Jira for task management: A comprehensive guide

Updated: February 9, 2024

We live in an era where effective task management is a necessity. With so many projects, deadlines, and responsibilities to juggle, it’s easy for teams to get overwhelmed and lose sight of progress. This is where Jira comes in – a task management tool that can revolutionize how teams approach their work.

Join us as we delve into Jira. We will explore its comprehensive features and demonstrate how it can help teams not just manage tasks, but master them.

Jira is a project management software developed by Atlassian. It’s not just a task management tool. It’s a platform that covers issue tracking, project planning, and agile development processes. 

Many teams use Jira, regardless of their size or industry. For example, in software development, marketing, customer support, or many other departments.

Jira’s task management process is straightforward and intuitive. It helps teams stay organized and focused.

It starts by creating a new task or issue. Then, it sets due dates, manages the activity involved, and finally, marks the task as complete.

This process can be summarized in three simple steps:

Every step of the task is tracked efficiently through this structured approach. It allows teams to navigate through their workload with clarity and purpose.

Jira is a popular choice for task management for several reasons:

Jira offers a comprehensive set of features to streamline task management:

Jira offers many benefits for task management:

A task-tracking template is a pre-configured format. You can use it to create and manage tasks in Jira. It provides a structured framework for organizing and tracking task information.

A Kanban board is a visual representation of task progress. Tasks move through stages on the board, such as “To Do,” “In Progress,” and “Done.” This helps teams visualize the status of tasks and identify bottlenecks.

A list is a simple way to organize tasks. You can organize tasks by priority, due date, or category. This helps find the tasks need to work on quickly.

You can use a calendar to track task deadlines and plan work. It displays tasks on a calendar, offering a clear view of deadlines, due dates, and task schedules.

Create diverse forms tailored to specific types of work. Collect information and managing work requests from various teams within an organization.

Set rules to automate important/frequent actions in your processes.

Time is a challenge for our efficiency of task management in Jira. We spend hours dealing with repetitive, mundane, and manual work within software. Jira is a powerful, globally recognized project management tool. It solves most of the problems of traditional ITSM solutions. Nevertheless, there are still ways to boost its effectiveness. You can also make task management less time-consuming.

Large projects can be daunting to manage. It’s important to break them down into smaller, more manageable tasks. This will make it easier to track progress. It will also help identify bottlenecks and ensure that tasks are completed on time. Keep it simple.

Design a structured workflow that aligns with your team’s processes. Define stages such as “To Do,” “In Progress,” and “Done” to visualize task progression.

Everyone has to understand what needs to be done. Create clear and detailed task descriptions. Include the task’s objective, scope, and any relevant details.

Use labels to categorize tasks and streamline search functionalities. It will help to quickly identify and group similar tasks.

Due dates should be challenging but achievable. If you set unrealistic due dates, you’re setting yourself up for failure.

Assign each task to the person who is best qualified to do it. It will help to ensure that tasks are completed efficiently and correctly.

Encourage consistent task prioritization across the team. Communicate the criteria for assigning priorities to ensure alignment.

Jira has several automations that can save you time and effort. For example, you can set up automation to automatically create tasks. You can also use automation to send notifications and update task statuses.

Make sure that you’re always on track. This will help you to identify any bottlenecks and make adjustments as needed.

Jira has many reporting capabilities that can help you to track your team’s progress. Use these reports to identify areas where you can improve.

Integrate Jira with other tools used by your team. It could be Confluence, Slack, GitHub or any other. It will streamline communication and enhance collaboration.

Regularly review and refine your task management processes. Do this based on team feedback and evolving project requirements. Welcome a culture of continuous improvement.

The difficulties in managing tasks concern all groups of Jira users. We are talking about end-users, clients, managers, admins, support teams, etc.

After all, it all comes down to the connected vessels. A problem in one place may cause disturbances in another.

So, let’s get to the point about the problems we are discussing. What activities do we spend the most time on before starting the task?

Creating a task with long forms usually means scrolling through many unnecessary fields. You have to answer questions unrelated to a specific project. Plus, you end up reading much redundant data. 

That opens the way to possible mistakes and accidental clicks. There might be a need to verify whether specific fields or information are necessary.

Besides, a poorly arranged form means low-quality of input data in the request. And that further extends the time of its implementation.

Another problem occurs while creating similar issues for various Jira instances. That often means creating Epics with dozens of Stories and hundreds of tasks – every few days.

A simple example may be onboarding a new team member or starting a big marketing venture.

Most of the time, all the mentioned tasks require repeating the same steps and introducing minor differences. That may cause mistakes and is time-consuming.

Even if we finally grasp what we need, we still want to know to whom we should assign a task. And finding the person to ask for additional information can be a real challenge.

Gathering information is a tedious process in general. This is especially true when it involves clicking between tabs and instances.

