• What has to be validated
• Who will be testing
• How the validation needs to be done
• Which test cases will be performed manually and which will be performed automatically 
• Different test cases with test data
• Resources involved
• Timelines involved

To learn how to create test plans in jira watch the below video:

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To learn how to create test sets and execute test sets in jira watch the below video.

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To learn how to create and execute test cases with preconditions in Jira see the below video:

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Test cases can be created in Jira with the help of a plugin named Xray.

To learn how to create test cases with parameters in jira see the below video:

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Test management is not provided with normal jira set-up for a scrum project. Therefore, we need to install a plugin for test management. We Can use Xray Plugin for test creation, execution, management and monitoring.

See How to Install and Configure Jira Plugin.

Once Xray is installed you can create test cases as jira issue type after clicking the Create Button on Top of the Screen.

Then Select Issue Type as Test

In the Create Issue Panel fill In the necessary details and hit the Create button on the panel.

To view all the steps in details watch the video :

Thank you for going through this article have a nice day.

Table Of Contents:

• Agile Coaching
• Agile Coaches
• Vital Skills of an Agile Coach
• One-on-One Coaching Conversations
• Roles and Responsibilities of an Agile Coach
• Conclusion

Agile Coaching

Let us see what agile and coaching mean separately to understand what agile coaching is.

Agile is a philosophy to follow for continuous improvement. Agile is an approach in which teams work iteratively to deliver faster, valued, high-quality products to their customers. Agility brings people to come to a common understanding.

Coaching is a process where an experienced person helps individuals improve their performance and evolve continuously.

Agile coaching is a process to help people and organizations to rise from where they are now to where they want to be. Agile coaching is the art of conversing with a coachee and guiding them with different perspectives by sharing experiences based on what you learned from others and who you are.

“I would say that agile coaching is 40% doing and 60% being”

— Lyssa Adkins.

“Coaching is a method for helping others to improve, develop, learn new skills, find personal success, achieve aims and manage life change and personal challenges”

— Laura Whitworth.

Agile Coaches

Agile coaches are agile experts who help people, teams, and organizations perform better and grow. An agile coach sometimes needs to wear the teacher’s hat and sometimes be a mentor to help organizations and people know what agile is and adopt it.
An Agile coach acts as a facilitator in an organisation’s agile journey by helping people identify and solve their problems.

Vital Skills of an Agile Coach

Agile Expert

As an agile coach, one should understand different agile methodologies like Kanban, Scrum, Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Lean, etc. They should have good experience working in agile and identify how and where to implement them.

Good Listener

An agile coach needs to be a good listener. Listening is one of the vital skills any coach should have.
Imagine talking to a person who is busy looking at something else. How would this make you feel? Not good. You may also feel disrespected or neglected.

Agile coaches should provide their complete attention while listening to their coachees’ problems. Apart from giving attention while listening, they should grasp all conservation details and process them.

As an agile coach – One should listen to what the other person is saying and understand unsaid words from noticing their behavior, such as the change of behavior when the environment changes, the body language, and facial expressions.

Empathetic

Understanding feelings is again a fundamental skill for an agile coach. They should be able to borrow the shoes of their coaching clients, understand what they are going through, and then return those shoes without getting attached to the problem or the situation.

Team Builder

As an agile coach, one should build trust within the teams. Also, agile coaches need to learn how to rebuild broken trust. A fundamental factor in building trust is avoiding emotional theories and sticking to facts. An agile coach should bring vulnerability to the team to learn to trust each other. The team should share all kinds of information and problems with each other. Similarly, the coaching conversations should reflect trust.

Self Managed

Self-management is not just for an agile coach but for everyone for filling an environment with harmony. Handling emotions is required when it comes to helping the teams as an agile coach or coaching one-to-one. Below is an approach an agile coach can practice taking control of their emotions while facilitating under challenging situations without getting attached to the problems and responding after processing the provided information.

Change Catalyst

An agile coach should enable organizations, teams, and people to bring the best in them and facilitate essential changes.
An agile coach should be the one who speeds up the changes and thus improves organizations, teams, and people to perform better. Agile coaches don’t get involved in the change.

Impeccable Trainer

Again, one of the very basic skills an agile coach requires is to conduct good training, impacting people. Keep a few things in mind before imparting training.

Time Management:

In training, time should be well-managed, start on time, and complete the selected topics on time.

Content:

Excellent and relevant content is always valued. The training content should be within the scope of the training. Adding lots of visuals and examples in the content makes the pieces of training exciting, and participants feel well-connected.

Use Metaphors

The trainer can use metaphors to help the participants better understand as they add life to words and vivid imagination to the subject.

Adding Humour:

Many trainers add humour while training as this does not let the participants feel bored. It helps people feel energized. Adding humour also allows the trainer to create a bond with the audience.

Activities:

 Adding a lot of activities helps the participants grasp the concept and, at the same time, keeps them entertained and engaged. Adding activities provides participants with an immersive experience.

