DEV Community: Nelly

How To Refine Your Jira Backlog As A Product Owner?

Nelly — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 20:42:23 +0000

The product owner plays an important role in Agile development since he is responsible for expressing stakeholders’ interests and guaranteeing the product meets the needs of the stakeholders. In this context, Jira is a Product owner’s best friend when it comes to managing tasks and establishing a viable Jira roadmap for a smooth project.

Read further to learn more about the Jira Backlog and its features.

Jira Backlog 101

The Jira backlog is a component of the Jira project management tool, serving as a repository for an ordered list of product backlog items associated with an ongoing project. The Jira backlog presents product backlog items or issues organized into backlog and sprints, providing visibility into the prioritized tasks for the project. According to the Scrum guide, a product backlog is an emergent, ordered list of what is needed to improve the product. It is the single source of work undertaken by the Scrum Team.

Exploring the Components of Jira Backlog
There are several key components of a Jira Backlog such as:

User Stories or Issues: User stories or issues represent the specific tasks, features, or improvements that need to be addressed in the project. There are three levels of issues hierarchy in Jira Backlog:

Epics: Represent high-level initiatives or larger pieces of work, such as new features for software teams, major service changes for IT service teams, or significant deliverables for business teams.
Standard Issues: Regular business tasks discussed and carried out by team members. For software teams, they include bugs and stories, tracking effort for software development.
Subtask Issues: Used to break down standard issues into smaller chunks, aiding collaboration and task management in a sprint.
Priority: Each issue is assigned a priority level to indicate its relative importance or urgency in the backlog. Prioritization helps the team focus on high-value items first.

Estimates: User stories or issues often include estimates of the effort or complexity required to complete them. These estimates help in planning and resource allocation.

Dependencies: The backlog may indicate any dependencies between user stories or issues, highlighting tasks that need to be completed before others can start.

Sprint Assignment: User stories or issues can be assigned to specific sprints, which represent time-bound iterations or cycles of work within the project.

Status: The current status of each user story or issue, such as “To Do,” “In Progress,” or “Done,” helps track progress and facilitates team collaboration.

Description and Acceptance Criteria: Detailed descriptions and acceptance criteria provide clear guidelines and expectations for completing each user story or issue.

Additional Labels or Tags: Backlog items may be labeled or tagged with additional metadata to aid in filtering, categorization, or organization.

Amalgamated together, these components in a Jira backlog help in breaking down work, prioritizing, estimating effort, and tracking progress, and enabling efficient and effective project management.

Want to create a product backlog item in Jira?
To create an issue (product backlog item), you can follow the given steps:

In the project sidebar, select Backlog. If you don’t see it, expand the sidebar by clicking the >> icon in the lower left corner of the screen.

You can quickly create issues using the inline issue create feature. Just click + Create issue.

Backlog refinement
Backlog refinement, also known as Jira backlog grooming, is an iterative process that involves review, clarification, and improvement of the items in the product backlog. Backlog refinement encompasses various activities, and by engaging in a grooming session, the team engages in better understanding, facilitates effective planning, and enhances their ability to deliver value and achieve project objectives.

Why should you have a well-refined Jira backlog?

Product Backlog refinement is the act of breaking down and further defining Product Backlog items into smaller more precise items. This is an ongoing activity that takes place as needed to add details, such as a description, order, and size. Attributes often vary with the domain of work With a refined backlog in place, the team gains a comprehensive understanding of the project’s scope, enabling effective sprint planning, efficient resource allocation, and timely delivery of valuable product increments. By enhancing visibility, reducing ambiguity, and allowing collaboration, a well-refined backlog empowers the team to work productively and aligns with stakeholder expectations throughout the project lifecycle. Regular backlog grooming sessions help the team maintain a clear understanding of upcoming work and enable effective planning and prioritization.

Refine your backlog at the right time!
Backlog refinement should ideally occur regularly throughout the project. The frequency of backlog grooming sessions may vary depending on the team’s needs and the nature of the project. Generally, it is recommended to conduct backlog grooming sessions at least once per sprint, before the sprint planning session. However, the frequency can be adjusted based on factors like the size and complexity of the backlog, the pace of change in requirements, and the availability of stakeholders.

How to refine your Jira Backlog?

Refining your Jira backlog as a Product Owner is an essential task to ensure the success of your Agile project. Here are some key steps to effectively refine your Jira backlog:

Schedule Regular Backlog Refinement Sessions: Set aside dedicated time at regular intervals to review and refine your backlog either weekly or depending on the demand of your project.
Prioritize Backlog Items: Start by reviewing the priority of each backlog item. Consider the business value, user needs, dependencies, and project goals. Reprioritize items as necessary to align with the evolving requirements and stakeholder feedback.
Breaking down epics into user stories and splitting user stories into smaller user stories as part of the refining process.
Define Clear Acceptance Criteria: You must ensure that each user story has clear acceptance criteria. Well-defined acceptance criteria help the development team understand the expectations and deliver the desired functionality in a better manner.
Remove unnecessary entries: Check the backlog on a regular basis for any obsolete entries.
Communicate with Stakeholders: this includes contacting customers, end-users, and the development team, to gather useful insights.
Keep the Backlog Visible and Organized: Use Jira’s features to maintain a visible and organized backlog. Use appropriate labels, tags, and filters to categorize and track backlog items effectively to ensure transparency.
Adapt and Iterate: Continuously adapt and refine your backlog based on feedback, changing requirements, and new information that arises during the development process.
These steps can be assistive for you to refine your Jira backlog as a Product Owner effectively. They will assist in better organizing your work.

When not to refine your backlog?

While backlog refinement is a valuable practice, it’s essential to consider the concept of “just-in-time” refinement to avoid over-refining items that might change or become unnecessary. By focusing on the immediate and highest priority backlog items, teams can reduce waste by avoiding excessive effort spent on refining stories that may not be relevant or may undergo significant changes. This has been inspired by Lean in Agile. There are some considerations to know regarding when not to refine your backlog:

Early project stages: While it is important to define clear priorities and prepare a buffer of refined stories, excessive backlog refinement during the early stages may lead to premature decisions based on incomplete information. In these stages, requirements and priorities may still be evolving, and investing significant time in detailed refinement sessions might result in wasted effort if priorities shift or requirements change significantly. A more iterative and adaptive approach, focusing on high-level backlog items and incorporating feedback as the project progresses, can be more beneficial.

Uncertain or rapidly changing environments: In such environments, maintaining a highly refined backlog for far-ahead stories may not be the most efficient use of time and resources. As priorities and requirements fluctuate, the effort spent on refining stories that might not be relevant in the near future could be better allocated to more immediate tasks. It is essential to strike a balance between maintaining flexibility and avoiding excessive refinement for stories that may undergo significant changes or become obsolete due to the rapidly changing nature of the project.
Key Terms that you must know about!

