2015.10.21

Learn about JIRA software

Jira is a agile based project management software. It is a powerful platform that combines issue collection and agile project management capabilities into a single application. Using JIRA Software helps you plan and organize tasks, workflows, and reports for your agile team more efficiently.

Installing JIRA Software

JIRA Software can be customized to suit your needs. You can also extend it and link it with other applications to provide you with the perfect solution to track all your work in one place.
Note, if you are upgrading from an existing JIRA instance, check out our Migration Hub first.
It's easy to get up and running with JIRA Software Cloud:

1. View the Cloud products for JIRA here.
2. Select the JIRA Software package and choose the number of users.
3. Fill in the signup form.

You'll have to wait a few minutes until your installation is ready. A confirmation email will be sent to you with your new site address and related information, once the process has finished. Just click the link in the email to access the signup form for your new site and get started.

What is JIRA Admin?

The powerful issue collection and agile project management capabilities of JIRA Software are built on top of JIRA Admin. JIRA Admin also contains the administrative functionalities of JIRA Software. Many application settings are configured in JIRA Admin, like creating and editing workflows, or configuring permissions. Whenever you are asked to perform functions like these, which require administrative access to JIRA Admin, we will direct you to the JIRA administration documentation to accomplish these tasks.

Functionalities of JIRA

The topics in this chapter cover the activities that you will need to do in each stage of the agile development lifecycle:

Starting a new project

Time to get everything set up! This is the stage where you create  a new JIRA Software project, configure your development tools (e.g. create repositories in Bitbucket, create projects in Bamboo, etc), and determine how you will manage documentation and team calendars.

Building a backlog

A backlog is a list of outstanding work. Before starting new work, you will build a new backlog or groom an existing backlog. This involves creating, ranking, and estimating issues, so that you have a prioritized list of tasks to work from.

Planning a version

Ready to start work on a new version? To plan a version, you need to set up the version in JIRA Software and configure your development tools appropriately (e.g. branch your repository, set up Bamboo plans, etc).

Getting to work

All systems are go! Once work begins, you will be running sprints and tracking your team's progress. For teams using Scrum, this involves planning and starting sprints, monitoring sprints via boards and charts, and completing sprints. For teams using Kanban, this involves monitoring the work in progress, and limiting work to the constraints for your team, via boards and charts.

Releasing a version

This is the culmination of your team's hard work. Before releasing a version, you would typically check if there is outstanding work for the version. If everything's good to go, you can then deploy the version, and create the related release reports and documentation.

Reporting

Reporting is an activity that occurs throughout a development cycle. You may need to make reports available to different stakeholders or use them yourself. JIRA Software has a number of reports that you can use to provide different information about the progress of your team's work.