JIRA: A Kanban Board
JIRA is a paid-for project and issue tracking software that runs within web browsers. It is largely favoured by project teams working within an Agile framework, owing to the nature of the methodology, which allows the tracking of small, timeboxed pieces of work that take place as part of 'Sprints', which are 2 week iterations of work.
features and functionality
Agile project teams work within 2 week iterations of work, known as sprints, which are planned as larger product increments. JIRA allows users to plan task-based cards into sprints, with customised columns that represent the desgign and delivery process. Cards can then be moved through these stages, such as 'In Development' and 'In Test', with the ability to add attachments, comments, labels and links to other cards or tasks. With the ability to designate card 'types', such as user stories, technical debt, test exercises and bugs, JIRA works well as both a user requirements tracking tool and a bug or defect tracker. What's more, it supports features that are part of specific types of Agile practices, such as feature-level cards, which are collections of user stories, and epic-level cards, which are collections of features.
in conclusion
JIRA works great as a project and defect tracker, with particularly useful features such as the ability to tie user stories and their associated defects together, providing an efficient means of tracking software development completion. There is a pricing structure that ramps up significantly after the first 10 users, but for smaller, Agile project teams with 10 or less members, this also makes it a very cheap option.
