Help with Jira Software, Jira Service Management & Confluence
Author: Rachel Wright
Rachel Wright is an entrepreneur, Certified Jira Administrator, and author of the Jira Strategy Admin Workbook. She started using Jira in 2011, became a Jira administrator in 2013, and was certified in 2016. She is the owner and founder of Industry Templates, LLC, which helps companies grow, get organized, and develop their processes.
Rachel Wright, author of the Jira Strategy Admin Workbook is delivering her Jira Software, Jira Service Management, and Confluence presentations in a town near you. Meet the author, learn from her mistakes, and talk shop about Jira strategy!
Contact Info & Event Booking
Rachel Wright is available for speaking engagements, interviews, podcasts, and appearances. She is also happy to speak to groups via telephone or web conference.
We had so much success discussing JIRA strategy in Northern Virginia and Ann Arbor that we’re doing it again next week in Charlotte, North Carolina and Chicago, Illinois.
Rachel Wright is a featured speaker at the March meetings of the Charlotte and Chicago user groups. On March 21, 2017 and March 23, 2017 she’ll present “Top JIRA Administration Mistakes” based on the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook.
The goal of the “Top JIRA Administration Mistakes” presentation is to keep others out of what I call the “JIRA swamp.” Or, if you’re already in it, help dig you out. This session is different – it’s about strategy. It’s recommendations from years of cleaning up horrible JIRA configurations! It’s about what you should do, what you shouldn’t do, and why. Hear the mistakes I made as a JIRA administrator and real examples of problems to avoid. Would you rather your application be an organized, tidy, and trimmed garden or a foggy, contaminated, overgrown swamp?
Charlotte Atlassian User Group
Atlassian Users Groups are where users meet, learn, network, and share best practices. The groups meet locally, all over the world, on a quarterly or more frequent basis. User Group members are newbies and veterans who like to “talk shop” about Atlassian software, about Agile development, and about related business topics. At these events, you can network with your peers, share solutions, meet Expert Partners, get special content from Atlassian, and enjoy a beer.
Will you be in Charlotte on March 21, 2017 or Chicago on March 23, 2017? Join us, join the User Group in your city, or start a group!
Rachel Wright is a featured speaker at the February meeting of the Ann Arbor Atlassian User Group. On February 28, 2017, she’ll present “Top JIRA Administration Mistakes” based on the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook.
The goal of the “Top JIRA Administration Mistakes” presentation is to keep others out of what I call the “JIRA swamp.” Or, if you’re already in it, help dig you out. This session is different – it’s about strategy. It’s recommendations from years of cleaning up horrible JIRA configurations! It’s about what you should do, what you shouldn’t do, and why. Hear the mistakes I made as a JIRA administrator and real examples of problems to avoid. Would you rather your application be an organized, tidy, and trimmed garden or a foggy, contaminated, overgrown swamp?
Atlassian Users Groups are where users meet, learn, network, and share best practices. The groups meet locally, all over the world, on a quarterly or more frequent basis. User Group members are newbies and veterans who like to “talk shop” about Atlassian software, about Agile development, and about related business topics. At these events, you can network with your peers, share solutions, meet Expert Partners, get special content from Atlassian, and enjoy a beer.
Rachel Wright is a featured speaker at the February meeting of the Northern Virginia Atlassian User Group. On February 22, 2017, she’ll present “Top JIRA Administration Mistakes” based on the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook. This is a special event for Rachel. She was the original founder of this user group and is extremely excited to return!
The goal of the “Top JIRA Administration Mistakes” presentation is to keep others out of what I call the “JIRA swamp.” Or, if you’re already in it, help dig you out. This session is different – it’s about strategy. It’s recommendations from years of cleaning up horrible JIRA configurations! It’s about what you should do, what you shouldn’t do, and why. Hear the mistakes I made as a JIRA administrator and real examples of problems to avoid. Would you rather your application be an organized, tidy, and trimmed garden or a foggy, contaminated, overgrown swamp?
Atlassian Users Groups are where users meet, learn, network, and share best practices. The groups meet locally, all over the world, on a quarterly or more frequent basis. User Group members are newbies and veterans who like to “talk shop” about Atlassian software, about Agile development, and about related business topics. At these events, you can network with your peers, share solutions, meet Expert Partners, get special content from Atlassian, and enjoy a beer.
A new JIRA Administrator training course, based on the principles in the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook, is on the way!
Just like the workbook isn’t typical documentation, this course is different too! This isn’t a traditional class, where you listen to the instructor speak all day, watch them click around a screen, and forget half of what you heard.
Instead, this course walks you through the content in the Workbook and helps you develop and implement your own strategies. This is so much more than a standard training course. Sure there’s content to read and videos to watch, but there’s also action items, interaction with the JIRA environment, and real scenarios to help you fix mistakes in your own application. This course may also help you prepare for JIRA Certification.
The course is self-paced so you can review the material and complete the tasks when and in the order it makes sense for you. Want to learn on the bus on the way to work? Why not? Want to pause while you discuss a scenario with your team? Do it!
Enter your email address below and you’ll be the first to know when the JIRA Strategy Admin Course is available.
Before Jira, I was using an ancient bug tracking application. By ancient, I mean software that would only load in a browser version which was no longer available. The manufacturer had stopped supporting it many years prior and it was becoming increasingly unstable. I couldn’t have been more excited to ditch it and switch to Atlassian’s Jira.
“Catastrophic Failure” – my favorite application error.
This was around the Halloween holiday, so we held an official funeral for our old software. We hung pictures of tombstones on the wall with screenshots of the most horrific error messages. A team member wrote the following obituary for the old application.
Obituary
TestDirector, the ancient and unsupported bug tracking system employed by Network Solutions for tracking tasks and issues, has died.
Born to Mercury Interactive Corporation in an era when ActiveX seemed like a good idea, TestDirector was best known for his finicky and bug-ridden interface and unreasonably-small character limit in the comments field. His inability to run in any browser better than Internet Explorer 7, combined with his skill in completely overwriting issues with data from other issues, made him truly unique in his field.
Adopted by Hewlett-Packard in 2006, TestDirector’s younger brother underwent cosmetic surgery and is now known as HP Quality Center. Hewlett-Packard has recently been committed to an institution due to his worsening schizophrenia, and HP Quality Center’s current condition is unknown.
At Network Solutions, TestDirector is being laid to rest near an open-grave labeled ‘TrueChange’. He will live on in the memories of employees who relish the irony of tracking bugs in a bug-ridden tracking system. He is survived by Atlassian Jira.
This tribute was crafted by Scott Bradford. Scott is a web technologist, developer, writer, and manager.
Jira Scary Stories Course
Take the Jira Scary Stories course for tales of spooky security, freakish custom fields, and the potential horrors of user-created projects and issue types.
You’ve decided to adopt JIRA. Congratulations! Use this 35 question planning checklist to help you make initial decisions and consider actions you should take to ensure a successful setup. Complete these items before, during, and after your install. Download the entire checklist from the Strategy for Jira Store.
Planning
1. Create an Internal JIRA Advisory Board Whether you’ve just started with JIRA or you’ve been using it for years, such a powerful and useful Application should not be directed by a single person. The people who set the strategy for JIRA use may be different from those who actually perform maintenance and administrative functions. You’ll want a governance or steering committee, who can establish standards and support both the application and the users.
See the “Establish an Advisory Board”, the “Ideal Board Makeup”, and the “Role of the Board” sections in the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook.
2. Determine Usage Decide how JIRA will mainly be used. Will it be for software development only or will other, non-technical groups also utilize it to track tasks?
3. Determine Ownership Decide who is responsible for the application. Who will make initial and ongoing configuration changes? Who will maintain the application? Who will perform upgrades? (Server Version Only) Who will ensure application, server, database, and network stability? (Server Version Only)
Application Type
4. Choose an Application Type Decide which hosting environment is appropriate for your business and industry. Will you utilize a Cloud (hosted by Atlassian or a third party) or a Server (on premises) implementation?
5. Choose an Application Flavor Based on your usage, decide which JIRA product, or combination of JIRA products to use. Will you utilize JIRA Software (built for software developers and includes agile features), JIRA Core (built for business-type users), JIRA Service Desk (built for help desk and support-type functions), or a combination? Do you require the high availability, performance at scale, and disaster recovery features of JIRA Data Center?
