Why is JIRA the Most Trending and Must-Know Tool for any QA?

What is one of the most important phases of developing any software product? It's delivering high-quality error-free software of course! That is only possible b

Why is JIRA the Most Trending and Must-Know Tool for any QA?

What is one of the most important phases of developing any software product? It's delivering high-quality error-free software of course! That is only possible b

What is one of the most important phases of developing any software product? It's delivering high-quality error-free software of course! That is only possible by planning to use the right testing tools. The best way to deliver quality software applications quickly is by practicing agile project management methodology. 

 

Agile project management needs continuous planning, testing, and integration. To achieve all this with precision, you need the best quality assurance tools that specialize in project management. Jira is one of the most reliable and suitable project management tools that can be effectively used for integration in agile software testing. To know more about what is JIRA and how to use JIRA for QA testing among other quality assurance tools and techniques, read on! 

 

What is JIRA?

JIRA is a project management tool and among the best Quality Assurance tools developed by the Australian company Atlassian. It is software used for tracking issues and managing tasks, projects as well as teams as well as it is one of the best software quality assurance services in the world and the most used software for keeping the track. It is an organized tool for supporting any type of project by incorporating a great number of features and integrations. Many businesses also use JIRA software in non-standard ways such as a warehouse automation tool, for document flow, expenses optimization, and others. 

 

Why does JIRA have that added edge? JIRA for project management works as an issue tracking tool. It is mainly utilized to track, organize, and prioritize issues, bugs, features, and tasks related to projects. The JIRA platform is beneficial when the project uses agile methodology during development. Testing with JIRA brings teams together for everything as it helps teams plan, assign, track, report, and manage work effectively.

 

Who uses JIRA?

Testing with JIRA is used by software teams to organize and track work. It is mainly used by Quality Assurance teams for test case management to track bugs and issues as well as manage tasks so collaboration with other teams becomes easy. 

 

JIRA is an efficient QA tools software that helps teams to aggregate together and work effectively in unity on a project. For the agile teams which follow scrum or kanban concepts, the JIRA board creates a visual representation of all work so that everyone from the team has visibility into each unit of the work’s current status and can quickly identify blockers in the workflow. QA engineers add identified issues to the tool, write its description and steps to reproduce, set a priority, assign team members and update the status. All team members that have access to the board can track progress.

 

JIRA core features

Here are some of the core features of JIRA for project management.

  1. Agile Boards: A board in JIRA software is a part of a project that displays issues and offers teams a flexible way to view, manage, and report about work in progress. Agile is a fundamental application of JIRA, and it encourages the smooth utilization of all the features of Scrum boards and Kanban boards. 
  2. Scrum board: This board is designed for teams who want to plan their tasks in detail before they can start a project.
  3. Kanban board: This board is used by teams that focus on managing and constraining their work-in-progress. It enables the team to initiate a project without a structured plan.
  4. Projects: A project is a collection of issues that are held in common by purpose or context. Issues grouped into projects can be configured in a variety of ways, ranging from visibility restrictions to available workflows.
  5. Issue: The bugs, tasks, or any type of enhancement request which can be generated or that can be tracked is defined as an issue.
  6. Workflows: Workflows represent the sequential path an issue takes from creation to completion.
  7. Reports: JIRA provides different types of reports within a project to track progress over a specific timeframe, deadlines, and individual contributions among others. 
  8. JIRA security: The security settings of JIRA bug tracking software restrict the access of certain bugs to only those people who are allowed to work on the bug or a team member of the given security level.
  9. Dashboard: The dashboard is the first thing that you can see once you log onto your JIRA software. The admin can customize the dashboard’s view and the things displayed on it.
  10. Product integration: The integration features of JIRA software make software development simpler and easier together with other tools. Some of the JIRA integrations are Salesforce Sales Cloud, GitHub, Zephyr, and Atlassian Confluence among others.

 

JIRA Issue Types

If you are using JIRA for test management, you must know about JIRA issue types. JIRA issues would track bugs or issues that underlie the project. Once you have imported a project, you can create issues. While creating a new issue, QA professionals can specify its type. For instance, they can label a specific issue as a bug, task, new feature, or improvement. 

 

The testers have the option to link the issues to specific components or versions of the software. These features help QA professionals to differentiate similar issues and track each issue more efficiently. Here's a list of the default issue types that come with each JIRA product. By default, software projects come with one parent issue type:

 

By default, software projects come with three standard issue types:

 

By default, software projects come with one child issue type:

 

Issue fields

As with workflows, needs relating to JIRA ticket fields can vary greatly from project to project. However, every project should ideally have the following ticket fields at a minimum: