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Using Jira and Associated Tools in Agile Environments
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Reviewed on March 14, 2012
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Submitted By: D. Weite Company Size: $5 Million - $10 Million in revenues |
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| I have extensive experience customizing Jira for use in Agile development organizations in parallel with formulating the end-to-end business process across product management, project management, software/hardware development, release, deployment, and maintenance. I have also used Jira for adjunct support services such as IT ticketing, Customer Support, etc. I have done this for eXtreme Programming and full SCRUM environments, as well as several hybrid approaches - for both fully co-located and distributed teams. The out-of-the-box setup of Jira is basically inadequate for all but the most trivial environments. For those and slightly more complex environments, the use of BaseCamp or PivitolTracker is likely more appropriate. But if you have a moderate to highly complex environment, Jira is a great tool if properly set up. The GreenHopper Agile plug-in has some usefulness depending on how "SCRUMly" you want to be - but is not a silver bullet. The setup of Jira for complex environments is not for the faint of heart. The myriad of parameters across fields, issue types, screens, permissions, etc., and all their associated "schemes" is highly complex and not always intuitive. Of the numerous times I have setup Jira in these complex environments, it has taken several weeks of analysis of cross-organizational work flows, and continuous iteration of the setup. There really is no "cookbook" to do this -- one has to fully understand what they are trying to accomplish organizationally and process-wise -- and then how to accomplish this in Jira. The customization possibilities are seemingly endless - especially the custom workflow ability which is one of the most beneficial features. There are numerous add-ons that can be very helpful. But if you use any of the Atlassian unsupported 3rd party plug-ins, you are on your own and can sometimes have problems with backward and forward compatibility. In general, the Atlassian support is very good - although not always as quick as you may want. If you are a medium to large enterprise, you want to have a resident Jira expert around. If you are hosting, you definitely need someone who is IT savvy in the Atlassian toolset installation and configuration. I have never utilized formal Jira training, but it would likely be of benefit to organizations adopting Jira without an in-house expert. There are several tools you likely want to use in parallel - the Confluence Wiki is indispensable and integrates quite nicely into the overall business process. You may also consider the Crowd user management (integrated with LDAP server), and FishEye for integration to the configuration control system. The other tools in the Atlassian suite are powerful, but not always needed, depending on your organization. I have never had the need to do custom development to extend Jira, as many plug-ins are available. So, custom plugins can be done, of course, with programming talent, but likely not needed in all but the most rare circumstances. Depending on the size of the organization, the tools can be on the expensive side -- but if done right in terms of customization and surrounded with a proper business process, you can usually recoup the cost in gained productivity. So in summary: * Use Jira for high to very-highly complex environments * Use the GreenHopper plugin for Agile if you are doing SCRUM - but take care process-wise how you configure and utilize it * Make use of the custom workflow capability - it's one of the most valuable features, but requires careful analysis of the organizational workflow and process * Have an in-house expert for Jira administration. If you are hosting Jira or any of the affiliated tools, you will need expertise on the IT side of the world, specific to these tools * Balance the cost of Jira and associated tools with a fair and objective evaluation of the gains in productivity |
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