Project Management Tool JIRA Interview Questions

Project Management Tool JIRA Interview Questions: This tutorial covers the most frequently asked Atlassian JIRA interview questions with detailed answers. Defect management tools or say Bug tracking tools have been a part of software testing and development cycles for years. “JIRA” is an incident management tool, developed by Atlassian, which is commonly used for defect/issue tracking as well as project management.

This defect tracking tool is not only used for convenience-related features like recording, reporting but is also integrated directly with the code development environment. JIRA is an efficient tool and can track any defects/issues. JIRA also supports agile projects.

Now, the above was the basic description of Atlassian JIRA, defect tracking tool. Through this article, we will discuss multiple interview questions and answers, which will help you understand this tool much better as well as, on the other hand, will help prepare for your interview.

Project Management Tool JIRA Interview Questions

1) Why is JIRA used?
Answer: Atlassian JIRA is an issue and project tracking tool which allows us to track any project related work by following a proper workflow. Enlisted below are few reasons which determine the usage of JIRA:

• Able to track project progress from time to time.
• JIRA use-cases include project management, feature implementation, bug tracking, etc.
• Work-flow can be easily customized as per our requirement.
• Along with issue tracking, history of the work done on issues, when, what, and by whom can also be tracked.
• JIRA is platform-independent and can run anywhere.

2) Explain the JIRA workflow.
Answer: Workflow defines the series of steps or stages an issue/ bug goes through during its lifecycle from creation to the closing of the issue. The workflow here includes the creation of an issue, a series of actions performed to fix the issue, and the last step includes the closing or says completion of the issue after verification. The below diagram can also understand this:

3) Enlist report types generated by JIRA.
Answer: There are multiple reports available in JIRA which are used to show the project statistics throughout the project life cycle. There are general reports available for analyzing issues as well as different reports for Scrum projects and Kanban projects.

Following are the general reports generated as and when required for analyzing issues:

• Average Age Report
• Created vs. Resolved issue Report
• Pie Chart Report
• Recently created Issue Report
• Resolution Time Report
• Time Tracking Report
• User Workload Report
• Version Workload Report
• Workload Pie chart Report

Following are the examples of reports generated for Scrum projects:

• Sprint Report
• Control chart
• Burndown chart
• Cumulative Flow diagram
• Epic Report
• Release Burndown
• Velocity chart
• Version Report

Following are the examples of reports generated for Kanban projects:

• Control chart
• Cumulative Flow diagram.

For generating reports for your project, follow the below steps;

• Navigated to the desired project dashboard.
• Click on the Reports tab from the left-hand side to view different reports.
• Click on the Switch report to view the different reports.

4) Explain step by step how an issue is created in JIRA.
Answer: Whenever an issue or defect is encountered while testing, it needs to be reported so that the developers can work on it and take the necessary action to fix it. We will see step by step how an issue is created in Atlassian JIRA.

1) Log in to your JIRA account by using valid credentials and get directed to the dashboard.
2) Click on the ‘Create’ button displayed, and you will be navigated to a window for creating an issue.
3) Enter all the necessary details as required to create an issue. As you can see in the below image:

In the Project field, the project for which we are creating an issue is selected. In this example: STH_Learning(STHL) is selected from the drop-down containing all the available projects.

In the Issue type field, the nature of the issue is selected from the drop-down, which contains option like Bug, Task, Improvement, Story, New Feature, etc. In this example, ‘Bug’ is the nature of the issue.

The summary field contains the one line title of the issue, which imparts the critical information about the issue in a summarized way. The more effective the issue headline, the more you can show the criticality of the issue. Of course, the headline should be easily understood without any chances of misinterpretation. The example I have taken here, however, is not much critical.

The Reporter is the one who reports the issue. In most of the cases, the name of the Project manager is selected in this field.

In the Description field, the detailed description of the issue is written. As you can see in the below example screenshot, Steps to reproduce the issue, Actual result, the Expected result are included in the description.

In the Affect Version field, the current build version of the project is selected in which the issue has been encountered.

Fix version field is selected by the concerned developer people, who choose the version as and when the work for the particular issue has been finished, and the issue has been fixed.

