Information Systems for Project Management [627123]

Information Systems for Project Management
JIRA and Agile Methodology Study

Robert ALEXE
Department of Engineering in Foreign Languages
University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest
Bucharest, Romania
[anonimizat]

Abstract— Software proje cts evolve rapidly, and the project
management tools need to be kept updated in order to add
value to the monitoring and visualization phases of a project .
The integration of Agile metho dology inside one of the most
well-known project management systems , JIRA , represent a
notable advance .
Keywords — agile, scrum, traditional development, project
lifecycle, jira, project tr acking, workflow, project p lanning,
project track ing, reporting
I. INTRODUCTION
During the last template Agile methodology has been
adopted in many organizations and it now represents the base
guideline in IT projects. By using this methodology
exhaustive, it comes the question of ho w to have a better
project analysis and monitoring using the existing
information systems used for traditional project
management . One of the main objectives in using the Agile
Methodology alongside a project tracking software like JIRA
is to deliver fast and to deploy new software and services that
respect the quality imposed by renamed companies
worldwide.
II. AGILE METHODOLOGY

Agile Methodology represents a combination of iterative
and incremental processes which have proven to be dynamic
by nature with the focus towards delivering value to the end –
user.
In the Agile Methodology there are many Agile Methods
that differ slightly from the point of view of the philosophy
behind and the practical applications of each of them. The
main methods identified are: Scr um, Kanban, XP (Extreme
Programming) and SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework). All
these methods use an integrated set of proven core practices
and techniques which have the main objectives to enable
team creativity, to obtain continuous feedback from the
stakeho lder and to demonstrate the solution components in
short, limited iterations.
In order to understand the benefits of Agile
Methodology, it is necessary to study the traditional
development problems in IT. The main problems of
traditional software developme nt are:
• Inflexibility to rapidly changing environments
• Business not aligned with technology
• Requirements deteriorate over time • Focus on projects instead of end -user value
As a parallel, Agile focuses on individuals and
interactions between them, working so ftware, customer
collaboration and fast responding to change – in other words
the notion of “agility”.
As a talking example, the report coming from “Version
One” shows interesting numbers for the agile adoption in
software projects.
It is clearly visible f rom Fig.1 that the main benefits from
the field are the ability to manage changing priorities,
increased team productivity and delivery speed (or time -to-
market). All these benefits come from the good organization
of Agile projects. Tasks are split into sm all, achievable
objectives thus productivity increases with at most 62%
comparing to regular projects (as Waterfall approach).

Fig. 1 – Benefits of Adopting Agile, VersionOne

Agile brings a lot of value added to a project, but it can
also be a challeng e to particular projects. One of the biggest
challenges that can be faced in using Agile methodology is
team inexperience. Teams’ habits are to read Agile books,
take basic certification courses but unfortunately the
gathered information is misapplied and incongruent with
core Agile principles and values.

Another challenge represents the specific culture of
organizations. Usually, long standing organizations have a

well-established process and bureaucracy in opposition with
the rapidity and innovation prop osed by Agile.

The last methodology to be described in conjunction
with JIRA afterwards is Scrum. Scrum represents the most
popular approach to Agile software development. The
deliverables are inspected after a specified period (usually
every two weeks to one month) – meaning every two weeks
or a month all the involved parties can see actual working
software and decide to release it or enhance it with new
features. All the project’s priorities are set by the business
roles (project owners or business analy sts) and the team
self-organizes to determine the best approach in order to
achieve the objective of delivering high priority features.

The Scrum lifecycle can be seen in Fig. 2 – the business
team organizes the sprint backlog by assigning priorities to
features, then the development team starts a 2 -4 weeks
sprint during which they solve the highest priority tasks.
Every day a daily scrum takes place where each involved
person explains the task in progress and possible
problems/risks. Using this approach, all team members gain
visibility on tasks and can intervene with their knowledge
towards rapid advancement.

