Making sure that your company runs smoothly in today’s fast-paced, transformative world isn’t as easy as it seems. There are countless factors that your leadership team will need to keep track of if you want to promote efficiency and exceptional performance. Fortunately, the age of collaboration means that there are plenty of tools on the market that may be able to help.
JIRA, by leading communication and software company Atlassian, is a subscription and cloud-based software which coordinates and supports agile teams. JIRA uses workflow mapping, agile development capabilities and issue tracking to align teams from any background and empower your employees.
Here’s what you need to know about using JIRA for your team.
Features of JIRA
JIRA is a recently-updated software solution that combines the most crucial aspects of agile development with workflow management. For instance, you can track potential issues and eliminate problems before they happen, as well as supporting team performance with Scrum and Kanban agility boards. JIRA users can create tasks on almost any screen and organise them into “sprints” by dragging and dropping them into a business backlog. JIRA is all about helping your team members to work better together. Features include:
- Easy-to-use interface
- Highly customisable workflows
- Unlimited custom fields
- Seamless issue and source integration
- Defect and bug management
- Customisable wallboards and dashboards
- Advanced reporting
- Integration with flexible REST APIs
- Mobile interface
- Available on the Cloud
- Easily import data from alternate systems
Benefits of JIRA
JIRA is a unique platform that adapts to the agility needs of your company’s work style and methodology. Additionally, the system integrates seamlessly with popular developer tools, so you can easily access information about builds, code changes, deployments, and more, to boost your contextual strategies.
With JIRA, you can enjoy a real-time overview of the status and health of everything that’s happening within your business, which means that you’re less likely to face unexpected problems. JIRA also offers the following benefits:
- End-to-end visibility and control: JIRA by Atlassian combines various aspects of project management into a simple-to-use dashboard. You can use JIRA to track bugs, manage tasks, deliver advanced solutions and customise your system according to your individual needs. What’s more, because the platform integrates with a range of project tools, you can easily broaden the scope of your software’s capabilities to suit your agile development teams’ needs.
- Expand and Enrich your collaboration tools: The Atlassian marketplace comes with access to more than 900 add-ons and plugins that support virtually any project need. Whatever you want to get out of your latest collaboration strategy, Atlassian is sure to have something to help. There’s even a Release Hub to help you gain insights into the status of your upcoming releases.
- Advanced Features: JIRA isn’t just a way to track bugs and issues in your collaboration system. You can follow every aspect of your business through a simple dashboard that offers everything from customisable scrum boards, to Kanban boards, JIRA agility reports and more. You’ll always have the ideal overview of your team’s performance.
- Work together anyway: JIRA is well-suited for remote and large teams working in dispersed location because it comes equipped with native apps that keep your distant team members connected. The apps available for your smartphones with JIRA are just as powerful as the tools you can use on-premise or on your desktop too!
Target Market & Regional Availability
JIRA is best-suited to larger teams with dispersed workforces who are collaborating on development projects. Designed specifically for people embracing the agile work methodology, JIRA is available either as an on-premise or cloud-based solution depending on your unique needs, and its compatible with a selection of diverse operating systems.
How to Buy & Pricing
JIRA products are available to purchase on a per-user, per month basis, with support available through an online portal. Your price will depend on how you choose to host your JIRA system. If you’re working on the cloud, you can access a free trial for up to 7 days or pay $10 per user per month for up to 10 users. For between 11 and 100 users, the price drops to $7.
If you’re hosting your own JIRA experience, you can either pay a $10 one-time payment for up to 10 users, or $12,000 per year for up to 500 users.
Finishing Thoughts: Pros, Cons, and Alternatives
JIRA is a developer-focused collaboration tool intended to help users manage and optimise their workflow. With JIRA, leaders can control the entire development process for their teams, ensuring that everything from concept to launch is covered. Currently, the system is used by some of the biggest companies in the world, including Spotify, LinkedIn, eBay, and more.
Pros:
- Flexible project management system
- Insightful reports with easy-to-find historical data
- Rich toolkit of development solutions
- Agile support for any team
- Flexible deployment options
- Number one choice for development support
- Customisable experience with wallboards and dashboards
- Easy integration with flexible REST APIs
Cons:
- Quite complicated to use at first
- Elaborate range of features can be hard to navigate
- Takes time to get used to the software
If you need an alternative to JIRA by Atlassian, try:
- Clarizen
- Hive
- Wrike
- Trello
- Podio
- Basecamp