Priority field defines which issue should be considered first to be fixed. Tester selects the priority of the issue from the drop-down based on its effect on the application. This example issue is a Medium priority.

In the Attachment field, any video or screenshot related to the issue is being uploaded.

In the Environment field, operating system and browser details are mentioned on which issue has been encountered.

4) After all the details have been completed, click on the ‘Create’ button displayed on the window to create the new issue.

5) The issue id is generated, which can be used in future reference for tracking the progress of the issue.

5) Explain the three color indicators and their significance.
Answer: For any particular issue in JIRA, 3 colors like Blue, Green, and Orange is used to denote the amount of time spent on any specific issue. This information is displayed under the ‘Time Tracking’ section. Each color has its significance like;

• Blue: This color is to denote the ‘Original Estimate,’ i.e., the time estimate to be invested in resolving the issue. This field has been labeled as ‘Estimated.’
• Orange: This color determines the time left for resolving the issue. This field has been labeled as ‘Remaining.’
• Green: This color defines the actual time that has been used or say spent in resolving the issue so far. This field has been labeled as ‘logged.’

6) For any particular issue, what all are included in change history?
Answer: Change history section displays the activities of changing any records with information regarding the person who has made the change as well as the time at which the changes have been made. The change history also displays information about the old and new field values in the case of the change in any field. Change history includes the following records of the changes:

• Creation and deletion of a comment.
• Creation and deletion of an issue link.
• Deletion of a worklog.
• File attachment changes
• Issue field changes

The change in history for any issue can be viewed in JIRA by following steps:

• Open to any particular issue.
• Click on the ‘History’ tab present in the ‘Activity’ section.

7) Mention a way with which an issue can be shared with other users in JIRA.
Answer: An issue can be shared with other users in JIRA by using the share option available on the issue description page.

When the share option for any particular issue is clicked, it contains the link to the issue to be shared along with the ‘Username or Email’ and ‘Note’ field that has to be filled.

8) What is the importance of labeling issue?
Answer: Labeling an issue is done to categorize an issue within a particular section, which in turn can be easily searched with the help of labels. Label for a particular issue can be initially set at the time of creating the issue, while it can also edit within the issue. The label field is displayed under the ‘Details’ section, as shown below in the figure:

9) How is an issue linked to JIRA?
Answer: As the name itself defines, Linking means the association between the two. In the same way, in JIRA issue is linked to any other issue in cases like:

• Relate to another issue
• Duplicate to another issue
• Block another issue.

For displaying the details of the Linked issues, there are two fields available in JIRA: ‘Linked issues’ and ‘Issues.’

Linked issue section contains the drop-down for the options to be selected as the reason for linking the issue. As per the selected option, the suggestion of the issues to be linked in displayed in the ‘Issue’ dropdown.

Linking of issues can be done either on the same or different JIRA servers.

10) What is the purpose of the JIRA dashboard?
Answer: The first page which is displayed whenever we get logged in to JIRA application is ‘Dashboard’ which is the default or system dashboard. A personal dashboard can also be created and designed by adding different gadgets and can also be edited as and when required. These gadgets are the means to display the project progress in terms of issues, etc. Let us understand in steps how a personal dashboard can be created:

1) Enter valid credentials and get navigated to the JIRA dashboard.
2) Click on “…” displayed on the upper right-hand side and chose the option ‘Create a dashboard.’ You can also choose the ‘Copy dashboard’ in the case of copying the currently viewed dashboard.

3) ‘Create Dashboard’ page is displayed.
4) Enter all mandatory information and click on the ‘Create’ button.

5) After creating a dashboard, you get navigated to a page where there are multiple options to select and add gadgets to your dashboard.

6) There is also an option available to choose and edit the layout of your dashboard.

Any particular Dashboard can be edited, copied, shared, delete from the Manage dashboard section.

11) What do you mean by Scheduling an issue?
Answer: Scheduling the issue means scheduling the work of the issue for a particular ‘due date.’ For this function to work, one must have ‘Schedule issue permission’ by JIRA Administrator. In this case, a field with ‘Due Date’ is being populated.

