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What is Jira?

Jira is a flexible issue tracking tool that helps teams plan, manage, and report on their work.  There are different versions of Jira depending on your usage needs.

What would I use each application for?

Jira Core

  • General business projects tracking
  • Task tracking and reporting
  • Task Management
  • General process management through workflows
  • Dashboard reporting of projects and tasks progress

Jira Software

  • Software Development
  • Virtual Scrum and Kanban boards
  • Backlog planning and issue assignment
  • Agile reporting
  • Dashboard reporting of issue, sprint, and release progress

Jira Service Management

  • Helpdesk/Service desk management
  • Incident or Problem management
  • Change management
  • Customer self-service portal powered with Knowledge Base
  • Tracking of Service Level Agreement (SLA) and other metrics

 

Who uses each application?

Jira Core

  • Business teams
  • Marketing teams
  • Legal teams
  • HR teams
  • Operations teams
  • Finance teams

Jira Software

  • Software Developers/Engineers
  • ScrumMasters
  • Product Owners
  • Technical Managers
  • Testing/QA teams
  • DevOps teams

Jira Service Management

  • Customers
  • Helpdesk Agents
  • Helpdesk Supervisors
  • Self-help users
  • Employees

 

Where can I get more info?

Reach out to Cprime or visit:

Atlassian Jira Core

Atlassian Jira Software

Atlassian Jira Service Management

What are some benefits of using Jira?

Jira is highly configurable and flexible to allow for usage in a wide variety of environment and processes. The Jira workflows, issue types, and screens enable tailoring for almost any scenario and can easily be change via the administration GUI. Atlassian provides excellent online support resources and in person Atlassian User Groups to help the community.

What industries are supported?

Atlassian products support a wide variety of industries due to it’s flexible configuration, historical data, powerful workflow engine, and easy team adoption. Jira has been used in finance, IT/technology, Healthcare, retail, manufacturing, professional services industries and more.

How does Jira work with other Atlassian tools like Confluence or Bitbucket?

The Atlassian suite integrates across each product allowing data to be passed from one application to the other and supports bi-directional traceability. While each integration works a bit differently, here are some of the key interactions between the applications:

  • Confluence – Create issues in Jira from Confluence, display Jira reports/dashboards in Confluence, and navigate easily between linked Jira issues and Confluence pages for traceability, Create Knowledge Base articles in Confluence from Jira Service Management, find contextual Knowledge Base articles in Jira Service tickets, and much more
  • Bitbucket – Create Bitbucket branches from within Jira, see all related commits, branches and pull requests in an issue, transition issues automatically based on development events, transition issues from within Bitbucket Server, see issues related to Bitbucket Server commits and pull requests, check commits, branches and pull requests for an entire version within Jira Software, and more
  • Bamboo – See Bamboo development activity in Jira, view detailed Bamboo build and deployment statuses, run a Bamboo build when releasing a Jira Software server version, view the Bamboo builds that relate to a Jira application project or version, and more
  • HipChat – Get notifications in your Hipchat rooms when issues are updated, preview issues and service desk requests directly in Hipchat when someone on your team mentions them, and more
  • Others – there are many other applications that Jira can integrate with to help share data.  See below for more details.

How does Jira support my service management needs? Will Jira fit in with my existing process?

  • Jira Service Management (JSM) is a versatile tool that spans and scales the varied needs of a service-driven organization. It can be used for internal IT service management operations such as Incident Management, Problem Management, Change Management, HR onboarding, Asset Management, and Service Request Management. JSD can also be used for external service management operations geared towards Product or Client Support. Additionally, JSD integrates with other Atlassian products such as JIRA Software to provide continuity of processes on support tickets resulting in bug fixes or change management. JSD comes with advance Knowledge Base integration to extend self-service features to your customers as well as agents, significantly reducing time to resolution. JSD can help support or scale your existing process with its advance features such as dynamic work queues, workflow automation, customizable SLAs and metrics, rules driven alerts and notifications, and robust API integration capabilities.

How does it compare to other similar products? strengths and flexibility

Jira’s rapid adoption within an organization and across enterprises can be attributed to several factors ranging from cost, user-adoption, Scalability, Interoperability, and maintainability. Here are some key reasons organizations move to Atlassian suite, starting with Jira

  • Affordable and Cost Effective – The cost of per user Jira license is typically half the cost of other competitive enterprise applications in this space. Additionally, ease of supporting and maintaining the application makes customization and upgrades much simpler. Overall, this keeps the total cost of ownership low and affordable.
  • User-Adoption – Users tend to favor Jira over other competitive tools due to its simple and intuitive interface. Additionally, the presence of wide range of open source product documentation and community support forums makes its easy for the users and administrators to learn and adapt the tool far more readily.
  • Scalable and Customizable – Jira can be used to centralize the collaboration and tracking needs of small to large size enterprises, from business to software to services teams, and from basic to large complex solutions. The broad range of usecases for Jira may include Agile, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), ITIL, Assess Management, Product Support, CRM, etc.
  • Interoperability – Jira’s rich ecosystem of over 2000 marketplace add ons, robust REST API library, and plugin SDK allows organizations to develop, integrate and extend the tool in a highly streamlined environment to build an enterprise level platform. Integrating with identify management software, finance applications, HR systems, and CRM systems are some of the ways organizations are using Jira to build a highly connected enterprise solution.
  • Light Weight Deployment – Jira has a light weight footprint and is deployed as a web application on Linux or Windows. Jira also supports all major commercial databases such as Oracle, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, and MySQL.  Additionally, Jira supports standard web browsers such as IE, Firefox, and Chrome.

