Exploring Jira Software, Service Management and Work Management.

Jira is a software application used for issue tracking and project management. The tool, developed by the Australian software company Atlassian, has become widely used by agile development teams to track bugs, stories, epics, and other tasks.

Jira helps teams plan, assign, track, report, and manage work and brings teams together for everything from agile software development and customer support to start-ups and enterprises. 

In this blog we are exploring three Jira products:

• JIRA Software
• JIRA Service Management
• JIRA Work Management

JIRA Software

Jira Software is an agile project management tool that supports any agile methodology, be it Scrum, Kanban, or your unique flavour. From agile boards, backlogs, roadmaps, and reports, to integrations and add-ons you can plan, track, and manage all your agile software development projects from a single tool.

Features of Jira Software

• Scrum boards– Helps agile teams break large, complex projects into manageable pieces of work so focused teams, working in sprints, ship faster.
• Roadmaps– Full visibility gives teams the context needed to make quick decisions while staying aligned with the bigger goals and – Keeps teams and organizations in sync
• Reports and insights– Out-of-the-box reports and dashboards in Jira Software offer critical insights within the context to ensure teams are always up to date and set up for success.

Hosting Options of Jira Software

• Jira Software Cloud- Jira Software site is hosted and set up in the cloud with Jira Software Cloud. This is generally the best option for teams who want to get started quickly and easily and don’t want to manage the technical complexity of hosting themselves.

Key terms of Jira Software

• Issues– Single work item of any type or size that is tracked from creation to completion.
• Projects– A collection of issues that are held in common by purpose or context. Jira Software projects are flexible working spaces that allow you to group issues by the team, business unit, product, or stream of work.
• Boards– It is a part of a project that displays issues giving teams a flexible way to view, manage, and report on work in progress i.e., visual representation of a team’s workflow within a project.
• Workflows– Workflows represent the sequential path an issue takes from creation to completion

Steps to setup project on Jira Software

1. Sign up for free at https://www.atlassian.com/try/cloud/signup
2. Add project details
   • Give name
   • Give key
3. Pick a template- Jira Software offers three templates: Scrum, Kanban, and bug tracking.
   • Scrum- For agile teams that work from a backlog, plan, and estimate their work in sprints, and deliver work on a regular schedule.
   • Kanban- For agile teams that monitor work in a continuous flow with a focus on managing in-progress work. 
   • Bug Tracking- For teams that don’t need boards and prefer to manage development tasks and bugs in a list view.
4. Select Project type in case Scrum or Kanban is selected.
   • Team-managed projects are suited for independent teams who want to control their own working processes and practices in a self-contained space.
   • Company-managed projects are set up and maintained by Jira admins. This project type is designed for teams who want to standardize a way of working across many teams, such as sharing a workflow.
5. Click on Create Project

6. Invite your team

7. Move work forward- Now that your team is on your Jira site, you’re ready to collaborate and track work together.

• If you’re in a scrum project, create and start a sprint to begin tracking work.
• If you’re in a Kanban project, start tracking work on the board. 
• To track work items, move an issue from one column to another as it progresses through your team’s workflow.

JIRA Service Management

Jira Service Management is designed to unlock high-velocity teams by empowering every team to deliver great service fast, bringing visibility to work, and accelerating the flow of work between development, IT, and business teams. It is a practice that helps organizations standardize the way they respond, coordinate, and fulfil service requests. 

Features of Jira Service Management –

• Request Management– Manage work across teams with one platform so your team and customer.
• Incident Management– Development and IT operations teams bought together to rapidly respond to, resolve, and continuously learn from incidents.
• Problem Management– Group incidents to problems, fast-track root cause analysis, and record workarounds to minimize the impact of incidents.
• Change Management– Empower your IT operations teams with richer contextual information around changes from software development tools so they can make better decisions and minimize risk.
• Asset Management– Store assets to manage inventory efficiently, track ownership and lifecycles, and reduce costs.
• Configuration Management– Gain visibility into the infrastructure that supports critical applications and services. Understand service dependencies so you can minimize risk.
• Knowledge Management– Enable self-service, deflect more requests, and manage knowledge articles while fostering team collaboration.

Hosting Options of Jira Service Management-

• Cloud- Host and set up your Jira Service Management site in the cloud with Jira Service Management Cloud. Suitable for teams who want to get started quickly and easily, and for teams who don’t want to manage the technical complexity of hosting themselves.

Key terms of Jira Service Management

• Agent – Licensed users who work on customer requests and add customers to the service project are called an agent. Agents are added to the Service Desk Team role in a service project.
• Asset – Hardware, software systems, or information organization values are IT assets.
• Change – Adding, modifying, or removing something that could affect IT services. 
• Configuration Management Database (CMDB) – CMDBs store information on the configuration of items within an organization, including hardware, software, systems, facilities, and even personnel.
• Customer – Unlicensed internal or external requestors who send requests to service projects through the portal, email, or widget.
• Enterprise Service Management (ESM)- The extension of IT Service Management (ITSM) principles to enable better service delivery for business teams like Human Resources (HR), legal, facilities, marketing, and finance.
• Incident – An unplanned event that may disrupt or reduce the quality of service and requires an emergency response.
• Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) – Widely accepted set of best practices that are designed to support an organization in gaining optimal value from IT by aligning IT services with business strategy.
• Issues – A single work item of any type or size that is tracked from creation to completion. 
• Insight Query Language (IQL) – A language format used in Insight to create search queries for assets and configuration items. 
• IT Service Management (ITSM) – This includes all the processes and activities to design, create, deliver, and support IT services. The core concept of ITSM is the belief that IT should be delivered as a service.
• Jira Query Language (JQL) – Most powerful and flexible way to search for your issues in Jira.
• Knowledge base – Self-serve online library of information about a product, service, department, or topic.
• Object Schema – A collection of information in Insight Asset Management used to track assets, configuration items, and resources. 
• Problem – The underlying cause of recurring or preventable incidents. 
• Projects – Collection of issues that are held in common by purpose or context.
• Service request – A formal user request for something new to be provided. 
• Workflows – The sequential path an issue takes from creation to completion. Each Jira workflow is composed of a set of statuses and transitions that your issue moves through during its lifecycle.

