In the era of automation , project management has witnessed a radical shift to optimize processes. And, If you’re involved in agile project management, it’s likely that you are familiar with Jira issues to manage your projects.
Different Jira Products
Jira allows teams to plan, track, and manage their work. Atlassian provides a bundle of Jira products, each designed to tackle a particular use case and to cater for its customer needs.
- Jira Software: the original Jira product which is designed for software development teams that utilize agile methodologies.
- Jira Service Management: previously known as Jira Desk Service is designed for IT and service teams for customer support to manage incidents, changes, requests and problems.
- Jira Work Management: Meanwhile this Jira product, formerly known as Jira Core, is designed for non-technical teams like HR, Marketing, and Leal teams that require a project management tool. It offers features like project templates. For instance, a Campaign Management template for Marketing Teams.
- Jira Product Discovery: This is the latest Jira product Atlassian has added to its Jira bundle. It is intended for product management teams to turn their ideas into successful products. Jira product discovery allows product managers to gather , organize and analyze product inputs, communicate with stakeholders, and connect their work to their teams. Thus making data-driven decisions.
Although Jira products may appear distinct, they share some common features that underpin their primary functionality as a project management tool. One of the essential features across all Jira products is Issues. Jira Issues are by far the fundamental macro that constitutes the value of Jira products.
Find out more about Jira Products wit tis Atlassian
What are Jira Issues? And Why are they important?
Jira Issues are a matter that requires some sort of action from a project team member. They are Jira tickets created to simplify and depict each problem and actions required to resolve it.
For instance -Let’s say you are a Marketing Team Lead- you need to plan for a product campaign for a new product update, to promote and market it. But, how can you document every step, and every action? how can you assign and keep track of each team member’s work and progress?
Issues are most definitely your go-to macro. They facilitate not only your work by dividing each major step into a detailed task, and every quest into a sub-task. But also, Issues facilitate your role as a team lead to monitor and track your team members’ work progress using the assignee and reporter Jira native fields.
For a more detailed tracking process, leverage Jira reports to monitor project and issue progress efficiently.
👉 Find out more in our article about Jira reports
For such project, you just need to create a new space by selecting the campaign management template in jira work management. Now, you can create different issues, where you can only select a task as an issue type. Which is great! As you can see, for a marketing campaign plan, your issues are evidently tasks.
Don’t worry we’ll get into the different types of Issues later in this article!
You can now create tasks, and organize them using the workflow macro which can be tailored to suit your needs.
List of Types of Jira Issues:
As each issue stands for one single action, they definitely facilitate tracking project progress.
However, there are several types of Issues! So what are Issues types?
To simplify this part, we provided a table that summaries Issue Types according to the Jira Product.
Later on, we’ll dive deep into each Jira Issue type, and include some use cases to really break down Issues Types in simple terms.
| Jira Product | Issue Types for this product |
| Jira Software: | Task Story Bug Epic Sub-Task |
| Jira Work Management | Task Sub-Task |
| Jira Service Management: | IT Help Service Request Service Request with Approval Change Incident Problem Post-Incident Review |
| Jira Product Discovery | Idea |
We’ll explain the hierarchy of Issue Types in a Jira Project, starting from the bottom and moving up, for better understanding.
Sub-Task:
A sub-Task is a child Issue type that is part of a larger Issue Type such as Task, Bug, or Story.
It’s used to break down larger Issues Types such as Task into smaller and more manageable components.
A sum of Subtasks leads to the completion of a Task. Say you have a project that requires multiple people working on it. Sub-tasks facilitate managing the work across your team members as they are smaller pieces of work.
Task:
A task is the work you need to do. It’s basically an activity that doesn’t fall under the label of other Issue types. This term broadly defines work that needs completion, without the need for a separate issue type.
For instance, a task in your campaign management template can be to draft a report to analyze previous campaigns’ performance.
Story:
A Story is a requirement that describes a functionality or features from the viewpoint of an end-user. It is user-centric and is often used in agile software development to break down a project into smaller and manageable pieces.
Bug:
A bug is a known term for DevOps and in the IT world. It stands its meaning in the Jira context. A bug issue type is an issue reflecting a problem with software under development that impairs or prevents the product from performing adequately.
EPIC:
EPIC incorporates all previous Issue Types. EPIC is generated from an agile management approach, it serves as a parent to other Issue Types. EPIC helps teams organize and plan work that might span multiple sprints, projects, and versions.
These were the first issue types that Jira made available to its users. They give your teams flexibility in how they structure their work. Jira Issues Types also offer a wide range of customization options. You can modify the meaning of specific issue types within the context of your project, incorporate specific information using custom fields for each issue you create, and and customize your project workflow to align with your project type and specific issues.
Jira recognized the need to enhance its issue types to align with the ITSM framework when creating Jira Service Management. Thus, the JSM product templates offer different issue types, to cater to the unique needs of its ITSM-oriented user base. These are the Issues Types for Jira Service Management:
Jira Service Management Issue types:
Service Request
As its name suggests, a service request is a user request for customer support. Users can raise service requests for IT help, to ask for a new update, etc.
Service Request With Approval:
Service request with Approval is also a formal user request but it requires compliance from higher-ups.
IT help:
An IT help is an Issue created when you need help from your IT team specialists. For instance, your company-issued laptop is malfunctioning, and it is disrupting your work. You should create an IT help Issue to raise this problem, and request a solution. So, you can describe your issue, assign an IT specialist to review this issue, and add any information that might be helpful to understand the situation. Thus, it is not necessary to reach out to the IT team in person or via email, wait for them to respond, and have a long discussion to communicate the issue.