6. Choose a License Tier Determine current and future licensing needs. How many users need to login to JIRA? Are license costs factored into the initial and ongoing budget?
7. Choose a Version (Server Version Only) Use the Atlassian release notes to determine which version to use. Will you install the latest version or the last major version?
16. Determine Data Import Needs Decide how to handle pre-JIRA data. Does existing data from another system need to be imported? What is the structure of the data and how will it be mapped to JIRA’s issue structure?
See the “Bulk Import” section of the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook. Download a sample import file at: jirastrategy.com/link/bulk-import.
17. Determine Data Insertion Methods Decide which of the many ways new issues will be created. How will new information be added to JIRA? (Examples: Via the UI, via UI import, via email, via the API, via an Issue Collector (web form), etc.)
See the “Get Data into JIRA” section of the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook. Download the “Worksheet: JIRA Issue Creation via Email Instructions” at: jirastrategy.com/link/creation-via-email.
Users
18. Create a User Management Strategy User management is more than just “adding new users” as they join the company. Your user list needs regular attention to remain accurate. You have to establish procedures on how to support new users as well as departing users. How will you handle and receive access requests and removals? How will you handle permissions related requests?
See the “User Access Strategies” and “User Management” sections of the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook.
19. Determine Access and Credentials Decide how users will access the application. What credentials are needed for login? How does a new user securely receive credentials? Will access be local to the application or managed by Active Directory, Google Apps, Crowd (an Atlassian application), or another service? Is 2 Factor Authentication needed?
See the “User Management” and “Single Sign-On” sections of the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook.
RECOMMENDATION
When the application grows to over 50 users, it’s time to consider a central user directory.
20. Select an Application Administration Team Create a strong, 2-5 person, admin team. Who will be responsible for new project configuration, customization, user access, and daily application management?
See the “Define Admin Users” section of the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook. Download the “Worksheet: Application Administrator Responsibilities” at: jirastrategy.com/link/admin-responsibilities.
TIP: Need to train your team? Give your administrators their own copy of the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook. Get the digital version at: jirastrategy.com/link/digital-workbook or the print version at: amzn.to/2fww6zh.
TIP: Have your admins prepare for and take the JIRA Certification exam. See the “Get Certified” and “How to Study” sections of the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook.
RECOMMENDATION
Give your application admin team read-only access to the JIRA database. Understanding how the data is structured will solve a lot of mysteries and make them better admins. They’ll have the ability to access additional data that’s not available in the admin UI.
NOTE: Granting read only database access gives users access to protected data and may violate your company security policy.
21. Appoint Ambassadors In addition to your advisory board, you’ll want to enlist the help of other users to disseminate information, answer common questions, and serve as a liaison to your users. A small team of JIRA Ambassadors is a vital asset when you need to execute changes to your current application or communicate the change request process.
See the “Appoint Ambassadors” section of the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook.
22. Determine an End User Training Strategy Determine your training needs and timeline. How will you train end users and encourage adoption?
See the “End User Training” and “Top 15 Things End Users Want to Know” sections of the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook.
31. Set Up a Test Environment (Server Version Only) Always test major changes, large imports, upgrades, plugin installations, proof of concepts, and clean-up activities in a test environment first. Make sure the resources powering your test environment match your production environment as much as possible. Make sure the software version and configuration are an exact copy of production.
TIP: Disable email in the test environment to avoid notifying end users with duplicate or test data.
32. Establish a Plugin and Add-On Vetting Procedure There are a plethora of plugins and add-on features available in the Atlassian Marketplace. But haphazard installs and free trials can leave behind remnants that negatively impact the system after the trial ends. You should develop specific procedures for handling add-ons and customization requests. The procedure should include pre-installation vetting, installation and trial testing, and uninstall procedures to ensure system functionality and stability.
See the “Plugins and Add-ons” section in the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook.
33. Determine Integrations and Connections Determine what connection points are initially needed and under what conditions new connections will be added. What other Atlassian or non-Atlassian applications will JIRA connect to? Will other internal applications be permitted to use the REST API or connect to the database?
See the “REST API and Database Users” section of the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook.