Backlog refinement vs. sprint planning

Backlog grooming and sprint planning are two distinct activities in Agile development, but they are closely related. Backlog refinement, as explained before, is an ongoing process of reviewing and preparing the product backlog for upcoming sprints. It involves activities like clarifying requirements, breaking down epics into user stories, estimating effort, and prioritizing backlog items.

Sprint planning

The Sprint is initiated with Sprint Planning, where the Scrum Team collaboratively lays out the work to be performed. The resulting plan is created collectively by the entire team.

The Product Owner ensures that all participants are ready to discuss the most important items from the Product Backlog and how they align with the Product Goal. The Scrum Team may also invite additional individuals to provide advice during Sprint Planning.

Sprint Planning covers the following:

Establishing the value of the Sprint: The Product Owner proposes ways to enhance the product’s value and usefulness during the current Sprint. The entire Scrum Team collaborates to define a Sprint Goal that communicates the value of the Sprint to stakeholders. The Sprint Goal must be finalized before the conclusion of Sprint Planning.

Determining achievable tasks for the Sprint: In consultation with the Product Owner, the Developers select items from the Product Backlog to include in the current Sprint. The Scrum Team may refine these items to enhance understanding and confidence.
Determining the amount of work that can be completed within a Sprint can be challenging. However, the Developers’ knowledge of their past performance, upcoming capacity, and Definition of Done increases their confidence in making accurate Sprint forecasts.

Planning the execution of chosen work: The Developers plan the necessary tasks for each selected Product Backlog item to create an Increment that meets the Definition of Done. Often, this involves breaking down the Product Backlog items into smaller work items that can be completed in a day or less. The decision of how to accomplish this is entirely up to the Developers, as they have autonomy in transforming Product Backlog items into valuable Increments.

The Sprint Goal, the selected Product Backlog items for the Sprint, and the plan to deliver them collectively form the Sprint Backlog. Sprint Planning is timeboxed to a maximum of eight hours for a one-month Sprint. For shorter Sprints, the duration of the event is usually adjusted accordingly.
DOR and DoD

The Definition of Ready (DoR) is an array of criteria that must be met by a user story or backlog item before it can be declared ready for implementation. It ensures that the item is well-defined, understood, and prepared for the development team to work on it. Whereas, (DoD) is the criteria that must be met for a user story or backlog item to be considered complete. It encompasses all the necessary activities and quality standards that need to be fulfilled, such as coding, testing, documentation, and any specific requirements for deployment or release. The DoD ensures that the team has a shared understanding of what constitutes a finished and potentially shippable increment of work.

Scrum artifacts

Scrum artifacts are key elements used in the Scrum framework to facilitate the planning, execution, and inspection of work. The three main Scrum artifacts are:

Product Backlog

The product backlog is a prioritized list of all the features, enhancements, bug fixes, and other work items for a product that must be done. It is maintained by the product owner and acts as the development team’s single source of requirements. The product backlog is constantly shifting, with things being added, modified, reprioritized, or eliminated in response to changing demands and feedback.

Sprint backlog

The sprint backlog defines the specific tasks, user stories, or backlog items that the team commits to completing during the sprint. It helps the team to work in a productive way and also to track progress throughout the sprint.

Increment

At the end of a sprint, the increment is the total of all completed and possibly shippable product backlog items. It represents the tangible outcome of the sprint and is the incrementally improved version of the product. Each sprint builds upon the previous increments, and over time, the product evolves and grows with each iteration. The increment should meet the definition of “done” as defined by the team and the product owner, ensuring that it is of sufficient quality and can potentially be released to users or stakeholders.

These three Scrum artifacts work together to provide transparency, alignment, and focus for the Scrum team.

Prioritization as a critical key to better outcomes
By prioritizing the backlog, the team can focus their efforts on delivering features and functionalities that align with the project’s goals and provide maximum value to stakeholders and end-users. Effective prioritization enables the team to deliver incremental value, adapt to changing requirements, and maintain a steady flow of deliverables, ultimately contributing to the success of the project.

How to estimate issues?
Estimating issues is an important aspect of Agile project management and helps in understanding the effort required to complete tasks or backlog items. Here’s a general approach to estimating issues:

Choose an Estimation Scale: Decide on an estimation scale that suits your team’s needs. Commonly used scales include story points, t-shirt sizes (XS, S, M, L, XL), or hours.
Use a Reference Item: Select a reference item or a user story that represents an average or medium-sized task or story. Assign it a value on your chosen estimation scale. This reference item will serve as a baseline for comparing and estimating other items.
Relative Estimation: During estimation, focus on the relative effort required to complete an issue compared to the reference item. The team discusses each issue and collectively decides whether it is smaller or larger in effort compared to the reference item.

Discuss and Collaborate: Ask your team members to share their insights, perspectives, and concerns regarding the issues being estimated.

Break Complex Issues: If an issue is too large or complex to estimate accurately, consider breaking it down into smaller, more manageable tasks.

Revisit and Refine: Regularly revisit and refine estimates as you gain more information or as the team’s understanding of the work evolves.

Tips for Productive backlog sessions

Conducting productive backlog refinement sessions and meetings is crucial for ensuring a well-prepared and refined backlog. Some critical tips include:

Set Clear Objectives: Define clear objectives for each backlog refinement session. Communicate the specific goals and outcomes you want to achieve during the meeting to keep everyone focused and on track.

Involve the Right Participants: Invite the relevant stakeholders, including the product owner, development team members, and subject matter experts, to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the requirements and perspectives.

Break down Epics and User Stories: Collaboratively break down epics into smaller, more manageable user stories during the refinement session.

Prioritize and Re-prioritize: Review and prioritize the backlog items based on their value, urgency, and alignment with the project goals.

Define Clear Acceptance Criteria: Clearly define acceptance criteria for each user story to ensure shared understanding and avoid ambiguity.

Timebox the Session: Set a time limit for each backlog refinement session to maintain focus and ensure efficient use of time. This enables better time management for the team to make progress within the allocated time.

Communication: Foster an open and collaborative environment where team members feel relaxed sharing their perspectives, asking questions, and suggesting reviews.

Capture Action Items: Record or document action items and decisions made during the session. Ensure that any tasks or follow-up actions are clearly assigned to all the team members, with clearly defined deadlines and responsibilities.

Iterate and Continuously Improve: Continuously reflect on the refinement sessions and identify opportunities for improvement.

By following these tips, you can conduct productive backlog refinement sessions and meetings that contribute to a refined and well-prepared backlog, leading to more effective agile sprint planning and successful project execution.

Conclusion

Jira is a go-to option for project managers as it offers the right amount of customization, flexibility, and quality-of-life elements deal for teams. Refining your Jira backlog can prove to be a great help for the execution of your project. If anything is missing from the app, it is easy to find on the Atlassian Marketplace!

