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What is the best textbook for Jira Administration?

Rob Horan

I am looking for a good textbook that can help me gain more skills and also help me prep for the ACP 100 exam. Ideally a book would also cover Scriptrunner, but so far I've only seen one book, Mastering Jira, and that didn't exactly have the best review. Any ideas?

Accepted answers

Ravi Sagar _Sparxsys_

I feel Jira Admin exam is not only about "how much you know Jira admin" but rather "the best way of doing Jira admin in different situations". I don't think the existing books (including mine) were written with a purpose of providing a guide to clear the exam. We are anyways not allowed to share sample questions asked

Each book is based on experiences of author when they were working as Jira Administrators. You will learn something different from each book. Comparing them is probably not a good idea.

Someone who is already a Jira admin and wants to clear the exam. Here are my tips.

1. Some preparation before you start a proper preparation

Do sample exam, it is short but will help in assessing where you are.
Make sure you already know Jira customisations, if not delay your exam.

2. Based on features of the tool (You don't want to loose marks just because you forgot something).

Get a test instance of Jira Server. No add-ons.
Download the exam topics and print them.
Open Atlassian documentation and read those topics word by word (EXTREMELY IMPORTANT). Everything asked will be somewhere in the documentation.
While you are reading those topics, practice on Jira instance (VERY IMPORTANT). You want to remember different things on the UI. The questions will try to confuse you but if you recently did a hands on then you will remember what you practiced.
Make plenty of notes on paper for each topics (VERY IMPORTANT). This is just to fill your brain with terms, keywords, possible options that appear on the UI. This worked for me, If I write something, most likely I remember it for the next few days.
Before the exam, I prefer reading my notes.
I prefer going to the centre hour in advance, nervousness of the exam, going to the centre helps in keeping my focus.

3. Based on your experience

If you have been working as a Jira admin then you probably know when not to create another set of configurations or better ways of doing things to save time and optimising existing configurations.
Just use your best judgement

4. For exam

Round 1: Spend one hour answering simple questions, that requires no further thinking. That you can answer straightaway. Less than 1-2 mins per question max.
Round 2: Answer questions that requires some thinking, in those cases reading answers will give you some clue.
Round 3: Review
Answer everything (last time I checked there was no negative marking)
Bonus tips: Don't drink too much water before/during the exam , wear relaxed clothes and be your best to feel confident.

Thanks,

Ravi

All comments

AnnWorley

Here are a couple of recent releases:

JIRA 7 Administration Cookbook, 2nd Edition

JIRA 7 Essentials, 4th Edition

For Atlassian certification, don't ignore the product documentation: JIRA Core documentation

JIRA Software documentation

JIRA Service Desk Documentation

AnnWorley

I am curious what other folks in the Community suggest.

Rob Horan

Have you read either of them? I'm just wondering which would be better. The Atlassian documentation... I find it to be lacking. Badly.

Atlassian's documentation is like a cookbook where they give you copious amounts of detail about specific ingredients and leave out the recipes, and the exam is all about the recipes. (the exam is all about best practices and solving scenarios, none of which are covered by the official documentation as far as I can tell) How to make a cake: get some flour and oh but what kind of flour? "There's wheat, but you might be gluten intolerant so theres all sorts of other flour like oat and rice and" - 50 pages later after exhaustively talking about the ingredients "Now that you've gathered all your ingredients you can make a cake. Byeeeeeee!"

Rob Horan

The Essentials book looks like a good resource for end users, but perhaps not as much for admins.

Thank you for the links!

LarryBrock

Many new and experienced JIRA Administrators find the JIRA Admin Strategy Workbook to be quite helpful. It's written by Rachel Wright, a well-seasoned JIRA adminstrator (who is currenty touring the country speaking to user group meetings and conferences) for other JIRA adminstrators and is full of "from the trenches" information. I don't believe Rachel's book covers ScriptRunner.

Stephanie Grice

@Rachel Wright's book! https://www.jirastrategy.com/

Gerry Claps

I've personally read (cover-to-cover):

Jira 7 Administration Cookbook by Patrick Li
JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook by Rachel Wright

For me, I used the Cookbook more as a reference guide, almost like a 101 for admins, while the Workbook was definitely more practical, with battle tested examples of what to do in specific situations.

If you're looking for one book, I'd learn towards JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook

Lasse Langhorn_eakpsc

Just passed the ACP-100 today. Read the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook. Very well written book.
Do the case studies provided by Atlassian. The exam is not easy.

vikrant kadam

Hi Lasse,

Congrats on your ACP-100 certification. I am planning to appear for the same in the coming months. I am confused with which book to buy:

1) JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook

2) Mastering Jira 7 by Ravi sagar 2nd edition.

I have few questions if you could answer:

Were you able to attempt all the question in the given time?

How useful was the Atlassian documentation?

Did you use any dumps for practice or did you take the atlassian training course for the same?

Please , do let me know.

Thanks,

Vikrant Kadam

Lasse Langhorn_eakpsc

Hi Vikrant,

I would recommend JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook. Rachel approach is Jira best practice.

Yes, I was able to answer all the questions. Not all were correct . I had a strategy for the exam.

Use the first hour to sweep all questions in the exam in order to cherry pick the easy ones that could be answered right away. Mark all the tough questions for the next iteration of question sweep.
For each question remove answers you that are not correct. This would leave you with fewer answers.

I took the Jira Certification Administration prep course. https://training.atlassian.com/elearning/jira-administrator-certification-prep-ondemand. This was very useful. This is free if you are a solution partner. There are a lot of sample questions which will give you an idea what to expect at the exam.