Change Issue:
Change Issue type is a request to make a cane to a service or a product. For instance, A change Issue can be about a new product feature upgrade. Say, you have a product, you can use the change Issue for a new UI interface for your mobile application product version.
Incident Issue:
An incident issue is used to report an unplanned interruption that may disrupt the service. For instance, an incident issue can be created to report an IT-service outage that may interrupt your customer support service. Your customer support portal is down for example, this implies that your clients are unable to access the portal to raise their tickets. Your team should prioritize this type of issue and respond immediately.
Post-Incident review:
Following the resolution of an incident issue, a post-incident review issue type can It can actively prevent future incidents and generate ideas for improvement.
Problem Issue:
Similar to an Incident and a chance, Problem Issue type is also inspired from the ITSM framework process- Problem Management. While multiple incidents can occur, some of these incidents can be recurring. A problem is generated, indicating an underlying root cause of multiple incidents. The problem issue type focuses on identifying and resolving the root cause to prevent future incidents from occurring.
These ITSM-focused issues are specific to Jira Service Management project templates. As a Jira user, it may sound a bit hectic to retain all at once, but practice makes perfect! and Jira is with you along the way to facilitate your work. One or perhaps the most strong suite Jira equips you with is its flexibility. Jira products already filter your drop-down Issue types menu according to the Jira product ,your project type, the Jira template you selected.
Whilst there’s more for Issues Types. Do not fret! As Jira Product Discovery is a newly adopted Jira product, so there is limited options when it comes to issue types.
Following the Team’s 22 announcement of the New Jira product- Jira product Discovery, Atlassian layed out more details during the “Unleash” event in the first quarter of 2023. As Jira Product Discovery is afterall a Jira Product, Issues constitute a big chunk of it. Focusing on its distinct target audience-Product Managers- for Jira Product Discovery, Jira introduced a new type of Issues -“IDEA” .
Idea:
Idea is essentially an issue where you include a product idea. This issue includes native jira fields such as summary, assignee, and description. However, the Idea issue incorporates new native jira fields tailored to include information about product ideas such as Teams working on the Idea, Roadmap, Goal (such as “Win Large Customers”),etc.
Steps to Create your First Jira Issue
It’s great that generating an issue is a simple process in Jira, as you’ll be spending a lot of time dealing with issues. At first glance, Issues might seem like a headache with so many types. But it is easier than it seems!
In order to create a new issue in a new project or an existing one, you just need to follow these simple steps:
Navigate to your desired Jira product:
You can navigate to an existing project page or create a new space for your project.
Select a Jira-native template:
This only applies in the case of a new project!
Create a new project:
After selecting your jira product and template , set your project name and Jira will automatically provide a unique key. Now, click “Create”.
On your project landing page, click “Create”:
Whether you just created a new project or you navigated to an existing one, you will open your project landing page, where you will find a visibly distinctive blue button “Create”. Click on it and a “Create issue” panel will then appear.
Select your Jira issue type, and fill out the necessary fields:
Fill out the required information. You can add or remove the already customized issue fields as necessary..
Finally, Click “Create”.
Don’t Worry! We’ll be sure to explain each step in more detail.
Simply click the blue “Create” button in any Jira product. Luckly, Jira uses a unified theme for its generic features like creating an issue, rendering your issue creation process literally a single click away.
The “Create issue” panel will then appear, and you can add or remove fields as necessary. This screen is totally customisable.
A list of default fields will appear. The displayed fields will vary depending on the Jira issue type. For example, if you select a “Task” Issue type, Jira native fields include Summary, Description, Attachments, Issue Priority, etc
You can change the project space of the new issue in the project area, and you can select the type of issue you’re working on in the issue type field drop-down menu.
Additionally, you can provide a description, attach files, and provide a summary about your issue.
You can also set the issue’s priority level and link related issues together.
Jira Issue Fields
Some of the native Jira fields that exist across all types of Jira Issues are:
Assignee:
With this field, you can specify who is responsible for resolving this issue. For instance, if the issue is an IT help, the assignee should typically be an IT specialist in your organization.
Reporter of a Jira Issue:
This Jira native field is where you can specify the person responsible for creating and reporting the issue. Simply put, It is typically the person who discovered the issue or is responsible for raising it to the teams’ attention.
Priority:
This macro allows to set a priority status to your issue ranging from highest to lowest
Labels in a Jira Issue:
You can select a label to facilitate filter and search of your issues later on, as well as enhance your issue organization. Labels help teams locate issues across their Jira instance by categorizing similar issues that do not belong to the same story or EPIC.
Linked Issues:
You can use this field to link other issues that are related to your current issue. For instance, you can link different sub-tasks to a bug, or story issue type it’s related to.
Once all is set, click “Create,” and you’re good to go! You just created a new issue for your project.
Jira offers multiple Jira Issue Types to cater to each Jira Product’s target audience, their task-specific demands, and the Jira template they chose to work with. Afterall, Jira Issues are one of the foundations of the Jira platform as a whole.
This article only scratches the surface of Jira Issues! But, Fear not! In subsequent blogs, we’ll be sure to dive deeper into some specific Jira issue use cases before moving on to explore other Jira Pillars like the Jira Dashboard.
