In this video, we will discuss an overview of Jira. We will start by discussing Jira and its hierarchy. In this course, we will use Atlassian Jira as a tool to help work with Agile processes. We will use hands-on Jira labs to reinforce the Agile principles and practices that you will learn. Jira is software used to help manage, develop, and communicate about projects. The projects can be team projects or individual projects. They can be quite complex or rather simple. The product that is developed for the project can be just about anything. Jira is very easy to get started with, it's very flexible and can be used in a way that matches your Agile processes. Jira can even be used if you mainly follow a waterfall approach to project management. Jira is organized around a hierarchy. The highest level is what we call the application level. A single Jira application can contain any number of projects. In the hands-on lab associated with this video, you will sign up for a free Jira site that you can use to create projects. The next level of the Jira hierarchy is the project level. A project contains one or more issues. An issue is any work item related to the project. The next level is a level of a specific issue. At this level you can see and change the details of the issue. An issue can represent any work that needs to be done in the project. When you log into Jira using your browser, you can view the projects on your site by clicking the Projects drop down in the navigation bar at the top. You will then see a list of projects that you recently worked on and can click "View all projects" to see the list of projects on your site as shown here. You can also click on your work to see recent projects as well as recent issues that you've worked on. Once you have navigated to a specific project, you will see a project sidebar. All of the links in the sidebar only apply to the current project. If you click on the issues link in the project sidebar, you will see a list of issues in the project. You can also view the details of an issue on the right. Here you can see three sample issues listed and they are used to help build some of the features of the project. We've now seen the two main ways to navigate in Jira. The navigation bar at the top of the screen is always visible and usually the options there apply to all projects on your site. For example, you can search for issues across your entire site using the search box in the upper right. Once you've selected a project, you can use the Projects sidebar to work inside of the project. In the top navigation bar, the icon to the left of the "Your work" link is the Jira icon. This icon may look different depending on which Jira products you're using on your site. You can click this icon to view a list of the projects in your site. The icon that we see here is for Jira software, which is the product that you will be using for the hands-on portion of this course. The term software in Jira software is a nod to the fact that there are integrations and other features related to software development. However, Jira software is used to manage the work of many other types of products too. In addition to Jira software, other Jira products include Jira Core and Jira Service Desk. Jira Core is included with Jira software. Also, if you use both Jira software and Jira Service Desk, your icon will look like this, indicating that both products are available on the site. The icon in the upper left of the top navigation bar opens the "Switch to" menu. This allows you to switch to any other Atlassian products or sites that you may be using. This course focuses on Jira software, but you are free to try any of the other products. Most of these products have free plans that you can use indefinitely. Notice that there's also an administration link that is to access site administration, which we will discuss later. Next, we will discuss creating a project and issues. To create a project, click on the Projects drop down in the top navigation, then click on " Create project". While viewing a list of projects, you can also click the "Create project" button in the upper right. You will create your first project in the first reading for this course. When you click on create project, you're given a choice of creating a classic project or a next-gen project, along with the list of the differences between the two types of projects. Classic Projects are traditional Jira projects. In general, they are more mature and have more functionality than next-gen projects. They have more configuration capabilities and configurations can be shared among multiple projects. They are created by Jira administrators. Next-gen projects are newer to Jira and capabilities are being added by the Atlassian engineers in an agile way. While there are many similarities, Next-gen projects have a different perspective on managing the projects. Instead of Jira administrators mainly creating and configuring projects. Next-gen projects can be easily created and configured by the members of the project team. The configuration applies only to that project, so team members don't have to worry that they are changing the configuration of other projects. The type of project that you create is up to you and your organization. Some organizations may choose to only use classic projects and keep better control over the project configuration. Some organizations may prefer the ease and flexibility of Next-gen projects and some organizations may allow the project teams to choose. In this course, you will mainly work with classic projects because they currently have more capabilities. In certain circumstances, you'll be given the option of using Next-gen projects. The hands-on labs will identify the type of project that you should create. Either way, what you learn in this course is foundational to any type of project that you choose. In the create project window for a classic project, you can enter a project name. Here we are naming our project ''Project A.'' Jira will automatically suggest a project key, which is an additional shorter name for your project. We will discuss project keys later. Notice that there's a template associated with our project. A template defines the projects initial configuration. Each template provides different default behavior and tools. Here we can see that the template is set to Kanban. Among other things, this means that a Kanban board will be included with the project. We will discuss Kanban projects later in the course. If you click on ''Change Template," you can view the available templates. When you click on ''Change Template," Jira provides you a choice of templates. We can see here that software is selected from the drop down. This means that you are being shown the project templates for Jira software. These are the three Jira software templates that you can choose from, Kanban, Scrum, and Bug-tracking. If you select ''Business'' from the drop-down, you are shown the Jira Core Project Templates. These are templates that apply generally to any business, such as managing the new hire process with the recruitment template. Jira Core Templates are included with Jira software, which is why these templates are available on your site. In this course, we will focus on Jira software templates, especially the Kanban and Scrum templates. When you are happy with the project name, project key and template, click ''Create'' to create the project. After creating the project, you can view some of its details and tools in the sidebar. We will discuss these throughout the course. To create an issue for the project, click on the ''Create'' button in the top navigation bar. In the Create Issue window, you can see and change the details of the issue. The details are called fields. We can see that this issue belongs to the project A, project. The issue also has a type, which in this case is story. The fields can change depending on the type of issue that is selected. We will discuss issue types in more detail later in the course. In the summary field, you enter a brief overview of the issue. This basically becomes the title or name of the issue. In this case, our issue name is ''add item 1." We are using this issue to help build a feature of our product. You can add more details in the description. You can add them now or add them at any time during the lifetime of the issue. You click ''Create'' to add the issue to your project. You can click on the ''Issues'' tab in your projects sidebar to see the issues of the project. Here we can see the issue we just created. Notice that Jira has automatically assigned a unique issue key to this issue. The letters before the dash represents a unique identifier for the project. This is called the project key and it was created when you created the project. The issue number in the project follows the dash. Issue key values are unique in your Jira application. To ensure this, you cannot have two projects with the same project key. Next, we will discuss the administration hierarchy. When you work with Jira, you may need to perform some administration tasks. This usually involves changing some configuration settings, because you are the owner of your Jira site, you will need to be at least somewhat familiar with administering Jira. We will see as we go through the course that there's a hierarchy associated with Jira administration. A site administrator has responsibility for the entire site. They can do things like add users to the site because you own your free Jira site that you will use in the labs, you are a site administrator. The next level of administrator, is a Jira administrator. They can control things like the creation of projects and configuration settings that can apply to multiple projects in the site. The next level of administrator is a project administrator. These users can configure the specific project. Since you own your Jira site, you will take on all of these administration responsibilities at various parts of the course. In addition to these levels of settings and administration, we will see later that there are settings for project boards and that each logged-in user has personal settings which apply no matter which site the user is logged into. Atlassian is the company that owns Jira. One way that they offer their products is as a hosted solution. This is known as they're cloud offering and it basically offers Jira as a service. An Atlassian cloud site is a URL that is specific to you, your team, or your company that hosts your collection of Atlassian products. For example, if your company was named Mycompany, your cloud site would be hosted at mycompany.atlassian.net, the site that you will use in the lab, we'll end with atlassian.net, but you will choose a unique name instead of mycompany. In the first reading or lab for this course, you will sign up for a free cloud site and use Jira software cloud to perform the hands-on labs for the course. A site administrator is responsible for the entire site. A site can contain other Atlassian applications such as confluence and bitbucket. You can click on the switch to menu in the top navigation bar to switch among applications in your site. If you are logged in as a site administrator, you can click on administration to access site-level administration and settings. Another way to access site settings is by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right of the top navigation bar and clicking on one of the links shown here. When you click on a site setting's link, you'll be taken to admin.atlassian.com. This is where you can administer your site. We will discuss this more later in the course. Jira is very configurable and contains settings for different situations. If you click on the gear icon in the top navigation, you can see a Jira's settings section. This is where you can configure changes that apply to all of the Jira projects in your site. You will only see this functionality if you are logged in as a Jira administrator. Since you own your Jira site, you are also a Jira administrator. In addition to Jira settings, you will see access to site level settings, if you are a site administrator. All users can view and modify their personal settings under the personal settings section. If you click on the project's settings link for a project, those settings apply only to that project. You must be a project administrator for the project to see the project settings link. We will discuss this more later in the course. Here we have clicked on the project settings link while viewing a project. We can change settings that relate only to this project. For example, this is where we can change the name of the project or define the members of the project. In order to login to an Atlassian cloud site, you must have an account. This account will be tied to your email address. The same cloud account can access many cloud sites with different levels of permissions. This is because the account is tied to an email address. If you currently don't have an Atlassian cloud account, one will be created for you when you sign up for a free site in the first lab. Each Atlassian cloud account has personal settings that you can configure. For example, you can update your profile information such as your full name and avatar. These profile settings apply to all sites that your account is a member of. You can access your profile settings by clicking on your avatar and selecting profile, or by clicking account settings. You can change personal settings related to this Jira site by clicking on personal settings under the Jira heading. This allows you to configure things like when you would like to get emails related to updates to issues that you are interested in. In this course, we will discuss many aspects of Jira and provide a solid foundation for why and how to use Jira. However, we will not cover everything. There are many resources available to you as you continue to learn. Here are links to the Jira homepage, documentation, discussion forums or community, general agile and Jira articles and tutorials, Atlassian team playbooks, Jira training, and the Atlassian YouTube channel. In addition, a general web search on any specific Jira topic or problem should return helpful information to you. Here's a review of what we've discussed in this video. Jira is software used to help manage and deliver projects. A Jira application contains projects which contain issues. A project is created from a template which provides common initial project configurations. Keep in mind the scope of any changes to settings that you make. Now it's time for you to work on some of the things that we've discussed in this video. Please consult the reading or lab associated with this video, which will guide you as you sign up for your Jira account and perform the lab.