12) Explain how particular project details are listed in JIRA.
Answer: Every project has some main attributes which have to be displayed in the project summary. These attributes include:

• Name of the project
• Key
• Components
• Versions (if present)

Please refer to the screenshot of the Project ‘STH_L’ summary page as your reference. Although not much activity has been done in this project, this image will give you a clear idea.

As you can see from the image, the middle display area of the page shows the ‘Activity’ screen containing details of the activities done on issues or projects.

The right-hand side section displays the basic information about the Project like Project Lead, Key, Issue Status, etc.

The left-hand side contains various options like Components, issues, Reports, Active Sprints, etc. The related information is displayed as per the selection from the option. For Example: If I select the ‘Issue’ option, the below-displayed screen will appear.

13) What are the issues types that are created and tracked via JIRA?
Answer: JIRA has some defined set of default issue types that are displayed under the ‘Issue Type’ section. Other issue types can be added, edited, and deleted as per the requirement of the project. Some of the common issue types are Bug, Task, Sub-task, Epic, Story, etc. Their details can also be seen under the Issue type section, as shown below in the figure.

As the definition of ‘Issue Type Schema’ mentioned in the JIRA application,

An issue type scheme determines which issue types will be available to a set of projects. It also allows specifying the order in which the issue types are presented in the user interface. There are two types of issue type schema:

• Default Issue type schema
• Scrum Issue type schema

14) How is a sub-task created in JIRA?
Answer: Sub-task is the way of splitting up of parent issue into a number of small tasks that are tracked and worked on separately. The parent issue contains the information of all its sub-tasks, which can be only of the same project. A parent issue cannot be closed unless and until all its sub-tasks are closed. A sub-task has the same fields as that of any standard-issue, but their issue types are different. Now, let us see step by step how a sub-task is created. I have created an issue in the below example for the understanding creation of the sub-task.

1) Open a parent issue by searching for an issue id or create any new issue id.
2) On the right-hand side of the issue description screen, you will see “…”. Click on it, and options are displayed.
3) Click on Create Sub-task from the displayed drop-down option.

4) Create a sub-task window is displayed.
5) Enter all the mandatory details and click on the ‘Create’ button.

6) Now the created subtask gets added to the parent issue under the sub-task section as shown below in the figure:

7) There are also options available to convert an issue into a subtask as well as subtask into an issue.

15) Explain the term Cloning an issue.
Answer: Cloning an issue means copying an issue. In this condition, a clone of the original issue is created, which consists of the same information as is present for the original issue. Cloning of the issue is done so that multiple users can work on the same issue. However, the operation done either on the original issue or the clone issue does not affect each other. All the information of the original issue are cloned expect few as mentioned below:

• Time tracking
• Comments’
• Issue History
• Status and Resolution

Let us see how to create a clone of an issue:

1) Open any issue by searching for an issue id or create any new issue id.
2) On the right-hand side of the issue description screen, you will see “…”. Click on it, and options are displayed.
3) Click on Clone from the displayed drop-down option.

4) The clone issue window is displayed.
5) If required, you can edit the summary of the issue and click on the ‘Create’ button.

6) Another issue is created with ‘CLONE’ added in summary.

16) Explain the Kanban board.
Answer: Kanban boards are created for the projects where the team has its prime focus on visualizing the workflow and managing the project’s work in progress. The most important feature of a Kanban board is that it is found in work mode because the projects do not have their work as planned. Let us see how the Kanban board is created in JIRA step by step.

1) Log In to the JIRA application using valid credentials and get navigated to the dashboard.
2) Click on Project drop-down and select the option ‘Create Project.’
3) Select ‘Kanban Software development’ and click on the Next button.

4) Enter all the necessary details and click on the Create button.
5) Kanban board is created, as shown in the below example.

Note: I have just taken a basic example of creation

In the case of Kanban, the incoming task is given more priority, and hence, it is considered as the best methodology for cases like bug fixing and maintenance release.

17) Mention one similarity and one difference between JIRA Scrum and JIRA Kanban.
Answer:

Similarity: Both JIRA Scrum and Kanban are considered as the most powerful process tool for the optimization of work and the processes as both processes focus is on continuous optimization and visualizing the workflow. In these cases, large and complex tasks are broken down, and each task are worked on and completed efficiently.