I hope you found the article on backlog refinement insightful. It’s authored by Oleksandr Siryi and available on the TitanApps blog.

Creating and Managing Projects in Jira: A Beginner’s Guide

Nelly — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 16:48:59 +0000

Managing a project can become chaotic without proper structure. Agile teams require the right tools to maintain order and prevent time consuming and costly mistakes. JIRA is considered the “gold standard” for agile project management, offering robust tracking, collaboration, and efficient workflow management features. However, for beginners, it can be overwhelming.

This article serves as a “crash course” in Jira, including basic usage, step-by-step instructions for project creation and management, and an overview of advanced features.

What is Jira Software?
Jira Software is a project management tool developed by Atlassian Corporation, a software company. Originally, Jira was designed for agile software development to plan, track, and manage work efficiently.

Over time, Jira has expanded to become a flexible tool for managing various project tasks, making it an ideal solution for IT, marketing, operations, finance, HR, legal, and other departments.

Some notable products in the Atlassian ecosystem that complement Jira’s capabilities and offer a comprehensive suite for various project management include:

Confluence – a team workspace for knowledge sharing and collaboration
Jira Service Management – a service desk platform for IT operations and support teams
Jira Align – a platform that bridges the gap between business strategy and technical execution, using data from Jira to align work across teams with organizational goals.
Using Jira Software improves project management by enabling team collaboration within a logical structure, ensuring transparency, and keeping everyone on the same page.

Jira is highly flexible and can be customized to fit the specific needs of any team. Whether you follow Scrum, Kanban, or your own unique agile methodology, Jira’s adaptability makes it very effective for project management.

Additionally, Jira provides detailed reports and dashboards, helping all stakeholders track progress and stay informed throughout the project’s lifecycle.

Jira key concepts for beginners
Before we get into project creation and management details, let’s briefly cover the main Jira concepts you’ll encounter:

Projects are customizable collections of issues that teams use to coordinate various tasks, such as product development, tracking project milestones, managing marketing campaigns, implementing IT infrastructure changes, etc.
Issues are the core element of Jira and represent different types of work items such as tasks, bugs, stories, and epics.
Boards are visual tools for managing issues within a project. There are two types of boards:
Scrum Boards for sprint-based work and is focused on iteration.
Kanban Boards for continuous workflow management without sprints.
Sprints are time-boxed periods where a set amount of work is completed.
Backlog is a space where you can prioritize and manage work that can be pulled into sprints.
Workflows define issues’ lifecycles, moving them through statuses like To Do, In Progress, and Done. They can be customized to fit specific project needs.
How to create a project in Jira?
Creating a project in Jira is straightforward; the steps are listed below. However, before creating a project, you need to make initial decisions to ensure everything aligns with your team’s workflow and goals. Although the examples provided are IT-focused, the setup instructions are applicable to various industries.

Jira offers various project creation templates, including Scrum, Kanban, Work Management, and others. Each template is designed to support different types of workflows, whether agile, traditional, or other project management methodologies.

Go with Scrum if you want to manage tasks in short, iterative cycles and need regular feedback to improve continuously.
Choose Kanban if your team prefers a continuous workflow without fixed sprints and values visual task management.
Select Work Management if your team needs to manage non-agile projects with more traditional planning and tracking, such as marketing campaigns, HR processes, or event planning.
Once you’ve picked the appropriate template, the next step is to create a team-managed or company-managed project.

Go with a team-managed project if your team is small, typically less than ten members, and needs flexibility and control over configurations without requiring administrative permissions.
Choose a company-managed project if your team is large, generally more than ten members, and requires standardized workflows and configurations set by the organization.
To create your project in Jira, follow these steps:

From the Jira home screen, select “Projects” in the navigation bar.
Click “Create project.”
Choose a template from the available categories. Templates are grouped into a library based on use-case categories or by Jira Cloud products. Select a category or product and click “Use template.”
Select either a company-managed or team-managed project type.
Enter a project name and, if needed, change the template.
Click “Create” to finalize the project setup.

Note
Creating a project requires admin permissions, though any user can create a team-managed project if allowed by global permissions.

With your project set up, you can customize your Jira board and columns to better suit your team’s workflow and improve task management.

Customizing Jira board and columns
You can customize your board and columns in Jira to better suit your specific project needs. This customization can improve the visibility of work progress, help identify bottlenecks, and enhance overall project management.

To access your board settings in Jira, open your project, click the three dots in the top right corner, and select “Configure Board” from the dropdown menu. This will take you to the settings page, where you can customize various aspects of your board.

General: Here, you can change your board’s name, assign administrators, specify in which project the board is located, and define filters that determine which issues appear on your board.
For instance, you might filter to display only high-priority issues or tasks assigned to a specific team.
Columns: In this section, you can manage your workflow stages by adding, renaming, or deleting columns. While the board represents your workflow, it doesn’t have to match it exactly. You can configure columns to combine multiple workflow statuses.
For example, workflow statuses like “Canceled” and “Done” can both be represented in a single column called “Closed.” Additionally, you can limit the number of tasks in each column to avoid bottlenecks and ensure efficient task management.
Swimlanes: This section lets you organize tasks by categories, assignees, or other criteria, helping you visualize work based on different priorities or team members.
Quick Filters: Create custom filters to view specific issues by defining JQL queries tailored to your team’s needs. The section below explains Jira Query Language (JQL) and how it enables precise issue searches.
Card Layout: Add fields such as priority, due date, or assignee to customize the information displayed on task cards for better task management.
Timeline: Configure whether and how you want to see your tasks planned over time to help manage project schedules and deadlines effectively.
After setting up your workflow to match your team’s processes and configuring your board settings, the next crucial step is to effectively set up and manage your backlog.

Setting up a backlog
In Scrum projects, the backlog is used to plan sprints. It is a dynamic list where tasks are continuously added and prioritized. During sprint planning, teams select items from the backlog to include in the sprint, allowing for focused, incremental progress.

For example, a software development team working on implementing push notifications for an app would use Scrum to manage this feature’s development. They would plan the work in two-week sprints, breaking it into tasks such as designing the notification system, developing the server-side logic, integrating with third-party push notification services, etc. Regular sprint reviews would enable the team to gather user feedback and make necessary adjustments, ensuring the feature works properly.
In Kanban projects, while there are no sprints, the backlog remains crucial for managing incoming tasks. It helps organize and prioritize tasks to maintain a continuous and manageable workflow. Tasks are pulled from the backlog into the work-in-progress (WIP) column as the team has capacity, ensuring a steady workflow without overloading the team.