34. Set Up Monitoring (Server Version Only) Set up additional software to routinely check the health of your application and database. Monitors and alerts help the admin team proactively maintain your application. Don’t let end users be the first or only source of trouble reports.
See the “Monitoring” section in the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook.
35. Engage with the JIRA Community There’s an amazing community of experts, administrators, consultants, end users, and Atlassians publishing new information and providing assistance. Connect with others through your local Atlassian User Group, participate in the online community (answers.atlassian.com), and attend the annual user conference.
See the “Atlassian User Groups” and “Summit Annual User Conference” sections of the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook.
This worksheet is a companion to the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook. Get the book and additional materials at jirastrategy.com.
Calling all JIRA Administrators! Now there’s help for managing your application! The JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook is finally here!
If you’re a new Administrator, or your company is just getting started with JIRA, this book shows you what actions to take up front, so you can have a well-planned and easy to maintain tool.
If your company has used JIRA for a while, this book shows you simple ways to streamline your instance and make daily work more manageable.
Tired of dry, technical, and difficult to use software documentation? This is not documentation, it’sstrategy!
“It’s an awesome book that left me thinking about my JIRA instances and wanting to make immediate adjustments.” – Gregory Van Den Ham, IT Manager and Chicago Atlassian User Group Leader
The author, Rachel Wright, is an entrepreneur, process engineer, and Atlassian Certified JIRA Administrator. She wrote this book because she knew she wasn’t the only person to inherit a messy configuration. She says “I want to keep others out of what I call the “JIRA swamp” or, if you’re already in it, help dig you out.“
“Rachel is an inspiration to all JIRA Admins in her no-nonsense, down to earth approach to JIRA.” – Susan Hauth, JIRA Queen and Toronto Atlassian User Group Leader
The JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook book contains:
152 recommendations to help you set up, clean up, and maintain JIRA,
50 worksheets, plus additional templates, code snippets, and wording samples to help you establish and streamline vital processes,
33 real examples of problems to avoid,
best practices and dos and don’ts for each administrative area,
the top 10 mistakes I made as an administrator, and
Title: JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook Sub title: Templates for the application administrator to set up, clean up, and maintain JIRA Author: Rachel Wright Publisher: Industry Templates, LLC Date of Publication: November 30, 2016 Retail Price: $59.99 USD (Print Version) ISBN-13: 978-1539090229 ISBN-10: 1539090221 Pages: 295
My introduction to Atlassian products was by chance. The company I was working for was using an ancient bug tracking application. By ancient, I mean software that would only load in a browser version which was no longer available. In fact, the manufacturer had stopped supporting it many years prior. The software was becoming increasingly unstable and a decision was made to switch to JIRA. We were so excited to ditch the old software that we set up an official funeral for it at the office. This was around the Halloween holiday, so we hung pictures of tombstones on the wall along with screenshots of our most “ghastly” bugs. A team member wrote an obituary for the old application. We covered the scene with spider webs and skeletons. It was a fun way to celebrate that we were changing to JIRA and also say “good riddance” to our old system.
I was immediately amazed by what JIRA offered us. We were able to track all our work, not just our bugs. The flexibility to work differently between projects and between issue types was something I hadn’t seen before. The ease of customization had me dreaming of all the ways we could improve our processes. I found myself immersed in the user documentation, reviewing the internal materials produced for the transition, and even helping others use this new application. I moved from being a typical end user, to an application administrator, strategist, and trainer. JIRA administration became an obsession and was easily the best part of my workday.
Today, I use JIRA and other Atlassian tools at my primary job, as a volunteer with the Atlassian User Group program, to run my side business, and even at home. At home, JIRA tracks “bucket list” items, personal goals, and my asset list, for insurance purposes. I use Confluence to collaborate with family members, plan trips, track “to do” items, and capture research details for major purchases. The JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook was written in Confluence and the book writing progress was tracked in JIRA. These tools have become a vital part of my personal and professional life. It’s safe to say I’m a huge Atlassian fan.
See the “Establish an Advisory Board”, the “Ideal Board Makeup”, and the “Role of the Board” sections in the JIRA Strategy Admin Workbook.
TIP: JIRA is for business teams too! Read more: 
