User:MistermindOlaf/Jira Software

Jira Software is a commercial proprietary issue tracking product developed by Atlassian that implements agile methodologies for software development teams. Jira Software is used for various purposes such as project management, issue tracking, requirements management and bug tracking. Jira Software evolved from Jira which started as bug tracking software and later split into multiple products to support issue tracking in many different organizations.

Use cases of Jira Software include Requirements and Test Case Management, Agile Team Management, Project Management, Software Development, DevOps, Product Management and Task Management.

Naming
The product name comes from the second and third syllables of the Japanese word pronounced as Gojira, which is Japanese for Godzilla. The name originated from a nickname Atlassian developers used to refer to Bugzilla, which was previously used internally for bug-tracking.

History
When launched in 2002, Jira was purely bug tracking software, targeted at software developers. The app was later adopted by non-IT organizations as a project management tool. The process sped up after the launch of Atlassian Marketplace in 2012, which allowed third-party developers to offer project management plugins for Jira. BigPicture, Advanced Roadmaps (formerly Portfolio), Structure, Tempo Planner and ActivityTimeline are major project management plugins for Jira. In 2015, Jira split into three separate standalone products with JIRA Software focusing on agile software development teams. In 2017, JIRA was renamed to Jira, changing the name of JIRA Software along with it.

Description
Jira Software is a project management and issue tracking tool designed for software development teams. It supports agile development methodologies and provides a variety of features such as task assignment and tracking, reporting, and integration with other tools. It helps software development teams to plan, track, and release their software efficiently.

Usages
Jira Software is a work management tool that is intended to aid various types of teams in managing their work. Originally, Jira was designed as a bug and issue tracker but has evolved into a powerful tool for various use cases. It is used by over 65.000 companies globally.

Use cases include:

Requirements and Test Case Management
One possible use case for Jira Software is requirements and test case management. It can be utilized as a central hub for teams that develop software incrementally, and it can integrate with various add-ons for test management. This allows for the seamless integration of quality assurance testing into the software development process. Users can utilize Jira issues, custom screens, fields, and workflows to manage manual and automated tests, resulting in effective and incremental testing and higher quality final products.

An industrial case study was conducted, in which Jira and third-party plugins were used for requirements management and traceability in the field of transit systems. The study describes how Jira can be configured and customized to effectively manage and track requirements, and how third-party plugins can be used to generate traceability reports. The study suggests that Jira, being low-cost and easy to use, is a viable option for requirements management for small and medium-sized enterprises as well as larger corporations despite not being specifically designed for requirement management.

The study mentions several features of Jira that enables its use for requirements management. It explains that Jira issues can represent requirements, can be characterized with custom fields and tracked using logging capabilities of Jira. The existing issue types Stories and Epics can be used for this purpose. Additionally, the industrial case study mentions links as a way to enable traceability between items. Furthermore, it identifies dashboards and reports as aids in managing requirement prioritization. However, it also identifies properly textually describing requirements as problematic in Jira, as descriptions can only be created in a basic text window. It agrees with Atlassian that integration with Confluence solves that. Both the industrial case study and Atlassian also promote third-party add-ons in the Atlassian Marketplace which extend functionality with for example branching, traceability matrices, viewers, diagrams, auditing and reports. Some of these third-party add-ons are RTM, R4J and RMsis. Furthermore, some requirement management vendors have also integrated their tools with Jira. Examples are eazyBI, HelixRM and ReqView. Lastly, it is good to note that user role modeling and persona support as well as customer collaboration are not supported by Jira Software according to respondents from a 2018 survey.

Agile Team Management
Another common use case is Agile team management. For teams that use agile methodologies, Jira Software provides Scrum and Kanban boards as standard features. These boards act as task management hubs, where tasks are mapped to customizable workflows, providing transparency and visibility into the status of each work item. The software also includes time tracking capabilities and real-time performance reports such as burn-up/down charts, sprint reports, and velocity charts, allowing teams to closely monitor their productivity over time. Jira Software supports any agile methodology for software development.

Project Management
Jira Software can also be used for project management. Teams can begin with a project template or create their own custom workflow. Jira issues track each piece of work that needs to pass through the workflow steps to completion. Customizable permissions allow administrators to determine who can see and perform specific actions. With all project information in one place, progress, productivity, and oversight can be tracked through generated reports.

Software Development
The software can also assist in software development, providing planning and roadmap tools for teams to manage stakeholders, budgets, and feature requirements from the start. Jira Software can be used throughout every stage of the software development lifecycle, from initial ideation to deploying new features to customers and all of the many steps in between. The Jira board serves as the central hub for all work related to a specific project, and with strategic apps and integrations, relevant data can be seamlessly integrated into Jira.

One paper discusses the use of the JIRA issue tracking system from Atlassian at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) for managing software development projects. The NIF has been using JIRA actively for 63 different projects, creating over 80,000 requests for new features and bug fixes. The paper details how JIRA has been customized to meet the specific needs of the NIF's software development process, including the creation of a custom workflow for tracking code reviews, recording test results from both developers and the quality control team, and managing product releases. It also explains how JIRA's advanced customization capabilities have been used to track key metrics about the ICCS development effort, such as developer workload.

DevOps
DevOps teams can also utilize Jira Software as it serves as the backbone of Atlassian’s open and integrated toolchain, Open DevOps. The software integrates with various first- and third-party tools throughout the DevOps life cycle, including code and version control tools, documentation and knowledge management tools, and monitoring and operating tools. This allows DevOps teams to efficiently ship better software by focusing on best practices such as automation, testing, security, observability, feature flagging and continuous delivery and deployment.

Product Management
Jira Software can be used for product management, enabling teams to build roadmaps that are associated with each project. The roadmap allows teams to outline the longer-term view of their work and track progress and share progress with others. More detail can be added to the roadmaps, showing dependencies and forecasts for when they might complete their work, and teams can create a view highlighting live roadmaps from multiple teams by embedding the Jira Software roadmap into Confluence.

Task Management
Jira Software can be used for task management for individuals and teams, allowing for tasks to be created with details, due dates, and reminders, and for others to watch and track progress and be notified when the task is completed.

License
Jira Software is a commercial software product and is available in three different license types: Data Center, Cloud and Server.

Architecture
Jira is written in Java and uses the Pico inversion of control container, Apache OFBiz entity engine, and WebWork 1 technology stack. For remote procedure calls (RPCs), Jira has REST, SOAP, and XML-RPC interfaces. Jira integrates with source control programs such as Clearcase, Concurrent Versions System (CVS), Git, Mercurial, Perforce, Subversion, and Team Foundation Server. It ships with various translations including English, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish.

Jira implements the Networked Help Desk API for sharing customer support tickets with other issue tracking systems.