Difference: Scrum board is the work mode where the progress of sprints and tracking of its work is done. Here the team determines the list of issues that have become backlog, and then these issues are moved to sprints as per team plan.

In the case of the Kanban board, the work in progress activities is being maintained, and their process flow is tracked. Here the team decides the increase and decrease of the number of issues that is to be displayed in each status of the workflow.

18) What are the most useful JIRA add-ons?
Answer: Some of the most useful JIRA add-ons are listed below:

• Jenkins-CI
• Usersnap
• Slack
• HipChat
• GitHub
• PagerDuty
• Tempo Timesheets

19) What comes under JIRA Schema?
Answer: JIRA Schema consists of the following:

• Workflows
• Issue types
• Custom fields
• Screens
• Field configurations
• Notifications
• Permissions

20) How is a security setting helpful in JIRA?
Answer: The security setting for any issue is defined or say set either at the time of the creation of the issue or while editing the issue. The basic reason for security settings is to restrict user access to the issue so that not all users can work on that issue. The security setting also allows access to the issue to the member of the chosen security level.

Important JIRA Interview Questions

1) Explain what JIRA is?
Answer: JIRA is an issue tracking product or a software tool developed by Atlassian, commonly used for bug tracking, project management, and issue tracking; it is entirely based on these three aspects.

2) Explain what a workflow is?
Answer: Workflow is defined as a movement of the bug/issue through various stages during its life-cycle

• Created/Open
• WIP ( Work In Progress)
• Completed/Closed

3) What can be referred to as an issue in JIRA?
Answer: In JIRA, an issue can be anything like a

• Software bug
• The project task
• A help-desk ticket
• The leave request form

4) List out the source control programs with which it integrates?
Answer: It integrates with source control programs such as CVS, Git, Subversion, ClearCase, Visual SourceSafe, Mercurial, and Perforce.

5) Why use JIRA?
Answer: The reason behind using JIRA is

• Upfront and fair licensing policy
• Features that are not available elsewhere
• Get the latest update on the progress of projects
• It runs anywhere and recognized by many famous companies
• Easily extensible and customizable

6) Is it possible to access the JIRA cloud site via a mobile device?
Answer: Yes, it is possible to access the JIRA cloud site via a mobile device. You have to use the URL of the JIRA cloud site in your mobile web browser.

7) Can you disable JIRA mobile for the site?
Answer: You can disable JIRA mobile for the site so that users can be unable to operate the desktop view of JIRA on their mobile device. JIRA mobile comes as a system add-on and can be disabled at any time.

8) Explain the labeling and linking issue in JIRA?
Answer:

• Labeling Issue: It enables you to categorize an issue in a more informal way than assigning it to a component or version. You can then search issues according to the label.
• Linking Issue: This feature enables you to link an association between two issues on either the same or different JIRA servers.

9) Mention the types of reports generated in JIRA?
Answer: JIRA offers reports that show statistics for projects, versions, people, or other fields within issues. Various reports included JIRA is

• Average Age Report
• Pie Chart Report
• Resolution Time Report
• Recently Created Issues Report
• Resolved vs. Created Issues Report
• Single Level Group By Report
• Time Tracking Report
• User Workload Report
• Workload Pie Chart Report, etc.

10) Explain what is Cloning an Issue?
Answer: Cloning as an issue allows you to create a duplicate of the original issue so that many employees can work on a single issue within a single project. The clone issue can be connected to the original issue. A clone issue holds following the information

• Summary
• Description
• Assignee
• Environment
• Priority
• Issue Type
• Security
• Reporter
• Components, etc.

11) Mention what things are not included in the cloned issue in JIRA?
Answer:

• Time tracking
• Issue History
• Comments

12) Explain what the use of the “Move Issue” wizard in JIRA is?
Answer: The move issue wizard enables you to specify another project in your JIRA instance. Move wizard permits you to change certain attributes of an issue like

• Issue Type: If your issue is a customs issue type and does not occur in your target project, you must choose a new issue type for your issue
• Issue Status: If you have assigned your issue as a customs issue status and it does not exist in your project, you must select a new issue status for your issue
• Custom Fields: If you have determined required custom fields for your issue, which do not occur in the target project, you must set values for them.

