Jira Beginner: Best Practices and Beginner Tips

Name: Jira Beginner: Best Practices and Beginner Tips
Author: Josephine Cheatham

Observe Jira best practices while gathering useful tips

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Course: On-Demand

Hello, my name is Josephine Cheatham, and in these lessons, you will learn about best practices and beginner tips. We'll start by launching our JPK project, and as it opens, it always brings us to our board. Our left navigation menu is collapsed, so we're going to open it so that we can see. Jira always brings us into the board that we want to view so that we know the work that needs to be done. It assumes you're doing the work, so you're going to be dragging and dropping your issues in between the columns. In this case, this lesson is about managing the sprint and starting and ending the sprint. As you can see on sprint three, we have three days remaining before we need to complete the sprint. So we're going to move our issues. We have stories here. We'll move them over to QA and put them in their appropriate window. If you notice, we have a column here with our story points, but we're missing points from our other issues. We need those points within each user's story so that we can track our burn-down charts. So what I'm going to do is click to backlog. Once we get in the backlog, you see, I can add in a new story point by clicking on the point, scrolling to that option, we're going to use Fibonacci, and I'll make them fives, click on the checkbox. I'll make this one also a five, click on our checkbox, and then we'll make this final one a three by scrolling and making it a three and clicking on our checkbox. This now gives us an accurate representation of the number of points completed in the sprint. You can see we have a strike through, meaning that issue type is completed. If there's no strike through, then the issue is still open. So you're also able to manage the sprint directly in the backlog screen. This is our issue detail view on the right. I'm going to close that so that we can see our full screen of just the current sprint. We have five issues. We have a sprint goal, which is this in writing, and then we have zero points that have not been started. We have 23 points that are currently in progress, and we're showing zero points completed because once you complete the points, you can't add them in after, which is what I did in this instance. If you click on the ellipse under your sprint, and you wanted to edit the sprint in terms of the dates, I want this to end today. So I'll change it to today, and I will update. You can do that, but best practice is not to only set the dates for your sprints when you begin the sprint. So that we have accurate reporting. I'm going to have our sprint end today. You could delete the sprint, but we don't want to do that as we're in the middle of it. On the left side, you have a panel to see your versions for releases and your epics assigned to each one of the stories, and this is called the version panel, which I will close, and this is called your epic panel, which I will also close. Before I close, I will show you that when you click on the carrot here under your epic panel, you see a total number of points for your issues that need to be done, what's been completed, what you underestimated, which is one point. And then what you currently have to still complete of estimate of nine points. So we'll go ahead and close our epic. That does come in handy if you have a very large project or program, and you want to dive deep into what each story it relates to. So now we have our sprint goal here, and we have our dates, and then we have our next sprint. You can always create a new sprint because once I complete the sprint three, I'll get the option to start sprint four. But as you can see on the shortcut, it says it can be planned, but not started until the completion of the above active sprint. I'm going to also create a new sprint. It will automatically give it the number five. I'm not going to add in my dates yet, but that's already there for us to drag and drop tickets into. Now I want to go back to my active sprints. Move my tickets over to done. Whatever's in QA has been fixed. You see I have my tickets straight through. We'll move our in progress tickets to QA. We'll pretend the day or two has gone by and move them over to done. Actually, let's leave one open under in progress so that you can see how Jerry handles it. Also, when I moved this issue from the done column to the in progress column, it was JPK dash 11 had a strike through. Now it no longer does. So we have zero days remaining in our sprint. We can shortcut and see the start dates and the projected end dates. And then we click on complete. It lets us know four issues were done. One issue is incomplete. What do we want to do with the issues? Do we want to move them into the very next sprint? Perhaps you want to move them two sprints ahead. Maybe you want to create a new sprint and put them in there as issues not completed. Or back into the backlog so that they can be re-prioritized and completed another time. I'm going to automatically let this go to sprint four and then complete. Once I click on complete, it takes me right into my sprint report. And you can see the guideline, which is how many story points we should have been completing over time. But we completed them all in one day. So that's why it drops dramatically on the last day. But I'm going to go back to the project. We'll go back to our active sprints and now we'll see we don't have an active sprint. So in order to start a new sprint, you can click on your backlog. The backlog is where we manage the sprints. And now we have the option to start the sprint. I'm going to go ahead and start that sprint. I'm going to make this a two week sprint. So once I do, the date is always going to be the date. You're opening it typically unless your administrator has customized it. And then if you're using a duration one week, you don't get the option to change the end date. Because you've already told Jerra, I want it to close and complete in three weeks time. So we'll use a standard two weeks for sprint. I love this shortcut on the top. It shows us the issues that do not have a value for the estimate field. So we do want to enter those because once we start the sprint, those values that we enter, it's going to be treated as scope change. And there is a report to see that in Jerra. Let's put in our sprinkle. I'll just say this is my goal. And start. Once you start the sprint, now whatever was in to do, all of your issues automatically. And if you recall, I moved this issue forward. That's what we call move it forward when we completed the sprint and we still had one in progress. If we put it in the next sprint, it's still going to be in progress. Also, as an administrator, I'm able to move everyone's issues back and forth. So you can always ask your scrum master or your administrator to move tickets throughout the Jerra board. That is how we manage our sprints. Stay tuned for the next lesson where I will show you the reporting best practices in Jerra. Thanks for watching. Thanks for watching.

