When Jira Can't Handle Your Workflow Anymore

 Learn how to get more out of Jira software development workflows by reading along, or jump ahead to a section that interests you:

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What Is Jira Used For?

Your developers like Jira for bug tracking because it’s cheap and easy to use. You liked it, too, when you had a smaller team and a simple workflow.

But your team grew. Now you’re dealing with more stakeholders than just engineers. And your workflow became more complex.

Today's Jira Software Development Workflows

Today, there’s more to track than just bugs. You have to manage requirements, test cases, and other development artifacts.

Even bug tracking — Jira’s strength — is more difficult. Your bugs number in the thousands.

Worse yet, you need strong traceability, and Jira can’t do it.

So, now you feel stuck. You can’t dump Jira — the developers would mutiny!

There is good news. You can make Jira fit your workflow without all the add-ons.

Making Jira Fit a Complex Workflow 

Whether Agile or Waterfall, your typical development project workflow has five stages: concept, feasibility, development, implementation, and production.

Jira provides decent coverage of the last three, but can’t stretch to the concept and feasibility phases unless you incorporate add-ons.

This exposes your project to risk and failures, which can have serious consequences:

• Defects in the release, potentially causing harm to users.
• Failure to pass a quality or regulatory audit, delaying time to market.
• Product failure, wasting significant investment in the product’s development.

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Make Jira Bug Workflows Better

Want to learn more about stretching Jira’s coverage for bug tracking?

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Beyond Bug Tracking with Jira

Get Better Jira QA Workflows (and More)

You need to extend Jira’s coverage to the entire product development workflow. That means you need efficient Jira QA workflows (even though Jira isn't built for testing). 

You could try to plug the holes with add-ons from the Jira store, but that approach has problems, too.

• It can double the cost of your Jira investment. All those additional license fees add up.
• The setup and maintenance can be complicated. You'll need to hire an outside consultant to get things running right.
• It can create multiple points of failure. What if the add-ons aren’t updated when a new Jira update rolls out?
• And when things go wrong, you’re left wondering who to call for support. Atlassian? The add-on’s creator?

If Not Add-ons, Then What?

So if add-ons aren’t the answer, what can you do when Jira doesn’t work for your workflow anymore?

You could jump to a new, more powerful tool, but you’d waste your Jira investment, and tick off your development team.

What if you could stretch Jira so that it could cover the entire product development workflow from the concept phase through the end of the production phase?

• You’d have a centralized way to access and manage all the artifacts a project generates: requirements, test cases, issues, and other development artifacts.
• All development artifacts could be automatically linked — from requirements to test cases to issues — giving you backwards and forwards traceability.
• Stronger traceability would mitigate your quality and regulatory compliance issues.
• Communication between stakeholders, developers, and QA would be simplified and streamlined.

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Does Your Workflow Need a Jira Alternative?

Learn more about using Jira alternatives to improve your development processes.

Visit the Jira Alternatives hub

Using Jira Bug Workflows with Helix ALM

By integrating Jira with Helix ALM, you'll get complete coverage of your entire workflow.

Plus, Helix ALM integrates with Jira right out of the box. 

Learn what you'll get by using Helix ALM and Jira together.

Jira + Helix ALM