One-on-One Coaching Conversation

The job of the agile coach is to help each member perform at their best and take steps forward in their agile journey. Therefore, often people come to an agile coach to discuss a problem, or an agile coach may approach a member if they see an issue.

The problem and the solution should come from the coaching client in such conversations.

Here are a few points that would lead to a meaningful and fruitful conversation.

1. Make the coachee comfortable by greeting the coachee. Make sure that the coachee is at ease and trusts you.
2. Listen to the coachee patiently and with mindfulness.
3. Ask your coaching client to make notes of their takeaways.
4. Discuss the problem without any biases.
5. Make the coachee accountable for their actions and get clarity on timelines.
6. Conclude the conversation before closing it.
7. What happens in the conversation remains only with the coach and coachee. That is, the dialogue is confidential.

Techniques for Coaching Conversations:

1. Powerful Questions:

Resist asking questions with a boolean or static reply instead, ask open-ended questions. Asking open-ended questions will give the coachee the freedom and the space to respond in detail. Self-expression might let you know even the minor details.

Example:

1. What made you think that way?
2. How do you think I can help in this situation?
3. What other issues are important to you?

2. Story Telling:

Tell a situation-based story that helps the coachee feel more connected during the conversation. It helps to resolve problems by themselves with imagination.

One can use the below graph to frame stories.

A coach needs to stop at the climax (twist in the story) so that the coaching client can imagine the subsequent actions and denouement (final part of the story).

3. Inquiry:

An inquiry gathers information by asking questions and applying human senses to the data collected. A humble inquiry may provide a coach with a lot of information that helps understand the coachee’s mindset and the complexity of the problem.

Roles and Responsibilities of an Agile Coach

TEACHING TEAMS :

 An agile coach teaches agile principles and helps teams implement agile frameworks like Scrum, Kanban, Safe, etc.  Agile coaches guide the emerging teams in their agile path.

IMPARTING TRAININGS

Everyone looks upon agile coaches as role models. An agile coach trains the teams to become independent so that organizations can move from where they are now to where they want to reach. Agile coaches also play an essential role in training the leaders such as managers, scrum masters, other executives on agility.

CHANGE FACILITATOR

Circumstances change as the organizations, projects, people progress. Agile coaches help support the change process or may even lead the change process.

Let us discuss a few methods that help facilitate the changes:

Identify the Purpose of Changes:

Find the root cause of why this change is required. Ask questions to find out the purpose of doing something.

Identify your Support System:

Strengthen yourself by knowing who can be the first to help you.

Pros and Cons

Find the pros and cons of the change and guide the teams with that knowledge.

Brainstorm

Brainstorm ideas with the team.

Address Constraints

Address the constraints with the team.

LEVERAGING CONFLICTS

Conflicts are inevitable in agile teams because of people from different backgrounds.

Conflicts should be encouraged so that different perspectives come to light.

As an agile coach, one should improve the team’s performance by using the conflicts constructively. An agile coach should infer the level of conflict and help the team face it. An agile coach should not teach teams to avoid conflicts rather coach them how to convert conflicts into constructive disagreements.

CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT

An agile coach encourages cultural development in the organization. They promote a culture of openness and trust among each other. They add a flavor of vulnerability within a team not only in work but in their personal lives as well as it is a way that makes people within the teams share more and more and, most importantly, makes them learn how to depend on each other without doubts. Such a culture builds excellent products and inspiring leaders.

CONCLUSION

To conclude, I would say an agile coach enables people to deliver the best software and get the best out of them.

In this article, we will see what sub-tasks are and how to create sub-tasks in JIRA.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction to Sub-Tasks
• How to Create Sub-Tasks in JIRA

Introduction to Sub-Tasks

Subtasks are child of another issue, they are created to easily manage other issues like stories, tasks or bugs.

Subtasks are technical in nature as they are created for the people working under a particular task.

For example, let’s assume that we have a task:

<Coding for Wishlist button on main page>

Now a few examples of the sub-tasks associated with this task could be:

• 1. Create a Wishlist Button on main-page.
• 2. Coding required to link the button with functionality.

Once created, these sub-tasks are assigned to team members to get them done.

How to Create Sub-Tasks in JIRA

Note that we cannot create a sub-task independently and has to be created under other issues like tasks, story or bugs. We will not see an option to create sub-tasks in the create issues drop-down.

Assuming that we already have a task created in JIRA. <Coding UI Wishlist Button on main page>

Follow the below easy steps to create a sub-task in JIRA

STEP 1

After selecting the task on the backlog, go to the detailed panel on the right-side. Click on the Create subtask button.

STEP2

Add the necessary details and click the Create button

And the sub-task will be created.

I hope this article helped you to create tasks in JIRA. Good Luck!!!

In this article, we will see what tasks are and how to create tasks in JIRA.

