Glossary · Hosting & DevOps

Jira

Definition: Jira is a project management and issue-tracking tool from Atlassian, widely used by software teams to plan, track, and manage work with Scrum and Kanban boards, sprints, backlogs, and customizable workflows.

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Overview

What Jira is

Jira is a project management and issue-tracking application from Atlassian, originally built for software development and now used broadly for planning work. Everything in Jira is an issue, such as a task, bug, user story, or feature, that moves through a customizable workflow from to-do to done. Teams organize issues into projects, boards, sprints, and backlogs.

How teams use it

Jira supports the two most common agile frameworks: Scrum, which organizes work into fixed-length sprints, and Kanban, which visualizes a continuous flow of tasks on a board. It adds backlog grooming, story-point estimation, release planning, and reporting like burndown charts and velocity. Jira also connects to the wider Atlassian ecosystem, such as Confluence and Bitbucket, plus thousands of integrations.

Why it matters for delivery and support

For a services team, Jira is the shared source of truth for what is being built, what is broken, and who is doing what. In app maintenance and support, it captures bug reports and change requests, prioritizes them, and tracks them to resolution with a clear audit trail. It also connects into automation platforms, so Jira issues can sync with tools like Monday and keep status consistent across systems a business already uses.

Where we use it

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FAQ

Jira — common questions

Is Jira only for software teams?

No. Jira started as a developer tool and remains strongest for software teams, but marketing, operations, and support teams use it too. Atlassian also offers Jira Service Management for IT and customer support and Jira Work Management for general business projects.

How much does Jira cost?

Jira has a free plan for up to 10 users, then Standard and Premium tiers priced per user per month, plus an Enterprise plan. Cloud pricing scales with your number of users, and larger teams typically land on Standard or Premium.

Jira vs. Trello?

Both are Atlassian products. Trello is a simpler, card-based Kanban tool best for lightweight task tracking, while Jira is built for structured software delivery with sprints, detailed issue types, workflows, and reporting. Choose Trello for simplicity, Jira for depth.

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