Beginner Provider : Josephine Cheatham 7 Lessons · 46m in English

Course Description

In these lessons we’ll cover how to implement some best practices and features in Jira to help you streamline projects, improve collaboration, and deliver successful outcomes. We will also cover how to efficiently manage issues on the Jira board. It is important to accurately reflect current statuses and reassign issues to different team members based on workloads and expertise.

You can leverage Jira's built-in reports to gain insights into project performance. The sprint report provides a summary of completed work, while the burndown chart visualizes sprint progress, and the burnup chart showcases the work completed versus the total scope. We will also use story points to measure the complexity of issues and assign points to issues for better planning, and to forecast future sprints. Jira helps you save time and effort by editing issue details directly from the board view, eliminating the need to open individual issue pages.

You’ll also learn how to enhance issue descriptions by adding attachments and updating descriptions with formatting, which can lead to improved documentation. It is important to prioritize backlog items by reordering them based on their importance. If an issue cannot be resolved in the current sprint, you can move it to a future sprint or version to ensure proper tracking and planning.

What You'll Learn

Start and close sprints in Jira to manage your project workflow
Manage the 'Only My Issues' filter to focus on your assigned work
Edit issues directly within a filter for faster updates
Use Jira's built-in reports including the sprint report, burndown chart, and burnup chart to track progress
Apply story points to measure issue complexity and forecast future sprints
Prioritize your backlog by reordering items based on importance

Key Takeaways

Jira best practices and features help streamline projects, improve collaboration, and deliver successful outcomes.
The sprint report summarizes completed work, the burndown chart visualizes sprint progress, and the burnup chart shows work completed versus total scope.
Story points measure the complexity of issues and support better planning and forecasting of future sprints.
Editing issue details directly from the board view saves time by eliminating the need to open individual issue pages.
Issues that cannot be resolved in the current sprint can be moved to a future sprint or version for proper tracking and planning.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is this course for?

It is a beginner-level course for those getting started with Jira who want to learn best practices and tips for streamlining projects and improving collaboration.

What topics does this course cover?

It covers starting and closing sprints, reporting, dashboard activity streams, running a daily stand-up meeting, managing 'Only My Issues', editing issues in a filter, and prioritizing your backlog.

What reports will I learn to use in Jira?

You will learn to use Jira's built-in reports, including the sprint report, the burndown chart, and the burnup chart, to gain insights into project performance.

How does this course help manage issues efficiently?

It shows how to reflect current statuses, reassign issues based on workloads and expertise, edit issue details directly from the board view, add attachments, update descriptions with formatting, and reorder backlog items by importance.