of project management is a plus.
MIT School of Distance Education (MITSDE) is an institute that understands the current skills gap in the market and strives hard to reduce it. Hence, MITSDE brings you PG Diploma (PGDM Project Management) in Project Management.
The course covers the concept, philosophy, and importance of Project Management, hands-on tools like Microsoft Project and Jira, project analysis, risk management, and project audit techniques.
