Atlassian JIRA Introduction to JIRA Issue

and Project Tracking Software Tutorial 1

Once again, we are back with another tool tutorial. This time its the Issue and Project
Tracking Software Atlassian JIRA. You will learn JIRA issue tracking tool with this series
of simple and easy to understand JIRA training tutorials.
*********************
UPDATE: Below text tutorials are good for learning JIRA tool. But if you are looking for
learning quickly from experts using Videos check out this JIRA video course:
For your convenience we have listed all the JIRA tutorials in this series:
Tutorial #1: Introduction to JIRA Issue and Project Tracking Tool
Tutorial #2: How Are Issues Handled in JIRA?
Tutorial #3: Creating and Working with Sub-tasks in JIRA
Tutorial #4: Managing Issues, Workflow Progress & Reporting Feature
Tutorial #5: Admin Aspects of JIRA Test Management Tool
Tutorial #6: Using JIRA for Managing Agile Projects
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Before we get into what this tool is, how it can be used and who it is used by, I want to lay
out some ground rules that will help us learn any tool easily and effectively in a short period
of time.

I personally think that learning any tool has 2 phases to it:

1. Understanding the underlying process
2. Learning the tool itself- features/capabilities/shortcomings etc.
Take the case of JIRA. Think that you are a newbie and know nothing about it. You have
heard about it from various friends, online references etc. You want to try your hand at it.
How can you do that?
Ask yourself these questions: What kind of tool is it? Who uses it?

Tip: When you are learning a tool (or any other software) and you want to get a nontechnical description, Wikipedia is the best place to start. Since wiki is aimed at a general
audience, the information will be easy for you to understand without being overwhelming.
JIRA is an Incident Management tool; what is Incident management? This is the stage when
you forget all about the tool and work on the process.
Before we see more details about this tool, lets get familiar to the incident management
process.
Incident Management Process overview:
Any task that is to be completed can be considered an incident.
The top 10 Incident Management requirements are:
1. An incident has to be created
2. Additional information needs to be added to the incident to make the description
comprehensive
3. Each stage of its progress should be marked and moved along the steps until
completion
4. The stages or steps that the incident needs to go through should be defined
5. It might be linked to other incidents or have some child incidents
6. Incidents might have to be grouped according to some common rules
7. Concerned people should be aware of the incident creation/change in the state
8. Others should be able to provide their feedback on a certain defects
9. Incident should be searchable
10. Reports have to available, if we need to see any trends
Whether it is JIRA or any other incident management tool, they should be able to support
these core 10 requirements and enhance them if possible, right? In this series, we will look
into how JIRA fares with respect to our list.
What is JIRA?
It is a defect tracking/project management tool by Atlassian, Inc., the current version is 6. It is
platform independent.
You can download JIRA and try it free for 30 days at this page: Download JIRA
Who uses JIRA?
Software project development teams, help desk systems, leave request systems etc.

Coming to its applicability to QA teams, it is widely used for bug tracking, tracking project
level issues- like documentation completion and for tracking environmental issues. A
working knowledge of this tool is highly desirable across the industry.
Basics about JIRA:
JIRA in its entirety is based on 3 concepts.

1. Issue: Every task, bug, enhancement request; basically anything to be created and
tracked via JIRA is considered an Issue.
2. Project: a collection of issues
3. Workflow: A workflow is simply the series of steps an issue goes through starting
from creation to completion.
Say the issue first gets created, goes to being worked on and when complete gets closed. The
work flow in this case is:

Let us get hands on:

Once you create a trial, an OnDemand account gets created for you and you will be able to
login to it.

How Are Issues Handled in JIRA?

Atlassian JIRA Tutorial #2
Working with JIRA issues
JIRA we are in the midst of self-learning this tool. In the last JIRA tutorial, we talked about
the underlying JIRA process the Incident Management and a few high-level details of the
tool itself.
Today we move on to yet another interesting topic How are issues handled in JIRA?
Before we get into more details let us reiterate what an issue is:
An issue is anything that you would track to completion. Some examples specific to QA can
be a document to be created, a document to be reviewed, a bug or an environmental
issue.
Let us move on to creating an issue assuming the user logged in is not an admin and our test
project Test for STH with components Module 1 and Module 2, versions version 1 and
Version 2. Key TFS is already created.