Table of Contents:

• Introduction to Tasks
• How to create Tasks in JIRA

Introduction to Tasks

Well, tasks are the elements of a user story.

Tasks are the work items that are not directly related to a requirement but should be completed to get those requirements completed.

For example, let’s assume that we have a user story:

< As a Store Manager I want a mechanism to provide budget offers to store customers >

Now a few examples of the tasks associated with this user story could be:

• 1. Make the configuration changes to provide higher access to the store_manager user.
• 2. Making coding changes to add Provide Offers button to the main screen
• 3. Integration test after making the changes.

Once created, these tasks are assigned to team members to get them done.

How to create sub-tasks in JIRA

Follow the below easy steps to create a task in JIRA

STEP 1

From the Top Menu, click on the Create Button.

STEP2

Select the issue type Tasks and add the necessary details.

STEP3

Press the Create Button

And the task will be created.

I hope this article helped you to create tasks in JIRA. Good Luck!!!

These days, JIRA is the most famous tool used worldwide in the IT world and other industries. Many people, including me, believe JIRA is the best project management tool available in the market. It deserves this fame because of its features; it is easy to learn, highly customizable, and the teams can use it per their needs. Also, it is free if we want to use it for small setups that are up to 10 users and store upto 2GB data.

JIRA can be a one-stop shop for all our project management needs. Lets us see some of the widely used features of JIRA.

Requirement Management with JIRA

JIRA can be used for requirements management when used in partnership with Confluence. Confluence and JIRA in integration can serve the purpose of all the requirement management needs of the project.

Teams can use Confluence for general requirement gathering and lengthy and technical discussions within the team. Then these requirements can be broken down to more granularity, and hence issues-level and task-level requirements can be created and tracked in JIRA.

Task Management with JIRA

JIRA is used extensively to create and track tasks until the end of its lifecycle, and JIRA provides a simple default workflow to track the transitions of these tasks. Apart from generic workflow, JIRA also allows creating custom workflow as per the need of your project.
Project board also highlights the progress of tasks very effectively in JIRA.

Bug Tracking System

JIRA is very popular for bug tracking. Once a bug is identified, one can create an issue-type bug with JIRA software and track it until its life cycle. The team uses JIRA software extensively for creating bugs, adding all details, including descriptions, screenshots, versions, etc. Teams can effectively manage the priority and severity of bugs in JIRA.
Workflows are used to manage the status of bugs and teams can create their workflow or use the default workflow provided by JIRA.
Notification is another vital feature that JIRA provides for bug tracking.

Streamlining Workflows

A workflow is a sequence of tasks while working on user stories, bugs, custom issue types, etc., in JIRA. While every project has its specific processes to be followed and has its definition of ‘Ready’ and ‘Done’. There are certain paths to reach those different states, and all these statuses, transitions, and movements get defined in workflows.

JIRA provides a potent workflow engine. Teams can either use the default workflow provided by JIRA based on the project or create their workflows per the organization’s processes.

Estimations

Teams use estimation to measure the size of work they have, like backlogs. JIRA Software provides the flexibility to teams to choose their statistics for estimations like story points, original time estimate, issue
count or any custom numeric field.

Reporting

Reports are visual data that teams can use for their benefit. There are lots of reports provided by JIRA, for example:
Reports for Scrum:
Sprint Repot, Burndown Chart, Release Burndown, Velocity Chart.
Reports for Kanban:
Control Chart, Cumulative Flow Diagram
Other Reports:
Pie Chart Reports, Created vs. Resolved Issues Report, Time Since Issues Report, Resolution Time Report, User Workload Report, and many more.

Backlog Tracking

A backlog is a list of pending work to be done in a project. Backlogs in JIRA provide a way to manage these outstanding tasks, prioritize them, create sprints conveniently and organize them using epics.

Release Planning

JIRA helps in organizing massive work in the form of releases. Teams can use the Releases feature of JIRA to create specific versions that are release names, and start date and end dates are added while creating a release to specify its duration. These versions can then be associated with issues to tag them with a release.

Other useful features of JIRA are Project Analytics, Logging and Customization, Email Notifications, Preparing Product Roadmaps, and a lot more.

Summary

JIRA is a handy software for managing projects and is very customizable. JIRA is free for up to 10 users and 2 GB of data storage but has a cost associated with more significant larger projects.

I hope this article gave you an insight on what is JIRA and why to use it. Good Luck!!!

Jira provides a variety of projects templates, making the creation of projects in different domains relatively easy. Also, Jira provides templates for project creation in different agile methodologies and hence supports the day-to-day activities of agile-based projects.

Steps to Create a Project in Jira

Step1:

From the top menu click on Projects menu option, followed by clicking on Create project option.

Step2:

Click the required project template from the left and select suitable option on the right.

Step3:

Click on Use template button

Step5:

Click on Select a company-managed project button

Step6:

Add the name of your project and click on the Create project button

The project will be created.

I hope this article helped you to create a project in Jira. Good Luck!!