What is the Atlassian Marketplace? Why should I care?

The Atlassian Marketplace provides 3rd party applications (formerly called add-ons) to help teams customize their products and add functionality. The applications provide functionality around reporting, workflows, test management, design, automation, and more. With thousands of available applications and an easy searchable interface, the Marketplace provides customization for almost any use case.

We have a number of Apps that help bridge your Agile processes with your Atlassian tools and just plain make your life easier. Check them out here.

How does Jira scale?

How can Jira help me achieve my organizational goals?

Cprime provides a skilled consulting team to provide the right resource to help make the Atlassian suite a success:

  • Solution Architects – The Cprime Solution Architects bring product, solution, and technical leadership to your engagement. Our expert facilitates conversations with your business and technical teams to establish a foundation of your current (as-is) business process, identify process re-engineering opportunities, and define a future-state recommendation in alignment to these discussions. The Solution Architect provide overall thought leadership and best practice solutions to optimize your implementation and organizational adoption.
  • Senior Consultants – The Cprime Senior Consultant provides delivery skills in your specific area of implementation needs – configuration, integration, migration, and more. Each Atlassian expert is your focused delivery resource to implement high quality solutions in an iterative manner. This person works closely with the Solution Architect to align on solution planning and delivery.
  • Managed Services Support Consultants – Our Support Management team feature Atlassian experts with extensive experience with each product and the flexibility to be remote or onsite. We offer the ability to follow your tickets/requests on a Jira queue to track your request in real-time. With hourly and recurring pricing stuctures, we can customize a support package that fits your requirements. A s a distinguished Atlassian partner (one of only 8 Platinum Experts in North America), you’ll benefit from our experience with Atlassian products across multiple sectors.

What do you need to consider before you implement Jira or Confluence?

While each implementation is different, there are some items that needs to be considered when configuring Jira and/or Confluence

  • Design – Teams are most successful when they define and validate the design of their instance before they begin implementation.  This improves the speed for implementation and makes evaluation clear and measurable.
  • Data Hierarchy – Your data hierarchy and structure is key to how Jira and Confluence should be setup.  This is often done by organization, product, or project and consistently setup throughout the instances.
  • Change Management – How changes are evaluated, communicated, and implemented is key to ensuring appropriate usage and a sustainable configuration.
  • Support – After configuration is completed, a clear support team and request process is critical to long term updates and consistent usage.
  • Training – User and administration training is key to fast adoption and

Can I integrate Jira with common enterprise tools?

Yes!  Jira has an open REST API that allows it to integrate with a wide variety of systems.  You can create your own connector or choose from a number of already created connectors from the Atlassian Marketplace.  Jira often integrates with:

  • SalesForce
  • Microsoft FTS & VSTS
  • IBM Doors, ClearQuest, & RTC
  • BMC Remedy
  • HP ALM/QC
  • CA PPM, Agile Central, & Harvest
  • Perforce
  • ServiceNow
  • Zendesk
  • GitHub and GitLab
  • Bugzilla
  • and more!


Learn more about Jira Integrations

How can I learn to use Jira better? 

  • Cprime has a wide variery of Atlassian training classes to help you and your organization get the most out of the Atlassian platform.  Our classes include hands-on exercises, leave behind guides, and instructors with years of real implementation and configuration experience.

    Our most popular Jira training courses include:
    Jira in the Enterprise, Jira/Confluence Integration, Jira Administration, and Advanced Jira Workflows, and more!

How can I get my organization on Jira?

  • Cprime offers customers a single source for license management, as well as the capability of procuring Atlassian products on a purchase order. For renewals Cprime will need a list of all applicable Atlassian Support Entitlement Numbers, and email of technical contact associated to each license. For new license purchases please list the name of the license, and user tier. Cprime provides licenses and standardization of license renewal dates and the ability to accept Purchase Orders.


Learn more about Jira Licensing

Who can help me manage Jira?

Cprime can take the burden off your teams, so they can focus on what matters. Our experts ensure that your systems remain operating as expected – managed hosting and support to updates and infrastructure.

We provide:

  • Managed Hosting
  • Managed Support
  • Upgrades. Migrations. Integrations.

Learn more about our Atlassian Managed Services offerings