The benefits of using Jira in different industries

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One of the reasons the project management software Jira by Atlassian is so popular is its flexibility. Over 65.000 companies of all kind are using the software today, whereby every organization uses it based on their its own individual way. The flexibility of the tool is caused by its individual adaptability, along with thousands of apps and integrations that expand the standard functions of the software.

Due to the large similarities in companies of different industries, the way of working with Jira is very analogical in those branches. In this article, we will show you how business units of different industries are using Jira and give you inspiration for your own usage of the software. We will thematize these industries: project management, software development, product development and service management.

Jira for project management

Branches: Health Service, Energy Sector, Technology, Food Industry & Media and Communication etc.

Project management is defined as the planning, monitoring, controlling and completion of a project. The “agile” project management is thereby a very popular kind of this system. “Agile” means hereby that the monitoring of the project reacts very dynamically and flexibly to new occurring requirements.

Jira was created to handle the typical challenges that appear in agile project management. The two popular agile project management models Scrum and Kanban are included in Jira through the Scrum- and Kanban-board. The board is the heart of Jira, because it gets utilized to manage all project tasks. The tasks include all needed information for the assignment like attachments, status of the task, sub-tasks etc. Based on these boards, project roadmaps can get created, that help you to have a productive communication of stakeholders and management about budgets and feature requirements.

Through the mentioned tools, Jira enables you to react agile on unexpected external influences. Jira is the perfect solution for your project management: your simple task management as well as in complex initiatives.

Get to know some best practices for the work with Jira in Project management in our article:

Article: Staying organized with Jira

Jira for software development

Branches: Production, Technology, Information Technology etc.

Jira was originally developed as a software development tool and has emerged itself over the years beyond the boarders of this area. Because of that, it is the perfect tool to handle the challenges that could occur in software development.

Here, the board is the center of the process, where all tasks get administered that are needed to deliver the software. Stakeholders can be kept in the loop, budgets can get overviewed and feature requirements can get managed. Jira tasks are used by development teams to manage assignments about the adjustment or expansion of software features or for the bug fixing.

In software development, it is important to have an eye on the strategic vision of the team. Therefore, Jira helps you with two useful tools: the roadmap and the project-backlog.

Roadmaps:

• Visualization of project goals
• Presentation of the project status

Backlog:

• Overview about tasks to take care of
• No future tasks will be forgotten

Additionally, Jira can be expanded for the special needs of software developers. The efficiency of your software development team can be highly improved, through the integration of a code-repository-service like Bitbucket.
Moreover, special feature-flagging-tools can be integrated in Jira. Through these tools, the launch of new software-features can be set up step by step, because it allows you to send your client a certain part of the code (f.e. 15%). The client can test the code and give his feedback, before the whole code gets published. Through feature-flagging-tools, releases can be reset completely if a problem occurs.

Jira for software development

Branches: Financial Services, Health Service, Production, Technology, Food Industry

For product management, Jira has some special features in addition to the standard functions, that simplify the work processes drastically.

For the development or the update of products, it is important for product managers to exactly know and define the requirements of the stakeholders. As soon as these requirements are defined, they can be subdivided in smaller steps and single tasks can be deducted. In Jira, this happens through Epics and Stories, that belong to the features of the product. Out of these Epics and Stories, tickets can then be derived. The task of the product manager is to translate the requirements and tasks in Epics and Stories and to create thereby a product backlog in Jira.

For the next steps, Jira delivers a very special tool for product managers: the roadmap. In the integrated roadmap function in Jira, Epics and Stories can be assigned descriptively to target time frames. Through this process, a plan for the next steps and interim goals for the product development can be developed. With the help of this Jira tool, product managers and all stakeholders can always keep an eye on the different steps and goals on the way to the finished product.

Learn how to use the Jira time tracking function in our article:

Article: Custom Reports in Jira

Jira for service management

Branches: Banking, Financial Services, Public Administration, Production, Sales, Health Service

More and more service companies are using Jira for task administration. Because of the individual adaptability of the software, Jira can be customized specifically to the needs of service teams.

The board is the center of the process and the organization happens through tasks here. The tasks get created including the task description, the due date and a priority. That’s why you can get an overview of the teamwork and the status of single tasks really quickly here.

Furthermore, Jira delivers its users functions to track the time for tasks and create reports based on the used time. The work performance of your team can be monitored by those reports very effectively.

A tool that was constructed especially for the needs of service teams is Jira Service Management. Jira Service Management enables your clients to create support requests through e.g. your website. These service requests automatically get translated in tickets by the software and can get processed by your service team afterwards. Your clients can select different choices about the topic of the request. Out of those choices, the software filters information about the requests and the action item for your employees. The intuitive, useful software will simplify your customer service drastically.

Conclusion

Jira by Atlassian is the perfect software to organize the operations of companies in different industries. It can be adapted individually to the specific needs of your company. Furthermore, it delivers many useful tools through numerous extensions like Jira Service Management and Bitbucket that will help you to handle the challenges of your industry.

This article is the second part of our Jira article series, if you are interested in the first part: Jira in different departments

I hope you liked our article, feel free to tell me what you think or if you have anything to add!

[Ruslana Smirnova]

That's a great article! Thank you for sharing it.