Jira

What it is and why

Jira is Atlassian's industry-standard tracker for tasks, sprints and bugs. If you're building a team of 5+, shipping releases on Scrum or Kanban and want the process to be strict and repeatable (statuses, transitions, required fields, SLAs), Jira covers that better than anything else. Reach for it when a board of sticky notes no longer holds: you need issue links, estimates, velocity reports and Git/CI integration.

How to do it (step by step)

1. Sign up. Atlassian Cloud isn't directly available from Russia — two routes: (a) self-host Jira Data Center on your own server; (b) use the cloud through a corporate VPN and non-Russian billing details. For a team based in Russia, default to Data Center or a Russian alternative (Yandex Tracker/Kaiten).
2. Create a project of type Scrum or Kanban (the wizard will suggest a template). Team-managed is easier to start with, Company-managed is for unified processes across the whole company.
3. Set up the Board. Columns = statuses. The minimum: To Do → In Progress → In Review → Done. Drag the statuses in Board settings → Columns.
4. Workflow. Project settings → Workflows. Add transitions with conditions (for example, nothing reaches Done without a filled-in "Resolution"). This is also where you set the auto-transition on PR merge.
5. Fields and estimation. Turn on Story Points (Board → Estimation). Add custom fields (Component, Team, Severity for bugs).
6. Sprints. Backlog → Create Sprint → pull issues in → Start Sprint (set the goal and dates). When it ends, Complete Sprint and anything unfinished rolls back to the backlog.
7. Integrations. Settings → Apps → Marketplace: GitHub/GitLab (linking commits to issues by the PROJ-123 key), Slack/Telegram notifications, Tempo (time tracking).
8. Automation. Project settings → Automation: rules like "when an issue moves to Done → notify the reporter", "if an issue sits 3 days in In Review → ping". No code, just the rule builder.

Ready-made recipe

The "feature from idea to release" conveyor: Epic → broken down into Stories (with Story Points) → the Story goes into a sprint → the developer creates a branch named PROJ-123-... → when the PR opens, Jira moves the issue to In Review automatically → after the merge into main, a CI hook moves it to Done and sets fixVersion → at the end of the sprint the Velocity report shows the team's real throughput for planning the next one.

What it costs (honestly)

The pricing logic: free up to about 10 users (cloud, basic features). Paid plans are monthly per active user, and the higher the plan (Standard/Premium) the more storage, audit logs and automations you get. Data Center is an annual license by user tier (more expensive, but the data stays with you). Exact figures and limits are on Atlassian's site — they change.

When it fits / when it doesn't

• Fits: a team of 5+, a formalized process, a need for reports and velocity, development with Git/CI, enterprise audit requirements.
• Doesn't fit: solo or 2-3 people (overkill); you want speed and a beautiful UX right now (take Linear); a team entirely inside Russia that doesn't want to mess with self-hosting or a VPN (take Yandex Tracker or Kaiten).

Risks and responsibility

Atlassian Cloud stores data on foreign servers — for Russian teams with personal data in their issues, that's 152-FZ territory (cross-border transfer of personal data, localization). Safer options are Data Center inside a Russian perimeter or a Russian tracker. Don't put real customer personal data into issues unless you have to. See the section disclaimer.

🤖 Prompt helper

You are a Jira admin. Set up a project for a team of {N} people, methodology {Scrum/Kanban}, product — {description}. Propose: (1) a status structure and a workflow with transitions; (2) a set of custom fields; (3) 3-5 automation rules for our process; (4) which reports to review weekly. Give it step by step, saying what to click where in the interface.