Chapter 1: Why Choose Jira Work Management?

For years, Atlassian's flagship collection of products known as Jira has been a favorite for project and product managers. This also rings true for those working in the field of information technology service management (ITSM). Jira has come a long way since it debuted in 2002 as an issue- and bug-tracking tool, with several products now having been launched since the initial offering.

So, whether you are a seasoned veteran of the Jira world or brand new to this funny-sounding tool landscape, this book will be just what you need to get up and running with navigating the product known as Jira Work Management (JWM).

As these new Jira products have sprouted up, there has come additional functionality and, unfortunately to an extent, increased complexity in creating, using, and managing projects. Don't get me wrong—I love the flexibility and enhancements that have been made. But I also have years of experience working with the Jira toolset, and for new users and administrators, Jira can be daunting.

Having said all of that, it begs the question: If many products are being offered by Atlassian, why should we choose JWM? The quick answer is that JWM provides a simple and fast path to creating new projects in Jira while incorporating new and exciting functionality not found in other Jira-related products.

At its very essence, JWM is a retooling and rebranding of the initial Jira Core product for business projects. This chapter will describe the differences in the products to help ease the move into this next generation of the tool.

But just being the rebranding of an existing tool is not a good enough reason to choose to use JWM. So, what are some things that set it apart?

First, JWM integrates seamlessly with the existing Jira family of products such as Jira Software (JSW) and Jira Service Management (JSM) projects and the Jira Cloud platform REpresentational State Transfer (REST) application programming interface (API) functionality. This integration means there is already a familiarity with the general execution of Atlassian products and their great reputation.

Add to those reasons the powerful performance of built-in project automation, the simple process of project creation and setup, and a suite of new tools, and you have one of the best new project management products on the market.

In this chapter, we're going to cover the following main topics:

• Comparing project types in Jira
• Review of the Jira Core product
• What's new in JWM?
• New terms learned in this chapter

Upon completion of this chapter, you will be able to describe how JWM projects are different from other Jira projects and which situations are best suited to each product type.