For instance, a technical support team handling infrastructure maintenance tasks would find Kanban most suitable. They can continuously prioritize and manage tasks such as server updates, performance monitoring, troubleshooting issues, etc. By using Kanban, the team can visualize the entire workflow, ensuring critical tasks are addressed promptly while balancing ongoing maintenance activities.
Whether you are using Scrum or Kanban, setting up a backlog in Jira follows similar basic steps:

Navigate to your Jira home screen, select the project you want to manage, and access the backlog view by clicking “Backlog” in the sidebar.

Note:In some cases, you may need to enable the backlog feature in your project settings before it appears in the sidebar.

Create issues by clicking the “Create” button, selecting the issue type (Task, Bug, Story), filling in the necessary details, and then clicking “Create” to add them to the backlog.
Prioritize the backlog by dragging and dropping tasks to reorder them based on priority or time estimates for better planning.
What is JQL?
JQL, or Jira Query Language, is a tool for searching data within Jira. Users can specify criteria like issue type, status, project, assignee, and custom fields to filter and sort issues, create custom reports, and automate processes.

Similar to SQL but specific to Jira, JQL helps both technical and non-technical users find, analyze, and report on data within the platform.

The basic structure of a JQL query consists of four components:

Field: Specifies the data element you want to search for (e.g., issue type, status, project, assignee).
Operator: Defines how you want to compare the field to the value (e.g., =, !=, IN, NOT IN, ~).
Value: The criteria you are searching for (e.g., Bug, In Progress, Project Alpha, Jane Doe).
Keyword: Additional keywords can enhance your query (e.g., AND, OR, ORDER BY).
For example, a JQL query to find bugs in “Project Alpha” that are “In Progress” and assigned to “Jane Doe” would look like this:

project = "Project Alpha" AND status = "In Progress" AND issuetype = Bug AND assignee = "Jane Doe"
Creating an issue in Jira
An issue in Jira is basically a single task that needs to be completed. For instance, within an application, an issue could be something like “Design login page,” which would be a smaller task within the “Implement User Authentication” epic.

Jira supports various issue types, each serving a specific purpose:

Task: A piece of work to be completed. Use tasks for general work items that don’t fit other specific categories. For example, “Update user documentation.”
Bug: A problem that needs to be fixed. Use bugs to track defects in the product. For instance, “Fix login page error when incorrect password is entered.”
Story: A user-focused feature or requirement. Use stories to describe features from the end user’s perspective. For example, “As a user, I want to be able to log in with my email address and password.”
Sub-task: A smaller piece of a task or story. Use sub-tasks to break down larger tasks or stories into manageable parts. For instance, “Create frontend design for login page” could be a sub-task under “Design login page.”
Epic: A large body of work broken down into smaller issues. Epics are used to group related tasks and stories that contribute to a significant feature or goal. For example, “Implement User Authentication” could be an epic that contains stories like “Design login page” and “Set up user database.”
To create an issue in Jira, click the “Create” button in the navigation bar. A window will pop up with several default fields that help to define and track the issue:

Summary: This is a brief title or description of the issue.
Description: A detailed explanation of the issue.
Assignee: The team member responsible for the issue.
Priority: The issue’s importance, which can be set to Low, Medium, High, or Critical.
Labels: Tags that help categorize the issue.
Attachments: Files related to the issue.
In addition to the default fields, Jira allows you to create custom fields tailored to your project’s needs, capturing any information critical to your team.

Advanced features in Jira
Jira’s basic features are great for various project management needs, making it a solid choice for different teams. However, the tool can be significantly improved by utilizing some of its advanced functionalities, such as workflow customization and automation.

Workflow customization allows teams to customize Jira to fit their specific processes. For instance, engineers can customize their workflows to include stages like “Code Review” and “QA Testing,” ensuring thorough checks before code completion.

Automation in Jira reduces “manual work” by automating repetitive tasks. For instance, a marketing team can establish rules to automatically notify team members when a task is moved to the “Review” stage, ensuring faster task turnaround times.

Beyond its built-in features, Jira’s functionality can be further extended through Atlassian Marketplace, which offers a wide range of add-ons. These add-ons can provide additional tools and integrations to meet specific needs.

One example of such add-ons are those offered by TitanApps – a set of productivity Smart Tools crafted specifically for Jira.

Smart Tools includes apps such as:

Smart Checklist for Jira allows teams to create detailed ToDo lists within Jira issues, making tracking progress easier and ensuring that all necessary steps are completed. Features like mandatory items, text formatting, and custom statuses help teams organize their work efficiently.

Smart Templates for Jira automate repetitive processes by saving and reusing issue templates. This tool is particularly useful for teams that handle recurring tasks, such as product launches or recruitment processes. With Smart Templates, teams can save any issue type, pre-fill issue fields, and even create hierarchies of issues to ensure consistency and save time.

Smart Productivity & Team Performance Dashboard for Jira provides insights into team productivity by comparing performance across projects, sprints, epics, and issue types. It allows you to organize employees into teams based on their roles, review statistics, and track what teams are working on.

Smart AI Release Notes for Jira automates the creation of release notes by summarizing Jira tickets. It generates issue summaries using AI. The tool also helps share well-structured and formatted updates, keeping development teams, customers, and stakeholders up-to-date.

Keep in mind that although Jira may seem daunting at first, it follows a logical pattern for completing tasks. Embrace the learning process, make use of the numerous high-quality Jira tutorials available, stay calm, and be confident that you can handle any project challenges that come your way!

This article, written by Denys Kontorskyy and published on the TitanApps blog, offers essential insights for beginners, including tips on creating and managing projects in Jira effectively.

How To Make A Newcomer Onboarding Template in Jira?

Nelly — Mon, 30 Dec 2024 18:05:42 +0000

Jira is a powerful and flexible tool with more features, bells, and whistles than any other solution on the market. In fact, Jira is so complex that I’m sure no living person, not even those on Atlassian’s development team, knows the app’s ins and outs completely.

Still, there are certain useful features that are missing from Jira to this day.

For example, creating a reusable process template for onboarding a new hire is not easy. This is especially sad given you probably want everyone to have a great experience during their first day at the new job. The first impression counts!

Sure, there are certain workarounds. For example, you can use issue cloning or field customization. Unfortunately, these and other workarounds come prepackaged with their own drawbacks and limitations.

This article will explore a simpler option for creating an intuitive and efficient template for an onboarding process inside Jira. We will be using two third-party apps. Both of them have a free trial, so you can check and make sure that the approach is a nice fit for your team.

Without further ado, let’s hop into creating an onboarding template with Smart Checklist and Smart Templates for Jira.

You can explore the options for creating issue templates in Jira (with and without external apps) here >>>

What goes into a new employee onboarding task inside Jira?
Generally speaking, onboarding a newcomer is a complex process that involves people from many teams, such as procurement, security, HR, the team the person will be working at, and the person themselves.