Creating a JIRA issue:

Issues form the crux of JIRA, so to create them there in option right on the menu bar:

Click on Create Issue button. Alternately, when you type c while on the JIRA page, the
following Create Issue dialog opens up.

All the fields in this page are self explanatory. We will discuss the most important one below.
Project: Every issue belongs to a project. You can choose the same by clicking on the drop
down and choosing the project that you want this issue to belong to.

Issue type: This field displays all the types of issues that can be created and tracked via
JIRA. The following options are available in this list (this list might differ depending on the
setting set by the administrator):

The items Bug, new feature, task, improvement are exactly what their names imply. Epic and
story are more relevant to agile projects. Story is a requirement in Agile that needs to be
tracked from start to finish. Epic is a group of stories.
Choose the issue type as needed. I am going to go with Bug.
Summary: Give your bug a title here. When used right, this field can be very successful at
transmitting a lot of critical information. Some aspects to note here:
A bug/defect is essentially something that is not right. The right way to approach a bug title is
to concisely define whats wrong.
An example of a bad title/summary is : There should be an option to clear the contents on
the screen. When I read this my initial reaction is going to be Okay, there should be- but
whats the problem here? Is the option not present at all? Or is the option present and not
clearing the content?
It is also agreed, that when I open this bug and look into it in detail, I am sure I will find the
answer to this question.
However, the emphasis here is to use this Summary field in the most efficient manner.
Therefore, a more apt summary/title would be The option to clear the contents on the home
login page does not clear the fields when clicked.
In the limited space that this field provides try to write your title in a way that communicates
the exact issue without any ambiguity.
Priority: This field can take one of the following values.
Choose an appropriate option for your bug.

Component: This list will display the components of the Project. Choose appropriately.
Affected Version and Fix version: These two fields will display the versions available for
the project. It is not necessary that a certain issue that you encountered in a certain version
gets fixed in the same one. In cases like that, you can choose the affected version as the
current version and fix version as the next one.
Also, these fields can take multiple values. You can choose to set that a certain issue affects
both version 1 and version 2 as below:

Assignee: You can type the name of the person to whom this issue should be handed over
further. You can also assign an issue to yourself.

Creating and Working with Sub-tasks

(Divisions of a Parent Issue) in JIRA
Tutorial #3
Having created an issue successfully in the last JIRA tutorial we are on our way to master yet
another important topic today Creating and working with sub-tasks in JIRA.
A sub-task is nothing but a division of a parent issue (task) into chunks of work that can
be assigned and tracked individually.
Example 1: A QA related example could be of the task of Test documentation. Test
documentation by itself is an activity that might take a week to finish. Say, it involves the
following aspects: Test plan documentation which takes 2 days. Test case documentation 2
days, Test plan review day and Test case review 1 day. Also assume that there are 2
resources.
In this case we can create a JIRA issue of the type task for Test documentation and have the
following four sub tasks under it:
1. Test plan documentation assigned to resource 1
2. Test case documentation assigned to resource 2
3. Test plan review- assigned to resource 2
4. Test case review- assigned to resource 1

By doing so, it is easier to have a better insight into the progress task wise and resource wise
by breaking a sizeable parent task into sub-tasks.
Note: It should not be confused that an issue type of Task only contains sub-tasks. An
issue of any type can have sub-tasks.
Example 2: An example related to bug could be if a bug is encountered and needs a code
change to fix it, the developer can use a sub-task to track this code-fix that needs to take
place. Here, the code-fix (of type sub-task) becomes a sub-task under the bug found (of type
Bug).

