Jira initially started off as a bug-tracking system, helping software development teams to better track and manage the problems/issues in their projects. As the product evolved, people started using Jira for other purposes; some use it as a general-purpose, task-management solution, others use it as a customer support portal, and some financial institutions even use Jira to track their portfolios. So, starting with Jira 7, Atlassian has made many improvements to help make Jira ubiquitous by introducing three distinct solutions—Jira Core, Jira Software, and Jira Service Desk.
In this chapter, we will take a look at projects and project types, focusing on the most basic Jira project type—business. We will then take a look at the various user interfaces that Jira has for working with projects, both as an administrator and an everyday user. We will also introduce permissions for the first time in the context of projects and will expand on this in later chapters. Business being the most basic project type, most of the concepts covered in this chapter will be applicable to the more specialized types.
By the end of this chapter, you will have learned the following:
- Jira project types and templates
- Different user interfaces for project management in Jira
- How to create new projects in Jira
- How to import data from other systems into Jira
- How to manage and configure a project
- How to manage components and versions