You might be looking for specific data, schedules, contact info, and other essentials. In the meantime, many tickets might have ambiguous summaries. They might also have an imprecise or missing description and no attachments or comments.

It’s trivial, yet worth emphasizing, that the lack of crucial data may cause long delays in starting the task. In consequence, it may harm the entire business process.

Next is jumping between issues scattered across Jira.

Finding substantial issues requires narrowing them down. Then, grouping them into a helpful list.

The worst comes when we need to do it manually.

Of course, let’s not forget about visibility and access for the end-users to their request pages.

Even if we can track the work progress and tasks in one place, we won’t always find all the information we need right away.

And this again forces us to ask for updates, checking task after task for the information we need.

As you can already tell, there is much to think about when it comes to task management. Jira’s default task management capabilities may not be sufficient for all teams.

On the one hand, you are using a firm tool to manage all tasks, but on the other, it still needs further improvement. 

This is where plugins come in to enhance Jira’s task management capabilities.

Here are some of the top Jira task management plugins:

Price: Free up to 5 seats; Pro $6 Seat / Month

Day.io is a popular choice for detailed time management. It integrates with Jira. It allows you to track time spent on tasks, generate timesheets, and monitor work hours. Furthermore, it also provides insights into team productivity and helps identify potential bottlenecks.

Price: Free up to 10 users; > 10 users $1.20 User/ Month

Foxly excels in issue prioritization. It optimizes backlog management with predefined templates like RICE and ICE. Users can also create custom templates and prioritize across projects.

Its features include an interactive Priority Matrix. It also has flexible issue filtering and collaborative Priority Planning Poker.

This provides a solution for efficient and data-driven backlog prioritization in real-time.

Price: Up to 10 users (Flat fee) $5 User/ Month ; > 10 users $0.80 User/ Month

Issue Checklist for Jira. Pro is a straightforward tool that allows users to create and customize checklists. It offers practical functionality without a complex setup. It has user-friendly features like mentions and due dates. What’s more, It is a versatile solution for efficient task management. It integrates with automation tools and adheres to GDPR standards.

Price: Up to 10 users (Flat fee) $10 / Month ; > 10 users $4.12 User/ Month

Timesheets by Tempo provides efficient time logging. It contributes to project health, billable hour tracking, and capacity planning. It has functionalities like bulk logging and precise reporting. Track time spent on specific tasks, projects, and clients. Maintain project financial health.

Price: Up to 10 users (Flat fee) $10 / Month ; > 10 users $2..50 User/ Month

Activity Timeline: Resource Capacity Planning, Time Tracking is a Jira add-on designed for resource capacity planning, time tracking, and resource management. Its key features include Jira capacity planning, time tracking with timesheets, resource management, and issue tracking. It helps teams streamline their Jira resource planning and capacity management processes.

Price: Free up to 10 users; > 10 users $2.15 User/ Month

Extension for Jira Service Management app enables quick and precise request submission. It uses dynamic request forms and fields. Simplify request forms to make communication more accessible, more consistent, and less confusing.

What does it mean in practice? For example, an HR specialist can see more issue details for an onboarding process. That includes setting up permissions, and dynamic request forms provided by the admin. 

Price: Free up to 10 users; > 10 users $1.08 User/ Month

When creating issues in Jira, we often need to clone whole Epics. This includes sub-tasks and other related tickets. Sometimes it involves entire repeatable structures.

It’s undoubtedly a demanding process, requiring a lot of time and awareness.

Issue Templates for Jira allows for auto-filling issues with flexible Jira ticket templates. You can customize them by choosing the fields to copy. It speeds up issue creation. It facilitates changes to a specific project by applying precise structures.

For example, autocompleted fields allow the user to create any Epic just in a few seconds.

Price: Free up to 10 users; > 10 users $1.50 User/ Month

Queues for JSM helps create Jira queues containing tickets from any project. You can create any number of tickets. You can also restrict the visibility of each – globally or from a single project. For better clarity, you can put and thus sort queues into folders.

The application helps various users save time by giving them insight into each other’s work. It also makes communication effortless.

Price: Free up to 10 users; > 10 users $1.10 User/ Month

With My Request Extention for JSM, you can add, change, and reorder all visible columns on the Request list. You can also navigate through them with filters defined by specific criteria. In addition, you can save your search configuration. Then, you can share it with coworkers or strictly selected groups.

Out of the box and with the default setup, Jira can make our ventures more time-consuming. However, it is a professional task management software. It enables flexible adaptation of instances to individual and unique needs.

Users can enhance Jira’s functionality by exploring apps available on the Atlassian Marketplace. Those apps can address specific needs and further optimize their Jira task management processes. Despite the initial time investment, the payoff comes in the form of enhanced efficiency. 

Jira’s professional capabilities and the flexibility provided by Marketplace apps make it a valuable asset. Those willing to explore its extensive options will appreciate it.