Everyone who’s involved in the process will have their tasks.

The HR might want to schedule onboarding meetings and feedback sessions, meet the person in the office on their first day, post information about their start date, survey them regarding the onboarding experience, etc.
Security will need to create the necessary accounts and grant appropriate permissions.
Procurement needs to purchase the hardware.
The legal team needs to manage the paperwork.
The manager needs to prepare the onboarding plan and introduce the person to their team members.
This list goes on and on.

But isn’t this just an onboarding checklist? Well, yes and no. While it is true that most HR teams have documentation and ToDo’s written down, most of the documentation is usually scarce and scattered. Moreover, these ToDo’s are rarely standartized across different teams and departments.

An onboarding template in Jira, on the other hand, is a selection of issues with very clear and detailed tasks for everyone involved in the onboarding process. You can set up an Epic with specific issue types, child tasks, subtasks, labels, instructions, and assignees, making sure that everyone involved in the process knows their scope.

How to create an onboarding template in Jira?
For the purpose of this example, I will create an Epic for the onboarding journey. This Epic will have separate tasks for the newbie, their manager, and the HR person. Keep in mind that this is just an example. Feel free to customize the process to fit within your team’s flow.

Step 1: Download Smart Templates from the Atlassian Marketplace
None of the steps I will describe in this article are rocket science, but this one is probably the easiest. All you have to do is find and install the Smart Templates app from the Atlassian Marketplace.

You need Jira Admin permissions to install apps from the marketplace. Ask your admin or PM for help during this step.

Step 2: Create an employee onboarding template
The purpose of creating an onboarding template is simple: you need to create and document a specific process once and reuse it every time a new person joins the team.

Having a template like this means that everyone who is involved in the onboarding process knows about their tasks and next steps.

*Note:I highly recommend you use the following as a quick guide rather than a step-by-step instruction. Please make the necessary adjustments to make the process your own.
*
As I said before, the onboarding template involves multiple people and tasks. Hence, I will create an Epic with separate ToDo’s for everyone.

The process is really simple and shouldn’t take longer than 10-30 minutes. That’s hardly a price to pay, given you will be reusing this bad boy over and over.

Open the Smart Templates app from the left sidebar in your Jira. Then click the button to create a new template. You can name it something like “The Onboarding Template”.

Step 3: Add variables
The next thing you’d want to do is to create a variable.

The functionality of text variables prompts users to enter a certain value before applying a template. The summary field will be a great example of text variables in use. A couple of simple edits now will ensure that your team (or whoever is creating the onboarding epic) will type in the correct name of the person before applying the template. Obviously, you aren’t limited to just one variable. The feature is equally useful for such contexts as position, department, type of cooperation, etc.

Select the variables tab and add a new variable. This will be the name of our candidate.
Copy the variable’s name, go to the Issues Tab, and paste it into the summary field. Make sure that the name is surrounded by two sets of rounded brackets like so {{name}}
Click the Save button.
Boom. You are all set. Now every time someone creates the issues from this template, they will be prompted to enter the candidate’s name.

Step 4: Add tasks
Now that the initial setup is out of the way, you can create the tasks for your team. I’d suggest the following tasks:

The new recruit: Onboarding issue with a checklist of all the ToDo’s on their first day/week/month
The lead: An issue for introducing a person to the team and an issue for giving feedback after the first week
The HR: an issue to gather feedback from the person and an issue to gather feedback from the lead/team
The IT person: An issue with creating necessary accounts and granting required permissions
You can specify the details of every issue from within the Smart Templates app. The fields tab will have all the necessary fields, such as labels, components, assignees, start dates, etc.

The Description field is located in a separate tab called Description.

Now that you’ve filled up your Epic with tasks, and the tasks with content, you should have a handy, reusable issue template that streamlines onboarding.

Step 5: Establish and enforce a process with Smart Checklist
The next step in crafting a bug report template will involve a different app from our suite of Smart Tools. Like Smart Templates, you can install Smart Checklist from the Atlassian Marketplace.

Keep in mind that this step is 100% optional. Still, I’d advise you to give the app a shot, as it can help you create a reliable onboarding process.

We will use Smart Checklist to create a list of ToDo’s for the new employee to follow. These steps can even include links to resources and appropriate tools.

Think of something like the following to get an idea of a checklist we are going for:

Log into your corporate accounts
Update your profile picture
Read through the onboarding materials
Update your LinkedIn status
A checklist for the IT person can look like this:

Create a corporate Gmail account
Create a Slack account
Share permissions to access the Google Drive
Create a Jira account
You can use the same approach for every task in your issues.

How can you add the checklist to the task?

Open the Smart Templates app from the sidebar on your left.
Click on the three dots next to the bug report template and select the Edit option.
Select the Smart Checklist tab on your right, under the summary field.
Enter the ToDo’s inside of every ticket.

Summary

To summarize, we have just created a standardized, well-formatted Jira onboarding template. The template has separate tasks for everybody on the team and some actionable ToDos. The whole process took us less than 30 minutes. Nice!

This article, authored by Oleksandr Siryi and featured on the TitanApps blog, covers many helpful insights, including guidance on using an onboarding template in Jira.

Advanced Roadmaps in Jira: How to Streamline Your Project Planning

Nelly — Thu, 19 Dec 2024 19:32:56 +0000

Advanced Roadmaps for Jira is a premium feature designed to help teams plan, track, and manage work across multiple projects. It goes beyond traditional project management tools like Gantt charts and basic roadmaps by offering a unified, strategic approach to long-term planning and execution.

In this article, I’ll provide a quick overview of the Advanced Roadmaps feature, how teams can effectively use its capabilities, and how the tool provides a more unified approach to project and portfolio management.

*What is Advanced Roadmaps for Jira?
*

Formerly known as Portfolio for Jira, Advanced Roadmaps is a tool that helps teams achieve larger business objectives and collaborate on big-scale initiatives. It works by pulling data from Jira projects, boards, and filters and displays it in a customizable visual interface.

As a feature available in Premium and Enterprise plans, here are some of the things you can do with it:

Create visual roadmaps that include multiple teams and projects, mapped-out epics, and initiatives. These help you see the big picture and make informed decisions.

Plan team capacity realistically to avoid overcommitment and ensure timely delivery.

Manage dependencies between tasks and projects to anticipate bottlenecks and streamline workflows.

Experiment with different scenarios and timelines to evaluate risks and adapt plans.

Prioritize work based on business value, dependencies, and team capacity to ensure the most critical tasks are addressed first.
Advanced Roadmaps’ compared to other project management methods
To understand how Advanced Roadmaps enhance planning, it’s essential to see how it compares to traditional tools like Gantt charts, standard roadmaps, and portfolio management systems.