Fig.2 – Scrum Lifecycle Diagram

The 4 ceremonies of Scrum approach are:

• Sprint planning – a meeting with the whole
team during which the scope and the objectives
of the next sprint are chosen
• Sprint demo – a meeting where the
development team shows to stakeholders the
features delivered during the sprint
• Daily standup – a 15 minutes meeting that
occurs daily with the main purpose of
synchronizin g the team with the work done by
each member
• Retrospective – a meeting with the scope of
reviewing the things that went well and wrong
during the sprint and possible actions to make
the next sprint better

III. JIRA FRAMEWORK

In order to create and main tain software projects it is
necessary to cope in the most efficient and organized way
with problems, anomalies and features that can occur.
JIRA is a bug -tracking and issue -tracking software
developed by an Australian company – Atlassian. The
product na me ‘JIRA’ is shortened from the word ‘Gojira’
which means Godzilla in Japanese.
It is widely used in project management and it can
encompass many projects that can hold issues and can
monitor the projects evolution. It is developed on a Java
platform and if offers many capabilities such as bug tracking,
issue tracking, tasks and project management.
JIRA software is organized on a hierarchical structure as
follows: projects represent the area where multiple tickets are
attached to. These tickets can have several states and these
states are part of a workflow. Each ticket is assigned a
different state by advancing the status of the ticket (action
called transition). The workflow can be configured such as
the user performing actions on the ticket may be req uired to
complete certain information that keep the ticket in a valid
state.

Fig.3 represents a workflow offered by default for a
typical JIRA project. Boxes represent the states a ticket can
have, and arrows represent possible transitions between
states . It is also possible to configure pre -functions and post –
functions that can be executer when a transition has been
triggered.

Fig. 3 – JIRA Standard workflow

A list of exhaustive JIRA key feature is:
• Scrum boards
• Project planning
• Project tracking
• Repo rting
• Notifications

Regarding notable advantages introduced by JIRA, the
most important ones are: improved collaboration, improved
tracking of tasks, better planning, increased productivity as
stated in productivity reports, improved customer satisfacti on
by real -time task monitoring and flexibility in daily use.
The top five reasons users mostly use JIRA are: Agile at
Scale, Industry Leading Workflow Engine, Powerful

Searching and Reporting, Deployment options and
Integration with everything.
The mos t important reason, Agile at Scale, also
represents the subject of the current article. Scrum and
Kanban boards improve project success and deliver value on
iterations. Alongside with its Agile plugin, JIRA can scale
Agile across the whole organization. It also has a
functionality that integrates projects with GitHub or SVN
and links issues to commits.
The other important JIRA reason is Integration with
everything. JIRA is an open -source project and it provides
access to its core functionalities via publis hed API. Thus,
developers can enrich its functionalities by creating plugins.
At current time, there are more than 600 plugins and add -ons
in the Atlassian Marketplace – plugins used to connect with
the applications and tools used every day.
Regarding dep loyment options, Atlassian provides simple
Windows and Linux installers for standalone installations.
Another option is also provided – OnDemand JIRA
installation, which gives access to a cloud instance of JIRA
product, managed by Atlassian company.
IV. USE OF AGILE PLUGINS IN JIRA

JIRA did not embrace Agile methodology from its early
versions. Until version 6.7.16, JIRA needed a plugin named
“JIRA Agile” in order to give access to Agile functionalities
within the platform.
Starting from 2017, the “JIRA Agile” plugin has been
retired and all its functionality has been incorporated into the
standalone JIRA software. This step emphasizes the
increased usage of Agile functionalities within Atlassian’s
main product.
The main resumed benefits of using JIRA Agile
functionality are:
• Backlog – a list that shows what tasks are in the
store for the upcoming sprints and releases
• Active sprints – shows what items are worked
upon in the current sprint
• Reports – help generate different reports to
check the sprint progress, v elocity chart,
burndown chart
• Smooth collaboration between stakeholder and
developers throughout the project as JIRA has
better visibility of the entire project
• Captures planned vs. actual effort – useful in
forecasting project performance (cost KPI,
sched ule variance, effort variance, productivity)
as these KPIs are used in status reports to
provide project status to stakeholders
• Reduce downtime between tasks in current
sprint
• Better prioritization of tasks – developers can
start with tasks that have most value to the
stakeholders
• Integrated Tracker system & Workflow system
– helps notify the particular agents when an event occurs, or any activity/task is getting
updated thus keeping traceability of all the
actions within the project
• Implementation of SLAs / KPIs and Metrics in
JIRA Service Desk version

