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As part of the agile management and software development methodology, the freevision team relies on JIRA. Why? The main benefits can be found in this article.

When developing complex or innovative tailored software, we apply agile approach in our team. That's why we needed to include a tool for keeping our work organized within your projects. We chose to use Jira by Atlassian. This task management tool is linked to all of our development tools and information about planning, tracking, delivery and overall reporting of development is at hand in real time.

Planning of software development

At the beginning of every new project, the project manager has the task to plan the whole development process. From dividing the project into individual units or modules, through proposition of initiation phase, to assigning each task to teams. With more detailed insight into the problem, the development planning can change on the run and project manager can alter the course of development thanks to agile approach. Requirements become clearer with time and estimates are adjusted accordingly. Jira Software provides absolute transparency and helps members of teams focus on the most important tasks at all times.

Task management and timeline

Project manager assigns tasks to teams, Jira orders dependencies and priorities and that helps us create realistic estimates in a form of a timeline. Estimated dates for finishing individual tasks or the final estimate are visible there.

Project scope

Overview of all planned tasks related to particular project are displayed in a scope table. It is possible to create additional tasks or show them according to the hierarchy there. Standard levels of hierarchy are the following:

• Epic - sum of all information about the project composed of some stories
• Story - smaller set of information that represents the main requests and is composed of some sub-tasks
• Sub-task - the smallest component (task)

Teams

Creation of teams is crucial for a functioning development. Every team has its initial and follow-up tasks assigned and the members work on them together. At that moment adding or removing members is possible altogether with management of their availability by announcing absence or holidays.

Project delivery A mentioned earlier in this article, at the beginning of planning Jira Software is able to estimate more or less accurate delivery date of the project. Estimating completion of individual tasks is easier for organization and can also be very helpful when setting their priority. It provides more confidence and less stress during the delivery process.