Gantt charts are a traditional project management tool used for specific task scheduling and dependency management. They offer clear visual timelines of tasks, milestones, and deadlines.

However, they are often limited in flexibility and struggle with managing complex dependencies across multiple teams.

Advanced Roadmaps differs by offering a more strategic, high-level approach. It allows teams to plan and track work across multiple projects, see real-time updates, and schedule tasks dynamically. It accommodates changes in task status, dependencies, and team capacity, making it better suited for long-term, multi-team planning.

Roadmaps are typically used to align teams with long-term strategic goals, helping organizations visualize the path from current efforts to future outcomes. However, traditional roadmaps often focus on a single team’s objectives and may lack integration with other teams’ plans.

Advanced Roadmaps stands out by integrating multiple team roadmaps into a single, unified view. This approach effectively manages dependencies between teams and ensures that all teams remain aligned with the organization’s broader strategic goals, offering a more comprehensive planning tool.

Portfolio management tools provide a broad overview of multiple projects, offering high-level insights into the progress and status of ongoing initiatives. However, they often do not provide the level of detail needed for day-to-day task management and can be disconnected from the granular work done by individual teams.

Advanced Roadmaps bridges this gap by combining strategic portfolio oversight and detailed task management. This allows project managers to see the big picture and ensure that every task and action aligns with the organization’s larger objectives, providing a more integrated and actionable approach to project and portfolio management.

*How to work with Plans in Advanced Roadmaps?
*
A plan in Advanced Roadmaps outlines all the work needed for your project in a timeline format, breaking down tasks into issues assigned to teams. As a sandbox environment, any changes made to your plan will only affect your actual Jira Software data once you choose to commit them.

Your plan is a combination of roadmaps from multiple teams, making it the key feature you will interact with in Advanced Roadmaps. It serves as a comprehensive view of all ongoing and planned work, integrating various team efforts into a unified strategy.

Let’s say you’re a project manager at a tech company overseeing a new product launch. This project involves multiple teams: Engineering, Design, Marketing, and Sales. Here’s how you can set up and manage this project using Advanced Roadmaps:

Create the plan: Navigate to “Plan” in the top navigation bar, select “Create,” and name your plan “New Product Launch 2024.” Choose the access type—Open for team collaboration or Private to restrict access.

Set the issue sources: Select the relevant projects and boards from each team to ensure that all launch-related tasks are included in the plan.
Configure exclusion rules: Use the exclusion rules to filter out irrelevant or completed tasks. For example:
Exclude issues completed more than 15 days ago.
Filter out non-essential tasks like bugs.
Remove tasks with statuses like “Closed” or “Resolved.”
Exclude irrelevant releases, focusing only on those pertinent to the launch.
Once your plan is set up, you can break down the work in the following way:

Structure the work: Under the “Launch New Product” initiative, create epics such as “Develop Core Features” for Engineering and “Design Product Interface” for Design.

Break these epics into stories and sub-tasks, like “Build User Authentication System” and “Design Database Schema.”

Manage dependencies: Link-related tasks to ensure a logical workflow, such as linking “Design Mockups” to the “Build User Authentication System” so development starts only when the design is ready. Align Marketing and Sales tasks to ensure materials are ready for the campaign launch.

Plan capacity: Use capacity planning to ensure teams are not overcommitted. Adjust workloads based on availability, such as reallocating tasks if the Engineering team is nearing capacity in the upcoming sprint.

Scenario planning: Create scenarios to prepare for potential changes. For instance:

Delay the launch by two weeks to accommodate design revisions.
Add extra resources to the Marketing team to speed up campaign preparation.

After finalizing and reviewing the plan, commit the changes and now regular updates will help keep all teams aligned.

Now that we’ve outlined the basic steps for setting up and managing a project in Advanced Roadmaps, let’s dive deeper into each of these points in greater detail, with additional examples to help you fully understand the tool’s capabilities and usage.

*Permission levels
*
To effectively manage your plan and ensure that everyone involved has the appropriate access, it’s important to understand the different permission levels available in Advanced Roadmaps:

Administrator: Full control over the plan, including creating, editing, deleting plans, setting permissions, and committing changes back to Jira Software.

Shared Team Management: Manage shared team settings, such as configuring team capacity and assigning team members, ensuring accurate and up-to-date team allocations.

User: View and edit plans without administrative privileges. Users can update tasks, adjust timelines, and contribute to the planning process without changing the plan’s overall structure.
Viewer: This is read-only access to the plans. Viewers can see all details and progress but cannot make any changes, ideal for stakeholders who need to stay informed without direct interaction with the plan.

*Hierarchy levels
*
Advanced Roadmaps enhances Jira’s standard issue hierarchy by introducing an additional level called Initiative.

Initiatives: High-level strategic goals that encompass multiple Epics.

Epics: Significant bodies of work that can be broken down into smaller tasks.

Stories: Functionalities or features that deliver specific value.
Sub-tasks: Smaller tasks required to complete a Story.
Furthermore, Advanced Roadmaps allows users to create and customize as many levels as needed. This flexibility offers a more comprehensive approach to planning, helping teams visualize the full scope of work, from high-level objectives down to individual tasks.

To better understand the hierarchy structure, let’s look at a practical example involving a SaaS product development project focused on improving user engagement:

Initiative: Improve User Engagement
Epics:
Redesign User Interface
Enhance User Onboarding
Implement Gamification Features
Stories:
Create a new homepage layout
Develop tutorial for new users
Add achievement badges
Sub-tasks:
Design mockups
Write tutorial content
Code badge functionality
Custom Levels:
Milestones: Mark significant progress points
This structured approach provides a detailed and comprehensive roadmap, ensuring all aspects of the project are covered and tracked effectively.

Having a detailed ToDo checklist within each issue is crucial for breaking down tasks into actionable steps, ensuring every detail is noticed, and making it easier to track progress. Using a checklist helps teams maintain clarity and accountability, which is essential for meeting deadlines and achieving project goals.

To implement this effectively, consider using Smart Checklist for Jira, which allows teams to create detailed ToDo lists within Jira issues, making tracking progress easier and ensuring that all necessary steps are completed. Features like mandatory items, text formatting, and custom statuses help teams organize their work efficiently.

Filters and saved views

Narrowing down the information in your plan can help you focus on key tasks, address high-priority issues promptly, identify bottlenecks, monitor progress, and make informed decisions easily. This is exactly what filters help you achieve by applying specific criteria.

