Planning and Forecasting in Jira: Part 2

[#1]

Planning Work

There are many ways to plan, prioritize, and schedule work. Atlassian has three tools in their suite for this exact purpose. The tools all have different features and abilities, however.

Atlassian Tools	Other Similar Tools
Jira Confluence Trello	Microsoft Project Gantt charts, timelines, project checklists And more

Let’s take a quick look at the Atlassian tool differences so you can choose the best one for the job.

Planning Tools

Jira Benefits

Structured data
Jira’s biggest benefit over the other Atlassian tools is structured data. All issue data is stored in a very specific format which makes it easy to use and analyze. For example, each piece of data is stored its own field.

Reporting
The structured data model enables the robust reporting that Jira is known for. Since the data’s format is predictable, you can view it in many ways.

The screenshot shows a Jira roadmap. You can view this exact same data in list format, in card format on a board, as statistics on a dashboard, using built-in reports, and more.

Data views
When issue data changes, all the views are updated too.

Jira Query Language (JQL)
Jira has powerful search capabilities, driven by a query engine, called JQL.

And more
And of course, Jira has a ton of other useful native features, like workflows, for example.

Part 3: Planning Tools (continued)