1. Using JIRA for Issue and Project Tracking
Byron Chan

2. Usability Issues with Bugzilla
Poor flow
Overwhelming
Certain types of searches hard (those needed for defect counts on weekly status reports)
Poor flow, overwhelming, multiple search buttons (do they do the same things?), have to manually enter dates not in standard US format, hard to do certain searches (e.g. searching for bugs created in the last week, newly resolved bugs) especially as required for the defect counts on the weekly status reports
04/28/2010

3. Usability Issues with Bugzilla
Bug search, columns bleed into each other, hard to read, hard to pick out bug severity/priorities
Columns too close to each other
Hard to differentiate severity and priority
04/28/2010

4. Tedious Project Management
Project Manager has to create and update project plan and progress report weekly
Hard to know project status – must ask each team member
Project plan often not looked at by the other team members. It requires a lot of work on the part of the project manager.
During development phase, how does the PM know what each person is doing? Can look at Subversion log but depends on how much people enter there. Often must resort to asking each developer.
04/28/2010

5. Use JIRA Instead Well-known issue and project tracker
User-friendly interface
Highly customizable
Allows plugins for additional functionality
Downside
$4000 for academic license (unlimited users)
Could purchase a $10 license (10 users) for each team
04/28/2010

6. JIRA Search List of search filters Grouped by category
Easy date searches
Standard search functionality – long list of items, flows off the page, not overwhelming (better flow than Bugzilla)
Select the fields you want, grouped by sections which are expandable/collapsable
For dates, can choose from a calendar, makes it easy to find bugs resolved within a period, or new bugs within a period (not easy in Bugzilla)
04/28/2010

7. JIRA Search Results Fields differentiated Icons/colors used
Search results, columns are well-delimited, easy to read, use of color, and icons to show type, priority, and status
Fields customizable
Fields differentiated
Icons/colors used
Fields customizable
04/28/2010

8. Project Tracking in JIRA
Put project plan in JIRA as tasks/subtasks
Team members responsible for updating
Easy for PM to track
Team members set status, logging work done, and entering comments.
04/28/2010

9. JIRA Time Tracking
04/28/2010

10. JIRA Dashboard, good for project managers, and others too.
Customizable with different widgets. Can show a lot of things—have issue statistics by priority, pie chart breaking down issues by assignee, created vs resolved graph, can have saved searches, either clicking a link to see the search results (will just show # on dashboard) or as shown here, displaying the actual results of the search.
04/28/2010

11. Many Other Features
Integrates with source control (Subversion, CVS, others)
IDE integration (Eclipse, Netbeans, others)
threading
Can import from Bugzilla
threading – when somebody updates an issue, gets sent as a reply to the original issue creation . So sorting by thread makes it easy to see all the changes/comments on a particular issue.
04/28/2010

12. References JIRA homepage Bugzilla homepage
Bugzilla homepage
04/28/2010

13. Questions?
04/28/2010

14. Backup Slides
04/28/2010

15. Academic Pricing
Source:
04/28/2010