5 Jira benefits for your team

Most software development professionals have encountered Jira project management and issue-tracking tools. But did you know it has applications outside of IT? 

Jira by Atlassian also serves as a productivity tool, helping teams operate efficiently and respond rapidly to changing requirements and deadlines. Learn more about the software and how to extend its capabilities to help everyone in your company – not just the project managers. Soon, your whole organization will enjoy Jira’s benefits. 

What is Jira?

Unsatisfied with existing bug-tracking tools, developers Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar created Jira, named after the Japanese title of the movie “Godzilla.” In 2002, they launched the Jira software platform as an issue-tracking application for IT teams.

Over time, Jira evolved beyond its bug-tracking software origins to become the go-to project management tool for waterfall and agile teams, regardless of industry. Its functionality also expanded to support service or incident management applications for IT and business support desks.

Considered the best-in-class technology to plan, track, and manage work, the application allows teams to organize workflows, archive mission-critical documentation, and facilitate communication. As well as being a project management software, you can use Jira software for the following:

• Requirement and test case management 

• Software development 

• DevOps

• Product management

• Task management 

Some companies leverage the platform in non-traditional ways, using it for warehouse automation, document flow management, or expense tracking.

What are the benefits of using Jira?

Digital.ai’s 2022 State of Agile Report found that 66% of agile teams use Atlassian’s Jira as their primary agile project management tool. It’s easy to see why when you consider the benefits:

1. Customization and integration

Integrating Jira into your current project management methodology, whether agile or waterfall, is a straightforward process. Instead of adjusting your practice to fit the platform, you can adapt Jira to your team’s requirements. Its built-in flexibility lets managers customize tasks, workflows, and data displays to suit their use case, whether leveraging Jira for project management, bug tracking, or customer support.  

For example, you can manage workflow using Kanban or scrum boards, allowing IT teams to track and adjust sprints based on scope changes or feedback. 

2. Powerful issue and project tracking

Jira work management goes beyond assigning tasks. It offers a clear tracking structure that enables teams to elaborate on and prioritize each assignment, whether it’s included in a larger project or as individual tickets.

Ultimately, Jira provides the transparency needed for successful task completion. Leaders can follow an item – a new job, bug, or failed task – as it moves through the workflow, allowing them to identify bottlenecks and improve the process. 

3. Reporting capabilities

Creating reports in Jira is fast and easy, thanks to 12 pre-made report templates. These reports offer managers instant visibility into team performance so they can assess progress and potential roadblocks. 

Reports available from the Jira dashboard include:

• Sprint reports

• Velocity charts

• Version reports

• Burnup and burndown charts

• Cumulative flow charts

• Created vs. resolved issues reports

• Time tracking reports

4. Scalability

Whether you’re a start-up or an established enterprise, Jira’s tools are fully scalable and ready for deployment. What’s more, the platform grows with your business. Add extensions, integrations, and plug-ins from the Atlassian Marketplace to adapt the platform to your evolving requirements. 

5. Communication and collaboration

Jira facilitates real-time team communication, expediting problem-solving efforts and feedback delivery between team members. The platform also stores project documentation and sends notifications to relevant audiences, streamlining interactions and information sharing.

Which teams can benefit from Jira?

Although Jira’s creators originally conceptualized it as an IT tool, its capabilities have evolved. Regardless of your role or department, Jira can benefit your process. 

Managers

Productivity studies revealed workers spend up to 80% of the workday on activities with little or no value. Management can reduce this rate by stepping in and offering guidance to help workers become more productive. 

Jira’s task management and project roadmap features provide visibility into team activities, helping improve productivity and move the needle on organizational objectives. Time tracking software provides:

• Transparency regarding schedules and output

• Opportunities for leadership to adjust plans and workloads

• Insights on whether progress aligns with project timelines

Project managers and project owners

Jira software lets project management create, manage, and prioritize tasks, user stories, bugs, and more. This functionality helps organize work so everything runs smoothly in the rush to produce deliverables. 

Project managers can also leverage customizable Jira workflows to define their unique process – whether scrum or Kanban – using the agile methodology or individual stages of the waterfall project management framework.

Product launch teams

Developing new products and enhancing existing ones will help your business retain loyal customers and attract newcomers. Product managers must actively encourage loyalty to ensure business longevity. 

However, product development is fraught with uncertainty, leading to unexpected scenarios that risk derailing the entire project. Fortunately, Jira project management helps product teams create multiple versions of the development roadmap that account for different contingencies and roadblocks. This provides the flexibility to adapt to best- or worst-case scenarios – and everything in between. 

Development and maintenance departments

Atlassian originally conceived Jira software as a bug-tracking and maintenance tool. Software development and maintenance departments still leverage the platform as a central support hub. It enables collaboration on the coding and release of new applications and updated features.

Jira service management includes time trackers that work hand-in-hand with issue tracking. These make it easy to evaluate how long tasks will take and estimate the length of future jobs. Accurate estimations based on work logs will improve customer satisfaction by managing expectations for support and maintenance tickets. 

HR departments

Tracking work hours does more than improve customer relations. HR departments equipped with Jira report smoother salary processing, ensuring the timely arrival of employee and contractor payments.

In addition, the HR department can customize the Jira dashboard to track and approve employee absences with appropriate context, such as sick leave, scheduled time off, or vacations. 

Sales teams

The sales department can leverage Jira time tracking to report agents’ hours spent on leads, demonstrations, sales calls, and other activities. The data helps sales managers evaluate team productivity, adjust strategies, and provide feedback to product teams. They can also use the information to set weekly or monthly sales goals and assess progress on long-term objectives.

Essential Jira elements

Alongside its flexibility, Jira software owes its popularity to its diverse suite of features. These features contribute to a dynamic and transparent workflow process:

Boards

The Jira tool lets teams using agile project management create both scrum and Kanban boards to meet their diverse needs.

Sprints

Jira allows scrums to plan and track tasks within their sprints. Users can also adjust and adapt their team’s approach depending on identified risks, roadblocks, or market influences, ensuring they meet their deadlines.

Backlog

No matter your development team’s agile project management framework, you can use Jira to organize its backlog according to priorities, stakeholder feedback, or impact.

Issues and tickets 

Jira issues are small tasks team members must complete to achieve project goals. Each issue log designates who is responsible for the ticket and includes comments, statuses, and a priority level. Each issue also has a unique ID to streamline progress tracking by project management. 

Workflows

Jira includes built-in issue workflows, ensuring the team completes the ticket following established processes. If these don’t suit you, you can create custom workflows to accommodate your team’s practices.

Integrate Tempo solutions to get the most out of Jira

Whether you oversee software development, marketing campaigns, or service desk operations, Jira is the management solution for you. Jira software has the options and flexibility to develop a bug-fixing or project-tracking system that suits your unique use case.

No matter what product you use, be it Jira Cloud, Confluence, or Jira Service Management, you can expand its capacity with applications from Tempo. Capacity Planner, Tempo’s Jira-enabled resource management tool, facilitates resource and team capacity planning. With Capacity Planner, project managers can allocate assets and time efficiently while balancing supply against capacity constraints.