Build Your Jira Habits and stay at ease

[#1]

Hello dear Jira community,

Thank you for being a valuable reader and your interest in the topic. This is a brief article with tips and outcomes for getting the best out of Jira software and building a habit.

"Be your team champion🏆"

Tip 1: Make Jira a part of your daily routine and a regular practice of checking or browsing or updating issue types or play with the field types (as per your role on the application).

Outcome: You start to become a Jira Pro with regular practice. This is similar to following a consistent routine of cycling/ jogging/ playing your favorite sport.

Tip 2: Add Jira/ Atlassian community to your daily checklist activity and track for a month.

Apple Fitness app says, it will take 180 days of activity to start the trends. According to a 2009 study published in the European Journal of Social Psychology, it takes 18 to 254 days for a person to form a new habit.

Outcome: Being consistent and regular helps prioritize your work day, have a work-family balance and focused. Just a few minutes/ day login build a healthy routine.

Tip 3: Be the Jira champion.

Outcome: By committing few mins a day with your team and checking the Jira portal, update-document-track Jira issues reinforce that collaboration, transparency and trust by sharing the same vision. So, you become the evangelist and the team champion facilitating the seamless communications. This habit will also offload or remove extra team meetings.

Tip 4: Customize the application as you would like.

Outcome: Jira offers plethora of custom work views, integrations to 3000+ Atlassian marketplace applications, personal settings, custom email notifications and their frequency etc…etc. So, you always cherish the feel of “Owning and Driving the application” without the need for coding skills and in fewer clicks.

Tip 5: Focus on creating and managing Jira issues.

Write the issue summary in 4-7 words and keep it precise for easy understanding.

Outcome: Suggested writing formats to try:

Tasks - Write task summaries like this: "<ACTION> <ACTIVITY/THING>." (e.g., "Build new homepage")

Stories - User stories can be written in either formats:

Format 1) "As a <ACTOR>, I want <THING> so that <ACTION >” 

Format 2) Given  <>

                 When <>

                 Then <>

Bugs - Write bug summaries like this: "<FEATURE> should do <X>, but does <Y>." (e.g., "Menu button should show menu, but errors out").

Tip 6: Creating multiple issues with Roadmap OR Backlog.

If you are to create multiple Jira issues at a time, both Jira roadmap and backlog provide you the means.

Outcomes:

• From the roadmap, select the button 'Create issue.' Type in a summary. Save your changes by selecting 'Review changes' at the top right of your screen.

• From the backlog, scroll to the bottom of the backlog and select 'Create issue.' Type in a summary.

Tip 7: Flag an issue and or use email notification.

Outcome: A flagged Jira issue tells if it is a blocker or escalated or missed deadline or a check point for discussion etc. Similarly, every email from Jira includes a direct link to the issue helping you to stay up to date.

Tip 8: Use “inbuilt comments” section for all communications with the team members. When you tag stakeholder(s), it triggers a specific notification as well.

Tip 9: Create a default board view, save your searches as filters, create your own dashboard and add gadgets.

If you have read this far, then you may enroll to this Atlassian University free course and earn an official badge when you complete the 3 course path.

If you wish to share best practices and tips, please post in the comments section.

[Kalin U]

Great article! Thank you for the tips. I agree that maintaining "healthy" Jira habits does wonders for effective work and collaboration ;)

[G subramanyam]

I'm glad you found the article helpful and resonating the Jira habits👍

[Dave Mathijs]

Thanks for (re-)sharing those tips @G subramanyam !

[G subramanyam]

Yes @Dave Mathijs sometimes reloading/ revising/ resharing the basic and best practices will keep our memory and knowledge intact. 

[Summer Hogan]

Great article ad advice @G subramanyam! I use Jira everyday and most of the work I do on a daily basis is in Jira, Confluence and Trello. I especially love tip #5 though! I write stories in that format, but never thought about having a format for tasks and bugs. Thanks for the great tips! 

[G subramanyam]

Thank you🤝 for the feedback @Summer Hogan 

Your comment made me think about another widely used format (format 2) in user stories writing.

[nesrineZ]

Great article! Thank you for the tips