Interviewing a Jira User

What is your role within the University, and how does Jira fit into your daily tasks and responsibilities?

I work as a Senior Leaning Technology and Design Advisor at the Edinburgh Futures Institute (EFI) and am currently seconded in the ‘AI for Teaching Innovation’ project (a partnership between the Centre for Research in Digital Education and the Edinburgh Futures Institute). In this role, I collaborate with academics and a team of software developer interns to create web applications that use Generative AI for teaching.

We ran two workshops with academics, where we reflected on ‘big ideas’ and critically considered the impacts of AI in education. These sessions also provided a hands-on space to come up with web applications for teaching, following a human-centred design approach. Following this, academics submitted pitch proposals, and the project’s advisory group evaluated them, ultimately selecting the most interesting and feasible ideas to take forward into the build phase. 

In the build phase, Jira is crucial to my responsibilities. I use it daily to track tasks, manage development sprints, and ensure that each stage of the project from ideation to deployment stays organised and on schedule.

Has Jira changed the way you work?

I’ve been using Jira for several years now, and I cannot imagine coordinating a software development project without it, so it has been very positive indeed. It’s structure for organising work into smaller, manageable tasks has made coordinating the development of web applications significantly easier. Additionally, the ability to break down projects into sprints or iterations increases transparency and communication within the team making planning, tracking progress, and adjusting to any changes smoother while being quite agile at the same time.

Are there any unique features of Jira that you find particularly useful?

The Kanban board (to do/in progress/in review/done) allows us to easily see where the project is at the moment, and see what everyone is working on. This is fundamental for collaborative coding (which is very different from solo-coding!). The fact that each Jira ticket can be packed with a wealth of very detailed information makes it a very handy tool for complex projects.

I also like to structure the whole agile development process in epics, stories, tasks, and subtasks, and find useful how everything can be linked to each other. This is particularly helpful when we need to break down larger tasks into smaller, more manageable sub-tasks, or when multiple app features are interrelated.

As someone with experience using Jira, what advice or tips would you give to new users to help them get the most out of the platform?

Software Development

I see Jira as a Trello or Planner on steroids, which I find super useful for software development. However, I also started to use it for other tasks that are not software development-related, but instead for regular project management. If Trello or Planner works for you, and you don’t work on software development, I wouldn’t recommend it.

General Project Management

While my primary use of Jira has been for software development, I’ve also adapted it for more general project management tasks. If you’re running projects that don’t require all these advanced features, Trello or Planner might be simpler and more intuitive. They work well for straightforward, less complex projects where a full-blown system like Jira isn’t necessary.

Bear in mind, that it takes a lot of learning to fully get the most out of Jira. So for teams that need a level of control and detail, especially in complex technical environments, the upfront effort to learn is definitely worth it!

All that said, if someone decides to go for Jira, the support received from the Apps Service Management team is fantastic – they are always happy to help and guide you!

If you're interested in using Jira please contact service.management@ed.ac.uk.