Located in the upper left corner next to the search bar in Advanced Roadmaps, filters provide several options to refine the view of your plan:

Releases: view all issues assigned to a particular release.
Teams: filter by specific teams included in the plan.
Assignees: focus on tasks assigned to particular team members or users within included teams.
Sprints: display issues from any sprint in your plan, with options to filter by sprint type.
Projects: display only issues from selected projects.
Issue Types: filter to display only certain types of issues mapped to Advanced Roadmaps.
Components: filter by components configured in your plan.
Labels: filter by labels configured in your plan.
Dependencies:
All issues: show all issues regardless of dependencies.
Has dependencies: view only issues with dependencies.
Specific issue: display dependencies related to a particular issue in your plan.
Status: view issues based on their current status.
Warnings: show only issues that have warnings.
In addition to the standard filters, Advanced Roadmaps supports the use of custom filters if configured for your plan:

Single-choice select one option from a predefined list of values, like a priority level (High, Medium, Low) for an issue.
Multiple-choice select: multiple options from a predefined list of values. As an example, this can be multiple technologies used in a project (e.g., JavaScript, Python, Java).
Checkbox: Yes/no or true/false criteria. For instance, indicating if a task requires approval (Yes/No).
Radio button: Select one option from several predefined values, such as the project phase (e.g., Planning, Development, Testing).
Label: Custom labels applied to issues for categorization. For example, issues can be tagged with specific themes like “User Interface,” “Backend,” and “Security.”
Once you have applied the desired filters, you can save these configurations. Saved views allow you to get a quick snapshot of your plan in a customized format and focus on relevant aspects. For example, a project manager might save a view that highlights upcoming deadlines and critical path tasks, while a team lead might save a view focusing on their team’s current sprint and individual task assignments.

To save a view in Advanced Roadmaps, click on the three-dot menu in the top right corner, select “Save as,” enter a name for your view, and click “Save.”

Dependencies

Anticipating bottlenecks and streamlining workflows is crucial for moving projects forward and completing them efficiently. The dependency feature in Advanced Roadmaps helps with this by identifying and tracking relationships between tasks and projects.

For example, in a SaaS product development project aimed at improving user engagement, if redesigning the user interface (an Epic) depends on completing mockups (a Sub-task), understanding these dependencies ensures tasks are completed in the correct order, preventing delays.

To manage dependencies:

Hover over the schedule bar of the desired issue and click the + icon.
Right side for outgoing dependency (indicates the issue must be completed before the dependent issue starts).
Left side for incoming dependency (indicates the issue is dependent on another issue being completed first).
Select the issue to link as a dependency.
Confirm by clicking the checkmark.
Adjust dates by dragging the ends of the schedule bar; badges will turn red if there are conflicting dates.
By managing dependencies effectively, you can then move on to ensuring resources are allocated efficiently, which brings us to the importance of capacity planning.

Capacity and Scenario Planning
Allocating resources effectively by understanding each team member’s availability is crucial for any project. Capacity planning in Advanced Roadmaps helps achieve this by ensuring work is distributed realistically, avoiding overcommitment, and ensuring timely delivery. By setting up and managing team schedules based on their availability, you can adjust workloads, assign tasks appropriately, and visualize work distribution over time.

In addition, capacity planning has key benefits, including preventing team burnout, optimizing resource usage, and improving project predictability by aligning tasks with available capacity. It also helps set realistic deadlines and manage stakeholder expectations.

As an example, let’s take a software development team led by a project manager working on a new feature for a SaaS product. Using capacity planning, the PM can see that her team of developers has 200 hours available for the next sprint. She assigns tasks based on each developer’s availability, ensuring that no one is overloaded. By adjusting workloads and reassigning tasks, she balances the team’s efforts and keeps the project on track, preventing burnout and meeting deadlines.

*To set up capacity planning:
*
Ensure sprints are set up in your scrum backlog, and the board is chosen as the issue source.
Link the relevant teams to the issue source and assign at least one issue to the sprint or team.
Navigate to your plan’s “view settings” and choose to view by either “Team” or “Sprint”.
Select the “Show capacity on timeline” option.
This will allow Advanced Roadmaps to monitor the amount of assigned work in the plan, comparing estimated values to your team’s capacity. In your plan timeline, tabs at the top represent sprints or iterations, with a vertical bar indicating capacity.

While capacity planning helps manage current resources, scenario planning allows project managers to anticipate potential challenges and adapt proactively. This tool helps simulate various “what-if” situations, allowing for informed decision-making about the best course of action.

Continuing from the previous example, suppose the project manager wants to prepare for potential delays or unexpected changes in the project. By using scenario planning, she creates different scenarios:

The feature release is delayed by two weeks due to unforeseen bugs.
An additional developer is brought in to expedite the process.
The scope of the feature is reduced to meet the original deadline.
By evaluating these scenarios, she decides that bringing in an additional developer provides the best balance between cost and timely delivery. This proactive approach allowed her to address potential risks and keep the project on track.

*To set up scenario planning:
*
Go to the Scenario menu located next to Settings and select “Create scenario.”
Name your scenario and choose a color (any changes will be flagged with that color).
Select starting point options:
Start with a blank scenario using data from your Jira Software issues.
Start with a copy of an existing scenario inheriting changes from any selected scenario.
Once everything is set, click “Create” to finalize your new scenario.
By using all the features Advanced Roadmaps offers, you can ensure deadlines are met, resources are optimized, and potential challenges are quickly addressed. Explore the rest of our blog for more Jira insights, and enjoy your project’s roadmap planning!

I hope you found the article about Advanced Roadmaps for Jira, written by Denys Kontorskyy, to be an interesting read. Feel free to explore additional articles on titanapps.io.

How to use Jira API?

Nelly — Fri, 22 Nov 2024 17:03:24 +0000

Jira REST API lets users interact with Jira remotely. You can use API calls to interact with common features like issues and workflows, or you can interact with application-specific features like customer requests that are only available in JSM.

In simpler words, Jira REST API lets you either get information from or update Jira without actually touching Jira. Some of the more prominent use cases include creating new issues in bulk, setting permissions, or developing new Jira apps that need to interact with Jira’s functionality like custom fields, etc.

*What do you need to work with Jira REST API?
*
Technically, you don’t need much to start working with Jira REST API. Having an API token and an API client should be more than enough to cover a wide variety of cases.

You will need project admin permissions to generate a token.
You can use any API client that suits your needs. I will be using the downloadable version of Postman for this article, but you are free to use any other alternative to it or just stick with good old curl, if that is your cup of tea.

Is there a difference between Jira Cloud REST API and REST API for Jira Data Center?

You should pay attention to the differences if you are an Atlassian App developer as there may be certain rate limits. Please refer to this documentation for Jira Cloud or to this documentation for Jira Data Center.

There’s one more thing you may need to consider. Atlassian rolls out changes to the Cloud API directly. This functions similarly to functionality updates and changes they introduce in Jira Cloud.

There are also certain differences in terms of authentication and authorization. Other than that, Jira REST API for Cloud and Data Center versions of the software has similar functionality. And you’ll need to add a special permission for API tokens in Jira Cloud.