You can create sub-tasks by following one of the two methods:

1. Create a sub-task to an issue, or
2. Convert an issue to a sub-task and choose a parent

We will see both the ways below.

Method 1: Creating a sub-task under a parent issue

When a parent issue is already created the following steps can be followed to create a subtask under it:
1) Open the issue. Go to More drop down in option on the top. Choose the Create subtask option from the list.
(click on any image to enlarge)

2) The Create Subtask dialog with the parent issue number will come up. This is similar to
the create issue dialog, except that:

Project: this field does not exist, because the sub-task will have to under
the project that the parent is created.
Issue type- auto populated as sub task. The drop down also has a
Technical Task as an alternative. In case of our example 2, marking it is a
Technical task will be more appropriate.

3) Enter the information as desired and click on Create to create the sub-task. Once created,
the link to the sub-task will appear in the Sub-tasks section of the parent issue as shown
below:

Note: You can choose to add a new sub-task by clicking on the + sign in the sub-tasks
section shown above.
4) Click on the link of the sub-task that you want to created. The details will be displayed as
below.

Method 2: Converting an issue into a sub-task

1) Open a created issue. Go to More drop down list and choose Convert to Sub-task
option. The following screen gets displayed.
Type in the issue ID or you can search it by using the link provided.
As the message on the screen specifies: only non-sub-task type issues already existing
under the same project can be chosen.
Choose the sub-task type as either Sub-task or technical task.
Click Next.

2) Continue with steps 2 and 3 by choosing Next

3) Step 4 will show you the conversion summary. Choose Finish to convert an issue to a subtask.

Atlassian JIRA Tutorial #4 Managing

Issues, Using Workflow Progress and the
Reporting Feature
JIRA User Module Conclusion
We have seen the different kinds of issues and how to create them in our previous JIRA
Tutorials. This is a next JIRA tutorial in this series where we will learn how to use them, the
workflow progress and the reporting feature of JIRA.
The issue once created can be accessed by searching the ID, browsing the Issues menu item
or going to the project details and checking the issues tab.
When you access an issue and click on its link, the details will be displayed. All the actions
that can be performed on the particular issue are available on the header of an issue details
screen:

We will go in a sequential order from Right to left and discuss all the options.

Manage Issues in JIRA:

1) Edit: As the name suggests, this option lets you modify an issue created. Click on it and
modify the information as desired. Choose Update when done. This is similar to Create
Issue dialog.

2) Comment: This is a useful way to record the proceedings on an issue and to communicate
with the concerned members. Enter your comments and choose the option to restrict
viewership:

3) Assign: This is the option you would need when you want to shift the ownership of an
issue. Enter the Assignee information, comments (anything that you would want to
communicate) and choose the viewership of the comment. Once an issue is assigned to the
user, an automatic email is sent (if this option is chosen by the admin) and the issue appears
on the assignees dashboard on login.

4) More: The following options are available under the More menu item:

Agile Board, Rank to Top, Rank to Bottom -> Related to Agile Projects the details of
which are going to be coming up in a later article.
Attach Files, Attach Screenshots -> Lets you attach files to an issue. The screenshot option
will auto capture a screenshot. All you need to do is print screen on your machine and you
can directly copy it here into JIRA.

Add Vote, Voters, Stop watching, Watchers -> Voting is a process that JIRA users can
perform to support the resolution of an issue favorably or unfavorably. The options in this
section facilitate the same. You can also choose to watch an issue when you do so, all the
changes to it will be notified to you.
Create Sub-Task, Convert to Sub-task -> These are the options that help create and work
with sub-tasks. The details are available in tutorial #3 of the JIRA series.
Labels -> This concept is similar to the Labels that we find on various blog and web pages.
You can categorize issues based on Version and Component formally, but when in need of
something more informal, this option can be used. For example, all the issues raised to track
peer review comments can be labeled peer review to view and track them easily.
5) Log work: This is a way to track the progress on your issue in terms of time. When this
option is used, the following dialog opens up. As you can see, the detailed information about
how much time is spent on an issue, how much is remaining, etc can be logged here.
(Click on images to enlarge)

6) Move: JIRA issues can be moved across projects. However, the move from one project to
another might mean a different target workflow, a different issue type, a new status etc. It is
therefore advisable to analyze thoroughly how the move is going to affect the issue before
going ahead with this.

