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The Amazing Five Minute Jira Primer

Jira helps business teams, software teams and service teams do their best work. A series of short videos detailing how J can help your team can be found in the green video resources ira & Confluencepanel to the right.

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Our team works closely with teams across PHE to implement digital solutions that help them become:

More transparent and open about their workBetter at communicating and collaborating on projectsMore accountable to internal and external stakeholdersBetter at planning, tracking, managing and reporting on their workBetter able to see opportunities for process improvements

What is an issue?

Put simply, an is simply a piece of work that has been created in Jira so that it can be tracked  'issue'through a process from start to finish. If it helps you, think of a Jira issue as a '  or 'work-item' work-

.unit'  Sometimes, you will hear people refer to Jira issues as 'tickets'. These are all just different words for the same thing, a piece of work that you want to track from start to finish through a process via Jira. Jira will help you plan, track, manage and report on the progress of issues within that process.

Different types of issues are distinguished by giving them different . Here are just a few issue typesexamples of different issue types:

An enquiryA simple task or something that needs doingA software requirement or bugA document for publicationAn event which is being organisedA health indicator for uploadA candidate for recruitment to a postA problem or incidentAn asset which needs procuring

Ultimately, issue types are only limited by your imagination!

What is a workflow?

The process that issues follow in a Jira project is defined by a . Jira workflow A workflow is the set of statuses and transitions between those statuses that an issue goes through during its lifecycle. Workflows typically represent business processes. A workflow may be as simple as the following three-step workflow, which would be well suited to a simple "Task" issue type:

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Table of Contents

What is an issue?What is a workflow?What is a Kanban Board?Jira Digital Kanban BoardsSo, to recap...

Issues are NOT "problems" in Jira

Don't think of the word "issue" as synonymous with "problem" - that's not what the word means in Jira. In Jira terms, an issue is just a piece of work which you want to track the progress of.

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Video resources

If you watch these videos it won't be a 5-minute Jira primer anymore, but we hope you won't quibble!

Jira for every team ~ 2.5 minsFor Software Development TeamsMeet Jira Software~ 3 minsFor Support Teams that have to communicate with customersMeet Jira Service

~ Desk 2 minsFor Business Teams ~ 2 minsJira Core: Product DemoWiki for Team Collaboration ~ 2 minsConfluence Overview

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Or may be quite complex, with many different business rules determining the specific conditions under which issues can move from status to status. Here is an example of a bespoke workflow that our team put together by working closely with the Publication Standard Team in Research, Translation & Innovation:

What is a Kanban Board?

Kanban Boards, often just referred to as  are visual representations of issues within a Boardsprocess. In an office environment, whiteboards are often used as physical Kanban boards (see below).

The post-it notes on the whiteboard which contain the information for the issue are often referred to as " " or " " cards tickets- the terms issue, ticket and card are often used interchangeably. Cards typically move from left to right across the board but may potentially move backwards if they fail a step in the process and need to return to an earlier status; an example would be something failing a quality assurance (QA) process.

Kanban boards are great because they are very good at displaying a large amount of information quickly.

Boards help teams by:

Enabling them to quickly understand where issues are within the process and who is assigned them (everyone can see who is responsible for what, which creates a sense of ownership and responsibility)Helping prioritise and plan which issues to tackle next - cards higher up in the columns have a higher priority (or you could use different colour post-its)

What is Kanban anyway?

Kanban is a method for  visualizing the flow of work, in order to balance demand with available capacity and spot bottlenecks. Work items are visualised to give participants a view of progress and process, from start to finish. Team members pull work as capacity permits, rather than work being pushed into the process when requested.

Kanban came from Agile Software Development. However, it is fantastically well suited to improving business processes too.

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Gain insights into the progress of the entire project or a milestone within the project against a future deadline, e.g. " ", " "Are we on track? How many issues did we deliver last week?Highlighting potential blockers or slow-moving issues in order that the team can rectify them sooner rather than laterPotentially demonstrating a lack of resource if one exists e.g. if the team is creating issues faster than they can be resolvedGiving visibility and transparency to the team and/or stakeholders

Jira Digital Kanban Boards

Jira allows you to have The example below is a Kanban Board for a document approval process.Digital Kanban Boards.

Digital Kanban boards in Jira are literally amazing because:

When cards move from one status to another the date and time is captured automatically. As such, it is possible to graph the data in order to gain insights such as:

Were there blockers at certain points in the process? Could we do anything in the future to correct this to become more efficient?What is the average time for cards to move from one side of the board to the other - two metrics called " " and " " are often usedCycle time Lead timeAre there any outliers which we need to look at to establish their cause to reduce them in the future?

You do not have to be at the office looking at a whiteboard, you can access this board anywhere in the world if you have a computer or mobile with an Internet connectionCards can automatically be coloured according to certain criteria - e.g. colour all cards orange if they have been in a column for more than a week and colour them red if they have been stuck in a column for more than two weeks. This can quickly show you where you may need to focus more attention or that you may need to chase-up a stakeholder that you are waiting on.

So, to recap...

The defines the process and business rules that the issues or cards follow.workflowThe represents the workflow visually which communicates information quickly. board Colum

are used to identify which status an issue is currently in.nsIssues typically move from left to right across the board until they are complete, the time taken to do so is called cycle time.

This is a very quick primer that has just scratched the surface of what is possible, there are myriad ways of helping teams collaborate and communicate better using Jira and its sister product Confluence.

If you want to understand better what Jira can do for your team and how quickly we can get your team up-and-running, please visit  . You can also Jira Project Templates and Sandpits Book onto Jira

.and Confluence Training

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If this article took you 5 minutes or less to read, treat yourself to a cookie, (as a Public Health organisation we encourage you to eat these only in moderation!)

If you liked this article, you might be interested in our related article for Confluence, The .Amazing Five Minute Confluence Primer