I'm a fan!
March 08, 2016
I'm a fan!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with JIRA Software
JIRA was used by our software development organization as the one true source for what work needed to be done, when and by whom. Although our approach was generally waterfall with some agile-esque concepts mixed in, JIRA proved to be a powerful tool for us. We created an extensive JIRA workflow to track and manage portions of our development projects from idea, design & requirements, development, QA, tech writing, UAT, etc. We also made extensive use of the dashboards to provide transparency to individual contributors and stakeholders alike.
- The biggest impact from experience with JIRA is the transformation it took from when I first started using it, until now. It seemed like the good folks at JIRA really practiced what they preached and I reaped the benefits. When I first started using the agile boards, it was at a time when they had just come out with a new version if you will and were sunsetting the old version (I can't remember the names). Anyhow, the agile board worked enough for me to check the box that I had a backlog. It did the basics. As time went on however, I was thoroughly impressed at the features that they added. It was as if they had been sitting at my desk alongside me and noticing my frustrations and then fixing them.
- Other favorite features, dashboards, saved searches, workflow, labels, advanced search query, linked issues, follow issue, history, batch updates, view in issue navigator. All these features seriously make life easier when working in JIRA. The administrative headaches of product management are out the window.
- I also dig the administrative features like find my field. This makes it so easy for an administrator to identify the cause of a configuration error and fix/test quickly.
- One thing that ever bothered me about JIRA was the rank feature. It used to be a global rank, so I could I query issues and display them in results by order of priority (rank) regardless of what sprint they were in. Now rank is only applicable in the context of a sprint, which is not so powerful really if I want to prioritize across several teams regardless of sprint.
- It would be nice to batch update labels, and not have the "all or nothing" approach. At least they have keyboard shortcuts that make updating many issues one at a time a total breeze.
- At my new company, I'm having a hard time converting my peers and management into JIRA admirers. Their concerns are mainly the price and the ease in which the system can be integrated into our homegrown system. Can you make some sort of browser plugin that could compare how long it takes me to complete the same work in JIRA vs my current application?
- As a product manager I needed to make sure that all teams were aware of priority and that new items went through triage and were accounted for in a timely manner. JIRA took us away from the headache of spreadsheets and daily meetings, to one transparent system with real time dashboards that required no meetings. People could just do their work because they knew what was the next most important item. This must have saved hundreds of thousands of hours over the years.
I was not part of the team who decided to go with JIRA, however I have used Rally, Trello and spreadsheets and JIRA beats them all hands down. Rally was a good starter system, but they did not (at least at the time) have the advanced query and administrative/configuration features that JIRA has. Trello is a good team tool as well, but lacks a true backlog feature as well as advanced queries. Spreadsheets are great if nothing changes, so...
Using JIRA
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
Like to use Relatively simple Easy to use Technical support not required Well integrated Consistent Quick to learn Convenient Feel confident using Familiar | None |
- keyboard shortcuts are amazing and same so much time
- Find my field is an amazing feature that also takes me to the correct admin config for me to make the updates I want so that I don't have to hunt around for what I'm looking for.
- The advanced search and saved searches make finding the issues important to me very easy. Nothing falls through the cracks.
- Managing labels across the system can be tough. It can get ugly if you have a lot of people using them and one person uses a capitol and someone doesn't. Then your searches need to include all permutations of the label to make sure you get the results of issues you're looking for.
- Configuration can be a bit daunting, but the Atlassian university was a great help.
Yes, but I don't use it