7) Link: This is a very versatile feature of JIRA that allows you can logically link issues
with one another and establish relationships/dependencies.
An example situation where this can be used in QA projects is when a certain defect prevents
you from working a certain requirement. You can use this option to show the dependency.
When this link is accessed, the following dialog opens up. Using this dialog is very simple:

The different kind of associations can be chosen from the This issue list box. The list
contains:

Alternately, you can choose to include a web-link as a reference.

8) Clone: As the name implies you can create a duplicate for an issue.

When an issue is cloned:

The cloned issues summary begins with CLONE prefixed.

There will be a link established between the parent issue and the cloned
issue.

9) Email issue: Click on the icon

. Enter the information for the recipient of the issue
information in the below dialog that opens up. An email with the JIRA issue details will be
sent.

10) Export: JIRA also provides a way to write the issue information to external files. To do
so, click on the Export button at the right most corner and you will see the formats to which
you can download a JIRA issue:

How to move a JIRA issue through the different stages of

Workflow?
1) An issue created in JIRA is always in the status Open upon creation.
2) The workflow stages that it goes depends on the project type and the workflow assigned to
the project while creation.
3) Only Admin will be able to choose this and once chosen, it cannot be changed and all the
issues under the project will go through the same workflow.
4) When Start Progress button is clicked the issue status changes to In Progress and
button label changes to Stop Progress which when clicked will revert the status back to
Open.
5) Clicking on Workflow button will display you a list box of the next stages that an issue
can go to.

6) If the issue needs to be set to Resolved directly, there is a Resolve issue button
available. On clicking it you will be able to choose the reason for saying the issue is fixed.

7) To view the workflow that the certain issue goes through, click on the View workflow
link that is next to the status field of an issue in the issue details page. For example, for my
issue the workflow displayed is:

JIRA Reports:
JIRA also comes with a robust reporting feature. There are many kinds of reports that it
facilitates. Browse through a project whose details you would want to get a report of and go
to the Reports tab. Here you will see a list of all the reports that can present for you.
Choose the report and set the data criteria and you will have a custom made report in hand
within no time.

Also, for an incident management tool, a user would expect strong search features and JIRA
fits the bill in this area too. So, be sure to leverage that to your benefit.

Conclusion:
This brings us to an end the JIRA- User part of the series. As always, we hope these 4 JIRA
tutorials in the series will not only helps you use Atlassian JIRA issue tracking software
successfully but also aids you in achieving best results for your Project/Incident/Test/Defect
management activities.

Learn the Admin Aspects of JIRA Test

Management Tool Tutorial #5
JIRA Administration:

We are going to learn all about JIRA administration today. This is a unique opportunity to
learn the admin aspects of a Project/Incident/Test Management tool.
This is the 5th tutorial in our JIRA learning series. Check all the tutorials in this series on
this JIRA Tutorials page.
Not all of them are as effective (and simple) and as accessible from the UI as it is for JIRA.
So, as always, concepts are more important than the tool specific details look out for the
operations and their importance- that will help you to estimate what you can expect from the
Admin module of any tool.
Note: When you create a trial, new JIRA URL will be created for you and the first user who
registers will be the admin by default. Use that initial ID to learn the features that are going to
be discussed in this article.

JIRA- Project Management:

Project management is one of the first and most important concepts in administration. A JIRA
admin can:
1. Create a project
2. Configure an already created Project.

Create Project:
1) Once you login, in the dashboard itself you will have a few options to get started:

2) You can either click on the item in the list or you can choose:

Or go to the Administration->Projects menu option:

And then in this page, you will have an option to Add Project
3) Choose any of the above 3 methods to add a project. In the below window, choose the
type of the project.
Tip: The Project type will determine the type of workflow your issues will go through.

