Jira is one of the most popular project management tools I’ve come across on the market. Atlassian, Jira’s parent company, originally designed it as an Agile methodology tool for software developers. Since then, the company has evolved it into a family of products addressing a range of use cases in IT and software development, including IT service desk, project and issue tracking, and enterprise planning.
Jira, formerly known as Jira Core, is the product I find most useful for companies that want to bring Agile methodology into projects outside of software development, such as sales, marketing, product development, human resources, and other business areas that can benefit from the methodology.
Jira features for enhancing project productivity
Jira supports project management productivity with templates, visualization tools, a summary page, and reporting tools.
Templates for fast, flexible project creation
One of the things I appreciate about Jira is that it removes the need to build projects from scratch by offering a wide library of ready-made templates across different teams and use cases. The template categories cover software development, marketing, design, sales, operations, service management, HR, legal, IT operations, and finance, making it a great starting point regardless of the type of project I’m working on.
Among the most popular ones I’ve used are the Scrum and Kanban templates for Agile workflows, the bug tracking template for managing issues, and the task tracking template for keeping personal or team work organized
After the foundation of the project is set, I can pull in company data by importing CSV or Excel files. Alternatively, I can integrate data from popular analytics tools like Power BI or Tableau. I can also make use of Jira-provided training data through Clover, Atlassian’s open-source project.
Boards and timelines for project visualization
Boards and timelines are two of the ways I use in Jira to visualize and manage project progress. The board displays work items in columns, with each column representing a step in the team’s workflow for taking work through completion. I find this particularly useful for getting a shared view of what hasn’t started, what’s in progress, and what’s been completed.
Boards in Jira
Jira offers two board types I can work with depending on my team’s approach. The Scrum board works well for teams that prefer working in sprints, while the Kanban board is better suited for teams whose primary objective is to manage the flow of work continuously. Each swimlane on the board is filled with individual task items called issues in the form of cards.
Within each issue card, I can assign tasks, leave comments, prioritize and label issues, attach files, and view issue history. I can also customize cards to display the information most relevant to my team, such as assignee, due date, and priority. When a task is completed, I simply drag and drop the card from one stage to the next to update its status, keeping everyone on the team informed of progress in real time.
Timelines in Jira
The timeline is a planning view available in all Jira plans that allows me to plan work, track progress, and map dependencies within a single team and project. I find it more comprehensive than the board view because it not only shows project progress but also issue timing, duration, and dependencies.
Dependencies, also called issue links, allow me to show the order in which issues need to be completed and can help identify potential blockers that the team needs to address. Each issue appears as a color-coded bar on the timeline, giving me a quick visual read of the project’s overall progress. I can also adjust the timeframe to view progress across weeks, months, or quarters, which helps me measure pace and reprioritize issues when needed.
Summary for easier project overview
Jira’s summary view gives me a high-level snapshot of my project’s overall health without having to dig through individual tasks. It includes an overview of the most critical information I need to find quickly, including:
- Overview cards that show the most recent activity and upcoming tasks
- Status overview that summarizes the status of project tasks
- Priority breakdown that displays a count of tasks based on priority level
- Team workload that shows the count and percentage distribution across team members
- Related projects that the user or their co-workers have touched recently
The widgets on the summary page give me a clear idea of how well my projects are pacing, how they impact business performance, and whether workload among team members is equally distributed. This kind of at-a-glance information makes it easier for me to report to other stakeholders, such as executives, who need high-level updates on project progress.
The summary page also informs how I direct my team. If, for instance, I notice a particular member with considerably more issues assigned or hours logged, that signals me to redistribute tasks to keep the workload balanced across the team.
Reports for data insights on projects
Jira also offers built-in reporting to help users make sense of project data. Types of reports include but are not limited to:
- Average age report measures the average lifespan of an issue from creation to completion
- Create vs. resolved issues report to monitor how big or small the backlog is
- Pie chart to see the breakdown of a set of issues
- Recently created issues report to monitor the number of issues created for a project
- Resolution time report shows the length of time taken to complete issues for a project
I can break down my projects however I need to assess overall performance and identify problems. In contrast to the summary page that presents a number of data points at once, a report helps me pinpoint the source of project issues or better understand how one particular variable affects other areas of the project. I can also export reports from Jira to CSV files for further analysis when needed.
Boost productivity with Jira
Jira is a good choice for companies looking to get started with or switch project management software that incorporates Agile methodology. Jira offers a range of features to handle Agile business projects more productively:
- Templates to easily spin up projects
- Boards, timelines, and more visualization models to monitor progress
- Summary page for an at-a-glance project overview
- Reporting to gain insight into how well a project team performs over time
However, Jira isn’t the only option out there. If you find that Jira’s features don’t meet your Agile project management needs, check out our project management software guide to find a solution that might be a better fit.
