Jira is a powerful tool that can help businesses improve their team collaboration efforts, allowing team members to track tasks, manage projects, and communicate with each other in real-time. Whether you’re working in software development, marketing, sales, or any other field, Jira’s versatility and customization options make it an ideal solution for teams of all sizes.

One of the most significant benefits of Jira is its ability to facilitate communication among team members. Considering the communication you should consider what you want to communicate , how, and to whom. Jira allows you configure and manage those aspects through different tools which we’ll review below.

With improved communication your team members will quickly see the progress of a project, identify issues, and provide feedback to each other in a timely and efficient manner.

Another important benefit of Jira is its ability to enhance transparency in project management. With Jira, team members can easily see the status of a project, who is working on what, and what issues need to be resolved. We’ll dive into how Jira can support that as well 🙂

Lets explore some of the features and best practices that you can use to get the most out of Jira for communication and clarity and collaboration!

Communication in Jira

The What

Depending on how your projects are set and teams are working, the critical parts of what to communicate will vary. For example, a developer will care to know that is task is ready for work, while a manager will want to see the scope of general progression.

Here are some ways jira can help you capture the important bits:

custom fields — allow you to define types of fields to capture structured information. that information can quickly convey the the important parts of what’s needed for work, instead of looking for them through comments. Make sure to select the right type of field. For example text fields should be for descriptive information and should’nt be used for a selective set of options)

Status — by constructing a WF that is specific to your team, the status of a ticket will convey the lifecycle that your team members are familiar with, making their lives much easier.

Boards & Filters — use these to make sure that only the relevant scopes are seen by stakeholders and dont overload your users.

Reports and dashboard — use these to have a higer bird’s view to quickly allow one to be familiar with what they need to know. this is a great way to make sure important information is clearly visible, especially if you use the graphical displays!

The How

Aside from making the information avialable on Jira’s interface clear and available, the system allows several other options to allow smoother communications.

Notifications — with this, you can choose who in your team should be notified, and on what occasions. Jira will push emails to them. Be aware to stay away from notifications overload, as this will lead to members actually ignoring notifications!

Comments and mentions — assuming the correct permissions are set up, your team members can comment with information that is unique to the task and include other members by mentioning them. this also pushes email to those member.

Emails/Slack/Teams — this is a large piece! where ever your team is comfortable communicating, Jira allows integrations with those systems, making sure that where ever you are, you wont miss a single bit, and you wont need to move away from your team’s main method of communication. These integrations require a bit more tech approach in configuring them, but its sure to pay its dividends in the long run!

The Who

Who has access to the information begins with access permissions to the data in Jira.

Jira offers different permissions to make sure the right people have access to the right information. From restricting specific issues, to blocking access to scopes of information, to allowing only managers to see progressions to defining read only users on the system.

Depending on how your team is built, you will need a setup that accounts for making sure people get all the information they need, and nothing more.

Transparency in Jira

This point is more about making sure the information is clear and available in the right places, and is a direct continuation of the matter of who should have visibility to the information.

For transparency, including some of what was mentioned before, Jira can help with the below:

Oraganizing the ticket view — Jira can separate the information to 3 main areas making sure the most critical information is readily available to watch. This can be done with the layout feature.

Roadmaps and advanced roadmaps — these tools allow aggregation of project related information to show progression (as well as allow to plan) for larger scopes.

User groups — a part of the onboarding and user management process, Jira allows you to define groups of users. With this function, you can then use groups in permissions and notifications to better and more easily manage access to information.

Scopes of work — this has more to do with how you decide to organize and structure the work in Jira. There are different project types available and each with its own dis/advantages. Setting your team(s) in the correct work structure(s) is a delicate process and a super important decision. Be sure to put the best setup from day 1, as this affects all the above parameters!

To bring it in all together, Jira offers a variety of options to ensure that your team is informed and up-to-date on everything they need to know. With so many options available, it can be overwhelming to choose the right ones for your specific use case. Be sure to take the time to explore all the options and select the tools that work best for your team to ensure successful adoption and performance.

have more questions? have issues with making sure your team is up to speed? wright in the comments below 🙂