Of the Atlassian set of products, Jira is well known in the software development space, supporting the work of small teams to Fortune 500 enterprises. Jira was originally developed as a web-based issue tracker to be used by software developers for managing issues, bugs and defects. Its low cost, low barrier to entry, and customizability made it easy for a team to buy it and run it in their space. As the tool continued to evolve through development as well as some strategic purchases, it became increasingly prevalent and associated with software development and as a developer tool. Currently, out of the box, it offers a set of configurations that are consistent with standard concepts and approaches to modern software development with common integrations to tools that are seen almost as a “default” for developers. Due to this, Jira and many of the Atlassian set of products are frequently seen as “only for developers” and are assumed to be too complex or missing elements needed by other organizational teams or aspects of the business.

Jira is so much more than a tool “just for developers.” Out of the box, Atlassian ships multiple project templates (a set of prebuild configurations) that can be leveraged for one or many projects. Examples of these are can be found here, but it’s sufficient to say that various marketing (e.g. campaign management, event planning, etc.), HR (e.g. recruitment, employee onboard/offboarding, etc.), product management (e.g. ideation, road mapping, product management, etc.) and of course software development, along with several other types templates ship with the product providing insight into ways the product can be leveraged to represent the ways of working and the needs of the various teams leveraging it.

At its heart, Jira is a customizable workflow engine with data collection, a set of functionalities around relationships and the sharing of that information. A workflow is any repeatable set of actions/processes that happen during the normal course of business – on/off boarding of employees, creation of an ad, the planning of an event, etc. The idea is that as someone performs the tasks, the person records their actions in Jira. Then Jira, with its power of automation, can either inform people & groups, or take further actions. Any team’s individual responsibility and needs can be represented as part of the overall whole and that information can be shared.

Beyond templates that ship, the customizability of Jira allows you to reflect your own process and data points within any set of templates that can be scaled out across your environment. So, if the overall teams developing products, planning/coordinating/marketing the release of those products, hiring the people that work on those in those workstreams are all leveraging the same tool, you can start to actually associate work with/from/to/because of other teams. The ability to customize to have multiple different teams, that may be doing different types and styles of work, within the same environment allows teams to better communicate status of work and relation of that work to each other is one of the benefits of an “beyond software” approach with Jira.

Some examples of uses of Jira that Envorso has worked on that reflect this “beyond just software” approach:

• The development and launch of an international toy with behaviors largely defined by software: Internal software, hardware and marketing and design teams worked alongside an external partner to handle the prototyping, breadboarding, software development and manufacturing in Jira. The collective team was also able to use Jira to track market specific translation work for two language variations of the product across the markets where it was launched. Each team’s processes were represented in the tool, along with a set of common data points enabling co-ordination and delivery.
• Issue resolution for a broadcast company managing a set of world-wide, multi-location sporting events: Jira was used to help plan and coordinate different media teams, with both the technical needs and language support requirements they would need. As technical teams and viewers reported broadcast issues that were noticeable to those watching the events in a customer care organization, Jira provided teams and management with the ability to identify, track and solve broadcast issues and apply lessons learned in future international broadcast events.
• Theme park compliance and inspection activities: We helped leverage Jira as the engagement point for compliance and inspection activities between multiple different state and local agencies and a company operating theme parks. The tool provided a multi-path method of engagement between different governmental agencies that met their requirements to plan, document, identify and resolve issues, with centralized visibility into the findings and the company’s set of activities.

You can also see evidence of the “beyond just software” approach in the diversity of companies that use Atlassian products (both public and private sector) and how they use them. Even software development itself isn’t a monolith. Company to company, and even between various teams within the same company, there is a wide variance between what is done; how it is done; and what specific things mean in relation to the context of the team, their work and the company.

Ultimately, any tool (and any functionality associated with them) does not fundamentally solve problems just by having it. It requires people with skills and knowledge of that tool who can match needs with functionality and innovative approaches to the unique challenges presented by your business. Envorso, as an Atlassian Silver Partner and with deep knowledge of the Atlassian set of products, has the knowledge and experience to help you accomplish your goals and move beyond a “just for software” approach to Atlassian products.

Schedule a free consultation today to explore how we can help your organization make the most of your Atlassian tools.