I used the Atlassian docs for quick look ups when practicing. It was OK. But I do recommend you practice a lot and think best practice all the time.

Regards

Lasse

Rob Horan

How can I think best practice when there is literally NO SOURCE of best practice documentation ANYWHERE?

Seriously, I have Rachel's book. I studied it. HARD. I have been an admin for years. I took the test, and all I got was a loss of money - BECAUSE THERE ARE NO ACTUAL STUDY GUIDES THAT SPEAK TO HOW THESE QUESTIONS ARE FORMULATED.

Sorry, I'm just beyond frustrated at this point.

Lasse Langhorn_eakpsc

Hi Robert,

You are right, there is no Jira Best practice guide. But I have used the Atlassian Community A LOT to see how problems are solved and questions have been answered regarding Jira. So this have been my way of thinking Jira and getting the idea of what is best practice.

The Jira Certification Prep course has a lot of example questions that are very close to the real thing. I think I went through these questions three or four times in order to understand what to expect.

The exam is tough and I really had to focus on reading the questions fast and understand.

I failed the first time I took the exam. I had been a Jira Admin for six month at that time and only 5-8 hours of professional Jira work each week, so I kind knew I would fail the first time. I mostly develop software but as an Atlassian Solution partner our company Netic had to have some Atlassian specialist, so I signed up for the certification program.

My best advice is to sign up for the Jira Certification prep course. Study the questions.

Good luck

Regards

Lasse

Ravi Sagar _Sparxsys_

Each book is based on experiences of author when they were working as Jira Administrators. You will learn something different from each book. Comparing them is probably not a good idea.

Someone who is already a Jira admin and wants to clear the exam. Here are my tips.

1. Some preparation before you start a proper preparation

Do sample exam, it is short but will help in assessing where you are.
Make sure you already know Jira customisations, if not delay your exam.

2. Based on features of the tool (You don't want to loose marks just because you forgot something).

Get a test instance of Jira Server. No add-ons.
Download the exam topics and print them.
Open Atlassian documentation and read those topics word by word (EXTREMELY IMPORTANT). Everything asked will be somewhere in the documentation.
While you are reading those topics, practice on Jira instance (VERY IMPORTANT). You want to remember different things on the UI. The questions will try to confuse you but if you recently did a hands on then you will remember what you practiced.
Make plenty of notes on paper for each topics (VERY IMPORTANT). This is just to fill your brain with terms, keywords, possible options that appear on the UI. This worked for me, If I write something, most likely I remember it for the next few days.
Before the exam, I prefer reading my notes.
I prefer going to the centre hour in advance, nervousness of the exam, going to the centre helps in keeping my focus.

3. Based on your experience

If you have been working as a Jira admin then you probably know when not to create another set of configurations or better ways of doing things to save time and optimising existing configurations.
Just use your best judgement

4. For exam

Round 1: Spend one hour answering simple questions, that requires no further thinking. That you can answer straightaway. Less than 1-2 mins per question max.
Round 2: Answer questions that requires some thinking, in those cases reading answers will give you some clue.
Round 3: Review
Answer everything (last time I checked there was no negative marking)
Bonus tips: Don't drink too much water before/during the exam , wear relaxed clothes and be your best to feel confident.

Thanks,

Ravi

Rob Horan

Hi Ravi,

Having successfully endured ACP-600 and ACP-120 I have to say with pure sincerity that there is a nearly unforgiveable lack of prep material.

Sorry, but experience is not enough. The prep courses are not enough. Seriously, the prep classes are not prep material AT ALL. They should be available to all at no charge in their current form. There needs to be written study material with images and exampes. There need to be detailed labs with documented solutions. There need to be practice exams. Multiple, full-length exams with documented answers.

Ravi Sagar _Sparxsys_

Well Atlassian do have courses but you are right those courses are not free.

Rob Horan

But @Ravi Sagar _Sparxsys_ to be perfectly honest, I would argue - vehemently - that they are NOT courses. At best they are lengthy, extended outlines. Courses provide guidance - they teach. This was beyond minimalist, and seriously rushed. That's fine for free, but for the $ charged there should be so much more content.

Rob Horan

Given the changes over the last - WOW - 8 YEARS since I posted this, it would be great if some of these resources were updated. The Jira Strategy Admin workbook was really helpful, but it would be great to see updates that reflect the lastest state of the cloud ecosystem.3

Ravi Sagar _Sparxsys_

Hi @Rob Horan I don't think if anything has changed or not, personally I don't bother much about certifications or books. I work with people involved with Jira everyday - they are either users of Jira or admins or developers and I have hired lot of Jira Admins/Consultants/Developers, I never look at their certifications to judge them.

Jira Administration exam can never cover all the possible use cases and scenarios.

Ravi

Rob Horan

Hi @Ravi Sagar _Sparxsys_, it's great that this works well for you, but it might not be preferable or even possible for a lot of folks. When I first submitted my question, I didn't have any other admins to work with. It was just me and the people using the tool looking to me for answers.

In any case, when it comes time for taking a test, especially a certification, I like to have focused study materials, and if that's not possible, then some other resources to study from.

I understand and agree with your point about certifications not being a true measure of an admin's abilities or experience, but that's a different topic altogether

There aren't many good reference materials out there, and the one I really liked hasn't been updated in a long time.

Ultimately, no matter how comfortable I am with the tools or how experienced I am, I'll always want good reference material. If I'm going to take an exam, that's a must have, not a nice to have.

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