Get started with service request management in Jira Service Management

• Create a service project
  1. Select Projects > Create project.
  2. Choose a service management template > Select Use template.
  3. Name your project.
  4. Create a project key or use the generated key.
  5. Choose if want to share settings with an existing project. If yes, specify the name of the existing project.
  6. Select Create project. 
• Add team members
  1. Go to Project settings > People.
  2. Select Add people.
  3. Enter the agent’s username or email.
  4. Choose their role from the dropdown (Service Desk Team).
  5. Select Add 
• Customize the online portal(s) and the help center
  1. Go to Project settings > Portal settings.
  2. Edit portal configuration and portal groups via their respective tabs.
  3. Choose the relevant option, make changes, and select Save changes.
  4. Under Customize your help center, customize help center.
• Set up email requests-
  1. From the service project, select Project settings > Email requests.
  2. Choose the email service provider and follow the prompts to link your account. 
• Configure request type forms and associated fields
  1. Navigate to Project settings > Request types.
  2. Select the request type by selecting add new request type.
  3. Modify the fields and information that will be displayed on the request form and agent view by using the available tabs.
  4. Select Save changes.
• Add/remove request forms to your portal groups.
  1.  Navigate to Project settings > Portal settings. 
  2. Select the portal group’s tab to add, remove, and rearrange request forms within portal groups.

JIRA Work Management

Jira Work Management is a friendly and intuitive way for business teams to access the power of Jira. Jira Work Management enables teams like marketing, HR, finance, and design to connect with their technical counterparts and work together seamlessly. 

Features of Work Management

1. 4 ways to get work from “To Do” to “Done” 

a. List– List extends the intuitive experience of a spreadsheet to Jira, incorporating in-line editing for blazing-fast performance and results.

b. Calendar– The calendar adds the context of time to your work in a way that’s clearly visible and universally understood.

c. Timeline- The timeline view is a fine-tuning of the traditional Gantt chart, designed to highlight connections and dependencies across workstreams.

d. Board- The board displays work tasks in the logical progression of the workflow they belong to, giving you a flexible way of viewing, managing, and reporting on work in progress.

• Templates designed for business teams– Crafted templates for every type of team like Marketing templates, Human resources templates, Operations templates, Design templates, Finance templates, Legal templates, and Sales templates.
• Customizable backgrounds 
• Seamlessly integrates with Jira Software to connect business and software teams as no other tool can.
• Get insight into what matters– Easily track the team’s progress, priorities, and workload. Identify blockers, celebrate wins, and plan so the team never misses a beat. 

Make a Jira Work Management project

A Jira admin for your organization’s Jira Cloud instance can simply make a company-managed Business project to get access to the new features. Jira admins of any Jira product can make Business projects, regardless of which Jira product is licensed. Jira Work Management is synonymous with Business projects.

For instance, with only Jira Work Management provisioned, admins can now permit users to create Business projects from the default list of templates. These users will not be able to manage any settings aspect of those Business projects — only create them. This is ideal for instances where admins want to leverage the power and consistency of company-managed projects but want to delegate project creation ability to users.

Get Started with the Jira Work Management project

1. Sign up for a Jira Work Management Cloud site.

• Go to the Jira Work Management Cloud https://www.atlassian.com/software/jira/work-management/free and get your free trial.
• Complete the sign-up steps. The credentials you enter here will be the administrator credentials you need to sign in later.

2. Set up your new site

• Open the site in a browser and log in as the administrator.
• Choose Settings ().
• Select System > Look and feel in the User interface section.
• Choose a logo image file to upload or an image URL.
• Select Upload Logo
• Scroll down to the Date/time formats section to select your preferred format

3. Create a project

• Choose Projects and select a project or choose View all projects to visit the projects directory.
• Select Create project.
• Enter Dragon Design Tees as the project name and choose the Project Management project type.

4. Customize your project

• From your project’s sidebar, select Project settings.
• Click the select image next to the project Avatar
• Choose an icon or upload an image
• Enter a URL and Description for the project to make it easier for the team to identify
  These fields display on the project’s Summary page.
• Click Save details

5. Add new users

• Go to  > Site administration.
• Add email addresses for users (Separate the email addresses with commas to invite multiple users)
• Select the products from the Application access list that they should have access to. In this case, at least choose Jira Core. You can always change this later.
• Click Invite users.

If you have any specific questions on Jira reporting, please share that in the comment area. You may also want to check our Atlassian Services and Jira Training offerings.