Jira 8 Essentials: Effective project tracking and issue management with enhanced Jira 8.21 and Data Center features, 6th Edition

I found this book to be a great way to learn concepts of JIRA. I am going to keep it.

The author provides a great technical overview of Jira requirements and how to effectively set up project management for your team. This is a great quick reference resource.

There are a lot of great project management tools out there to use, but one I have spent the most time with is the Atlassian suite, including Jira. The new edition of “Jira 8 Essentials” Packt by Patrick Li provides a great starting point for learning and implementing Jira for local project management. One of the main advantages is Jira 8 uses cloud support to set multiple nodes and projects within the same environment. This allows customized construction as well as integration between different teams. The first section covers the administrative configuration, the next project basics, and the final element with advanced user practices. Along the way, a consistent sample project is used to build skills. The first section only covers two chapters and quickly discusses loading the Jira Platform into the system and starting the basic configuration. This is rapidly followed by the meat and potatoes in setting up project spaces and creating work-based issues. One especially useful chapter was the segment of field and screen management. If you’ve used Jira, you know it can be a sticky spot to go from project and project while making sure that the right fields go with you. This can include items like version control, unique project labels and other methods to standardize metrics and controls. The author follows those basics with an introduction to creating workflows and automating notification procedures. Workflows are one of the central tools of Jira, and customizing these items can create significant observability, one of my soapboxes, across multiple items. If one cannot see how a program is progressing, it can be difficult to compare, resulting in more apples to oranges than apples to apples when managing where to assign resources. Chapter 9 dealt with securing Jira and administrative rights. This element would have been better included in the first section on initial permission than later in the book. Jira 8 uses an RBAC implementation primarily, allowing admins to decide which fields, projects, and properties are assigned to each element as a user, group or project-level consideration. Projects can be assigned to a group or an individual. One key element missing was walking through Jira custom automation, like automating customer security down to the individual level. For example, one can create a security group for certain individuals to allow viewing of a particular issue, like a contract, and then automate that the security tag will be automatically assigned based on a field within the ticket. It would have been nice to see more in this particular lane. Finally, the work deals with using Jira queries, either the basic model or writing your own Jira Query Language (JQL) It then discusses the reporting mechanisms that can be tied to these unique queries. Again, this is a favorite Jira strong points is that one can build a unique query and then display customized graphs to management. There are a number of reports available, but these often are not sufficiently customizable to show exactly what one may be looking to display. Third-party apps are also discussed, as, unfortunately, many of the truly useful graphs are not accessible in the baseline Atlassian application. This also highlights another missing section, Plans. Plans in Jira describe a function where items can be shown in a hierarchy from high-level issues to individual tasks, mapped over time, and tracked with dependencies. Overall, this is an excellent beginner book on Jira. It covers all the basics that one needs to know to get started. However, several of the key strengths, such as automation tasks and planning boards, were left out. These may be more on the advanced segment but are one of the items that truly differentiates Jira from other project management software available in the market. I’d recommend purchasing a copy or two of this on the office shelf for any organizations that regularly use Jira.

To understand the opinions that I will share in this review, you need to know my background. I work as a DevOps Consultant who has more than 5 years of experience with Jira. I am an Atlassian Certified Expert and spend time on the online Atlassian Community as a Community Leader. I have purchased Patrick Li's books on previous versions of Jira (Jira 6 and 7) and found them helpful in understanding the features of Jira and forming my expertise. I was provided a review copy of Jira 8 Essentials by the publisher and asked to provide a review. For this latest edition of Jira 8 Essentials, Li is faced with a challenge: how to prepare the reader of a changing Jira atmosphere when Atlassian removes support for Server products in 2024. He answers this challenge by introducing the Data Center platform for Jira in the first chapter. He shows the steps for setting up Data Center in a nonclustered environment, and then how to add additional cluster nodes for high availability. From then on, Li focuses on introducing the elements of Jira configuration. He starts by showing Jira projects, the base for configuring a team's work. He presents the steps for creating a project and modifying a project's configuration in an easy, straightforward manner. He ends by establishing a lab for the reader to follow along and create an example project. Each successive chapter builds from the Jira project, by looking at a specific configuration element. Li starts with fields, then moves to screens, and workflows. He demonstrates how to create new elements, as well as how to modify existing elements and incorporate them into the project. The labs at the end of the chapters give the reader hands-on experience in properly setting up the correct configurations. This book is valuable for those starting out on managing Jira projects or administering Jira Data Center. Jira 8 Essentials contains a wealth of information for setting up Jira Data Center and Jira projects in an easy-to-read format. I reccommend aspiring Jira Project administrators and Jira administrators pick up a copy today.

This is an application I am very interested in but know little about. So, I decided to jump in with both feet and immerse myself into the subject matter. As a senior technical writer, I'm quite comfortable with "high-tech" subject matter. The book is written in a very cohesive and understandable format; the author certainly has an excellent command of the English language and communicates well to the reader. For anyone who wishes to delve into Jira, this book is logically structured and moves smoothly from one topic to the next.

Our company has been used Jira for project management and bug tracking for number of years. It is a very powerful and effective tool for us. Very glad to see the latest edition with very detail instructions and some of very helpful new features. Many Thanks to Author Patrick for getting it out. Great Job!

The book is well writtenby an expert in the field. It is a well structured book. To the point with numerous useful examples covering a variety of situations.

This book is well structured, very handy, and super helpful if you're one of the PMs using Jira daily. Thank you very much, Partick Li!

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