Note: Please note the Import from external systems link at the bottom of the page. If you
have been using a different bug/issue tracking system and would like to migrate to JIRA. This
is the option you could use. Also, if all you had earlier is an excel sheet for all your issues,
you can create a project by importing all the issues in the CSV file into JIRA.
4) Enter the project Name, Key (once chosen cannot be changed) and assign a Project Lead
(the person who is responsible for the overall project). Click Submit when done.

5) The project gets created and the following details are displayed. By going to the
Administration link you will be able to configure the project.(in case of an already
configured project, you can edit the configurations)

Configuring a Project:
As you can see below, you can choose the issue types that need to show up, the workflow that
the project follows, versions and components, people involved and the level of access
permissions they have etc. (Click to enlarge image)

User Management
User creation being the most important part of the User Management process, it is not limited
to just that. The other important user related activities performed by a JIRA admin are:
1. Edit a particular user information
2. Delete a user
3. Creating users groups
4. Creating Roles
5. Permissions
6. Setting Preferences

We will see the creations, deleting and editing of an issue in details below. For the rest of the
operations, we would encourage you to try them on the site with your trial ID.
Note: With the trial you can add up to 10 users to your account i.e., 9 additional users and 1
admin, yourself.
Firstly, Go to Administration->User Management:
There are two ways in which you can add users to JIRA.

Create them manually.

Send an invite to join JIRA to a users email ID

Let us look at create manually in detail:

1) Click on Create User button in the below page: (Click to enlarge image)

2) Enter the user details in the Create new user dialog that opens up. In the below example
I have entered only mandatory fields. The others are self-explanatory and can be set as
required.

3) On Clicking create, the user gets added and the following confirmation page comes up for
the user. (Click to enlarge image)

An email is sent to the ID provided to the user with the information on to how to set up a
password that would enable the user to login and use JIRA.
Method 2 of user creation, via email invites:
1) Click on the Invite users button in the User Management->Users screen and enter one or
more email IDs in the below dialog that opens up. When done, click Send.

2) The invitation sent message comes up when the message is successfully sent.
3) In case of an email invite, the user is not added until the recipient of the email invite acts
on the received invitation.

Editing a user:
1) Go to the User Management -> Users page. All the users available will be displayed. The
top portion of this page contains a Filter section. This can be used to manipulate how/what
user information needs to be displayed. You can choose to keep it empty, in which case it
displays all the users available.
2) Below the filter is a list o f users organized in a tabular form is displayed. (Click to enlarge
image)

3) Note the Edit link in the Operations column. Click on the corresponding Edit link
for the user whose information is to be modified.

You will be able to change the following profile information.

Delete a user:
Choose the Delete link corresponding to the user you would like deleted from JIRA. The
following confirmation message is displayed and you can choose to delete a user or cancel
the operation.

A JIRA admin can additionally:

1. Configure the look and feel
2. Configure workflows
3. Set Project/issue level security details.
4. Can add custom fields/screens
5. Integrate a JIRA project with development tools to make sure that the
commit, revert , changes etc. can reflect immediately in JIRA.
6. Configure Dashboard settings
7. Set time/time zone information.
8. Configure and set email preferences

Please note that all the admin aspects of any tool should more or less support the activities we
have detailed above.
Also, admin access to a tool is very powerful and, with great power comes great

responsibility.
Typically, admin access is limited to just one person in an organization to make sure that
accidental inconsistencies do not happen. All the requests for changes, new projects or new
users are directed through the admin.