Just remember to refer to the correct version of documentation when there’s a question.

And just so we are on the same page, I’ll be using a Jira Data Center project for the examples in this article.

How to create an API Token in Atlassian Jira?

First thing’s first. You will need to generate a Token to use API calls. These tokens are needed for secure authentication.

Click on your avatar
Click on profile
Select Personal Access Tokens

Create a new token

Type the name of your token
Select the automatic expiry date

Generate your Token

Copy the token you see on the screen. You will not be able to see this token after you close the token screen. You can also save it somewhere, though this option isn’t recommended since saving a token isn’t what I’d call secure. Therefore, I highly suggest you copy the token straight into Postman (or whichever app you’ll be using to interact with Jira).

Now that we have our token, let‘s use it for authorization in Postman.

Open a new tab in Postman
Go to authorization (Auth)
Select the Bearer Token as Type and paste your Token
Go to body and select raw and JSON from the drop-down menus
Type in your URL and select the HTTP request like POST or GET, depending on your needs. You can rely on Atlassian Documentation to generate a correct URL.

That’s pretty much the whole setup. You have everything you need to work with Jira without Jira ?.

*Creating and editing issues with API calls: examples
*
Let’s start with something simple. We will create a new issue in your Jira project. The following code will create a task issue type inside a project you’ve specified using the project key. As you can see, I’ve also specified the summary and description in this example.
{ “fields”: { “project”: { “key”: “JAP” }, “summary”: “New task from Postman”, “issuetype”: { “name”: “Task” }, “description”: “This is a new task you’ve created from Postman” } }
You can be much more descriptive when creating issues. For example, the following code will add an assignee and a label to your newly created ticket.

{ “fields”: { “project”: { “key”: “JAP” }, “summary”: “Another Task From Postman”, “issuetype”: { “name”: “Task” }, “description”: “This is a task you’ve created from Postman”, “assignee”: { “name”: “admin” }, “labels”: [ “demo” ] } }

Alternatively, you can post updates to your tickets from the Postman interface. For example, this code will create a new comment inside a specific ticket.

{ “body”: “This is a brand new comment” }
That being said, you need to specify the issue you want to update inside Postman’s URL field. For example, I used “JAP-1” because it is the issue ID I wanted to update, and I also used comment to specify what I wanted to do.

Working with Jira API simplified

Modifying issues one by one through API is barely faster than doing the same directly in Jira. Modifying several dozens of issues at once – now that’s where the fun begins.

Let’s look at two examples of creating issues in bulk using Jira API. The first example is importing issues from a CSV file.

Bulk update from CSV

For starters, you need to transform your issue key and the comment body into variables. Replace the actual issue key in the URL field for {{issuekey}} and the body of the comment to {{comment}}.

Next, create a CSV file and populate it with issue keys and comments. Make sure to name your columns the same way as the variables. Save your CSV file.

Go back to Postman. We will be using the Runner feature. You can access it by clicking on the Runner button at the bottom of the app’s interface.

Select the option you’d like to proceed with. In our case, I’ll go with Running manually.
Click on the Select file button to upload your CSV. You’ll see that the number in the Iterations field has changed. This number corresponds to the number of rows you have in your Excel sheet.
Drag the POST function you’d like to run into the Run order column from the Collections folder.
You can use the history tab to find the POST function if you haven’t created a collection yet. Hover over the function, click on the + button, and add it to your collection.
Click on the now brightly orange Run Jira button. Bulk update from JSON representation The second example is the creation of multiple issues or sub-tasks from a JSON representation. The method you will be using is POST /rest/api/2/issue/bulk

Here is an example of a request provided by Atlassian documentation:

{ “issueUpdates”: [ { “update”: { “worklog”: [ { “add”: { “timeSpent”: “60m”, “started”: “2011-07-05T11:05:00.000+0000” } } ] }, “fields”: { “project”: { “id”: “10000” }, “summary”: “something’s wrong”, “issuetype”: { “id”: “10000” }, “assignee”: { “name”: “homer” }, “reporter”: { “name”: “smithers” }, “priority”: { “id”: “20000” }, “labels”: [ “bugfix”, “blitz_test” ], “timetracking”: { “originalEstimate”: “10”, “remainingEstimate”: “5” }, “security”: { “id”: “10000” }, “versions”: [ { “id”: “10000” } ], “environment”: “environment”, “description”: “description”, “duedate”: “2011-03-11”, “fixVersions”: [ { “id”: “10001” } ], “components”: [ { “id”: “10000” } ], “customfield_30000”: [ “10000”, “10002” ], “customfield_80000”: { “value”: “red” }, “customfield_20000”: “06/Jul/11 3:25 PM”, “customfield_40000”: “this is a text field”, “customfield_70000”: [ “jira-administrators”, “jira-software-users” ], “customfield_60000”: “jira-software-users”, “customfield_50000”: “this is a text area. big text.”, “customfield_10000”: “09/Jun/81” } }, { “update”: {}, “fields”: { “project”: { “id”: “1000” }, “summary”: “something’s very wrong”, “issuetype”: { “id”: “10000” }, “assignee”: { “name”: “jerry” }, “reporter”: { “name”: “kosecki” }, “priority”: { “id”: “20000” }, “labels”: [ “new_release” ], “timetracking”: { “originalEstimate”: “15”, “remainingEstimate”: “5” }, “security”: { “id”: “10000” }, “versions”: [ { “id”: “10000” } ], “environment”: “environment”, “description”: “description”, “duedate”: “2011-04-16”, “fixVersions”: [ { “id”: “10001” } ], “components”: [ { “id”: “10000” } ], “customfield_30000”: [ “10000”, “10002” ], “customfield_80000”: { “value”: “red” }, “customfield_20000”: “06/Jul/11 3:25 PM”, “customfield_40000”: “this is a text field”, “customfield_70000”: [ “jira-administrators”, “jira-software-users” ], “customfield_60000”: “jira-software-users”, “customfield_50000”: “this is a text area. big text.”, “customfield_10000”: “09/Jun/81” } } ] }
Some other examples of operations with issues using API include:

Editing and deleting issues;
Notifying users;
Getting, updating, and deleting comments;
Getting the issue work log, and much more.

That said, you are not limited to operations with issues with Jira REST API. You can work with fields, dashboards, components, filters, groups, and so much more. Please refer to Atlassian documentation for a full list of API references.

It is also worth mentioning that Jira API is not limited to Jira itself. You can use API calls to interact with the apps you’ve installed from the Atlassian Marketplace. For instance, you can read, update, and delete checklists with Smart Checklist REST API. This is interesting for cases when you need to get Smart Checklist history in a specific issue.

We hope you found the article, written by Oleksandr and featured on the TitanApps blog page, insightful and engaging