The architecture of JIRA Agile Tool is the following: a
sprint starts with the sprint planning, encompasses the
development work during the sprint and ends with the review
and retrospective. The number of it ems (called Stories or
Sub-Tasks) in the product backlog is likely to be more than a
develop team can complete in a short -duration sprint of 2 -4
weeks maximum. For this reason, the development team will
determine at the beginning of the sprint a subset of the
product backlog items it believes it can complete – activity
called sprint planning.
Scrum board is the most used approach for JIRA Agile
functionality. Scrum board has three modes/views:
• Backlog/Plan mode – shows what is in store for
upcoming sprints and releases
• Active Sprint/Work mode – shows which items
are worked upon in the current sprint and their
status
• Reports – helps generating different reports to
check the sprint progress, velocity chart,
burndown chart

Backlog or Plan mode can be used to p repare a backlog
with tasks and prioritize them. It can also be used to group
the user stories under different sprints depending on their
priority. In backlog mode it is also possible to estimate the
user stories/tasks and once estimated, move the user sto ry to
active sprint. One other possible action is to create different
sub-tasks under user stories, such as build, unit test, system
test, peer review, deploy. The other useful identified
functionalities are:
• Create the sprints
• Estimations in terms of hour s possible by
configuring the board
• Stories can be grouped under each sprint
• Number of user stories/issues and the story
points/hours are automatically displayed to
make plan easier

Fig. 4 – Backlog view in JIRA

Fig. 6 – Burndown Chart in JIRA
Active sprint or work mode is used for creating subtasks,
bug tasks, reminders etc. Each of these subtasks falls under
one of the following default statuses: To -do, In Progress and
Done. Moreover, other statuses can be added to reflect the
business activities of a specific project (for example – the
Ready for Test status which can notify testers if a user story
has been finished by developers and needs testing before
being presented to stakeholders at the end of the sprint). In
active sprint mode the subtasks can be dragged from one
status to an other as they are progressed. Once all the subtasks
within a user story are closed, the title of the user story will
be strike through. Work mode is also very useful during the
daily standup meetings to have an overview of the
advancement on the sprint.
Typically, the work mode view is divided into three
columns: To Do, In Progress and Done. The project
administrator (usually the business analyst or product owner)
can add, delete or rename these columns in order to reflect
the most accurate business meaning s.

Fig. 5 – Active Sprint view in JIRA
Report mode is used to generate different reports to go
back in time and look at historical trends, check the timing of
transitions and find out project and team performance. One
other useful feature is that the J IRA user can build its own
directory of customized reports that can be triggered by a
single click and sent to email or exported on a daily, weekly
or monthly schedule. The reports can also be shared with
other team members so that they can run a copy of t he user’s
personalized reports.
Some of the most interesting reports generated by JIRA
Agile are the sprint burndown chart and the velocity report.
The sprint burndown chart is used to show the team’s
track record for the current active sprint. The report draws a
line from the beginning of the sprint (on the left in Fig. 6)
and until the end of the sprint (on the right in Fig. 6).
Usually, the remaining story points have to stay under the
guideline line, which can be seen colored in gray. It is a very
useful report because it provides insight into how the team
advances with the work in a given sprint. The report shows if the team consistently finishes work
early – meaning they aren’t committing enough or fear of not
finishing the sprint or shows if the te am constantly misses
the forecast – meaning they didn’t have a realistic view of
the workload and committed to too much work.
The velocity report is very useful to team leads or
managers who have to care about tracking team velocity. The
chart shows the am ount of value delivered during each sprint
and it enables the team leader to make predictions regarding
the workload team can reach during the future sprints. It is a
very useful chart during sprint planning, when teams can
have an idea of the workload the y can sustain, given velocity
data from previous sprints.

Fig. 7 – Workload Chart in JIRA

V. CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES

The current paper has shown how industry evolves in
order to have better visibility and monitoring of projects and
to reach t he most important goal in project management –
how to achieve the goal of delivering high -quality products
in an efficient and shorter time.
During an Atlassian summit it has been presented the
theme of implementing Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) in
JIRA. I t is a courageous approach because Agile at scale
represents a challenge in every project. Some further
questions need to be asked regarding this subject – how to
work across geographically divided multi -teams, how to
track the overall progress of the mult i-teams and how to
synchronize the activities in a large -scaled environment.

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