How to Use JIRA Effectively for Managing

Agile Projects JIRA Tutorial #6
This is the last tutorial in our JIRA self-learning tutorials series. We hope you find this series
useful. We welcome your feedback and suggestions. Let us know if you want us to cover such
series of detailed tutorials on other Software Testing or Automation testing topics.
JIRA Agile Project
Agile methodology for software development has gained immense popularity in the recent
years.
Agile Projects follow an incremental approach to development of the requirements.
The highlights of an Agile/Scrum Project are:
1. The requirements are created/agreed upon and the grouped together into
a Product Backlog
2. The requirements (User stories) are ranked in the order of priority and
business importance
3. Once ranked, the stories are assigned developmental cycles (Sprints) that
last for approx. 4-6 weeks.
4. The detailed documentation is avoided. Instead, a scrum board is
maintained that will show the status and progress.

JIRA successfully supports all the activities listed above for projects following an Agile
Methodology. In this article, we will see how.
Note Firstly, you will need JIRA Agile add-on if you have not gotten it already.
User stories in JIRA are created using JIRA issues:

You can have a product backlog by creating a main User story and having
various sub-tasks under it.

Or you can create an Issue type -Epic and Issue type Story linked to it. To
do so, in the Create Issue page you can go to Configure Fields and
choose Epic link field to be included in the issue creation screen. This
is the most commonly used method.

Note: You will not be able to link Epic to another Epic.

The next important feature of an Agile Project is the Scrum board. JIRA provides a solid
basis to facilitate it. The feature is called a Board, and it is right there under the Agile

menu item. (This menu option will be available only if you have the JIRA Agile add-in; this
was previously called GreenHopper)

JIRA features that help achieve the Agile process:

Feature #1) A user can create and manage boards in Agile. It will display the issues from
the same project or multiple projects so the progress can be monitored from one place
Feature #2) There are two kinds of boards in JIRA agile. What are they and what they do is
explained in the below window. Choose the appropriate board and continue through the steps
to create a board. You will have to choose the projects from which issues are to be
considered. In this article we are going to discuss a Scrum board.

Feature #3) After a board is created you will be able to configure it as you see fit. Basically,
there are two modes to a board Plan and work. As the name implies, plan is the part where
you can categorize your requirements (stories) into Sprints. Work mode is when you can track
the time spent and the overall progress. Apart from these two you can generate several
reports.
Feature #4) Plan mode:
The following is how the plan mode looks like: (Click to enlarge image)

The plan mode displays all the user stories created for the project.
You can use the LHS menu to decide the basis on which the issues need to
be displayed. You can choose to view all the issues or only the ones
related to a certain Epic.

Change the order in which issues need to be considered simply by

dragging them up or down in the backlog.

From the RHS side menu upon clicking on an issue, you can create links,
subtasks, logwork and perform any other activity like you would on a
normal issue.

You can use this screen to create a sprint too, if you have the right
permissions.

Feature #5) Work mode:

This will display the Active sprint information. All the user stories are going to be categorized
into To do, In progress and Done to show the progress clearly.

Feature #6) Agile Reports:

Go to Agile Board->Reports. As you can see, there are lots of custom Agile reports that can
be generated using JIRA. All you have to do is, choose the report that you would like and
decide the data based on which this report should be generated. (Click to enlarge image)

Feature #7) Managing boards:

With the right permissions or if you are an admin, you will be able to configure a board after
its creation. To do so, go to Agile->Manage Boards. In the following screen, select the
Configure option next to the board that you want to edit from the list of the all boards
available. (Click on image to enlarge)

From the following page that comes up you will be able to define/edit the details as needed:

Conclusion:
That completes the basic introduction into how JIRA can be used for Agile Projects. In my
opinion, the tool when used right can provide solid support for this methodology. Since the
focus on documentation is low in Agile, JIRA can be your one stop-shop to have
everything in one place.
Now, the obvious question: How is JIRA agile helpful for testers? Frankly, for the QA
fraternity the scope of JIRA is either for bug tracking or task tracking these do not change
whether they are Agile Projects or regular ones. But having a good knowledge of this
methodology by itself and the tool provided support is important because the IT world is
shifting its focus to Agile and we want to know all there is to know about it to make the
best of it.
This finishes our Atlassian JIRA tutorial series.
Please let us know your questions and comments below. If you are using JIRA tool please
share your experience.