13) How is the security setting helpful in JIRA?
Answer: JIRA’S security setting restricts access to the issue to only those person who is allowed to work on the issue or a member of the chosen security level. The security level of an issue can be set either when the issue is created or when the issue is being edited

14) Explain how you can share an issue with other users?
Answer: You can email an issue by using the share option in JIRA. You can also email other JIRA users a link to the issue by sharing the issue with them or by mentioning them in an issue’s Description or Comment field.

15) Explain how you can modify multiple bulk issues?
Answer: To modify multiple bulk issues, you can use the Bulk Change option from the “Tools” menu of the navigator. All the issues on the current page can be selected for the bulk operation. The following list details the available bulk operations like

• Workflow Transition
• Delete
• Move
• Edit

16) Explain how you can disable mail notification for Bulk Operations?
Answer: To disable mail notification for a particular Bulk Operations, you have to de-select the “Send Notification” checkbox in the bulk operation wizard.

17) What does an issue change history include?
Answer: Issue change history includes

• Deletion of a comment
• Deletion of a worklog
• Creation or deletion of an issue link
• Attachment of a file
• Changes to an issue field

18) Explain what do the three colors indicate tracking times or duration for an issue?
Answer: Three colors will be displayed representing the amount of time spent on the issue

• Original Estimate (Blue): The amount of time initially estimated to resolve the issue
• Remaining Estimate(Orange): The remaining amount of time left to resolve the issue
• Time Spen or Logged (Green): The amount of time spent so far while resolving the issue

19) Mention some of the popular add-ons for JIRA?
Answer: Some popular add-ons for JIRA include,

• Suites utilities for JIRA
• ScriptRunner for JIRA
• Zephyr for JIRA – Test Management
• JIRA Toolkit Plugin
• Atlassian REST API Browser
• Portfolio for JIRA
• JIRA Misc Workflow Extensions
• Tempo Timesheets for JIRA
• JIRA Charting Plugin

20) Mention what Schemes are in JIRA?
Answer: Schemes are a major part of the JIRA configuration. It is a collection of configured values that can be used by one or more JIRA project. For instance, Notification Schemes, Permission Scheme, Issue Type Scheme, and so on. There is a total of seven types of schemes.

21) Mention what can be configured for the JIRA project and issue type?
Answer: You can configure the following things for each pair of an issue type and JIRA project.

• The order of custom fields appears on an issue screen
• The workflow of an issue including the statuses
• Which custom fields and system an issue can use
• Project accessibility
• Permissions for what a user can do with an issue
• Versions and components available for an issue

22) Mention is it possible to get back up your JIRA cloud data?
Answer: In JIRA, you can take the backup of your JIRA cloud data using Backup Manager. But only one backup file is stored at a time. New ones overwrite the existing backup.

23) Mention what data can be backed up?
Answer: The backup data includes,

• Attachments if selected
• Users and their group settings
• Avatars
• Issues

24) Mention some useful tips on JIRA Workflow?
Answer: As such Statuses are global objects in JIRA. Changing the name of the status on one workflow will change the status on all workflows that use that status

• Hover over status or transition to see the relevant transition labels
• One cannot clone transitions in the workflow designer
• In the workflow designer, one cannot create annotations
• Directly you cannot set the issue. Editable property.

25) Mention what are the limitations when editing an active workflow?
Answer:

• If a workflow is active, you cannot edit the workflow name (only the description)
• You cannot delete the workflow steps
• A step associated status cannot be edited
• You cannot add any new outgoing transition if a step has no outgoing transitions (Global transitions are not considered).
• A step’s Step ID cannot be changed.

26) In the JIRA workflow, is it possible to transition an issue back to its previous status?
Answer: Practically, it is not possible to transition an issue back to its previous status. However, you can use the “on hold” feature to transition an issue back to its previous status. Here are the steps,

• In the workflow, Create a global transition to the ‘On Hold’ status.
• Now from ‘On Hold’ status create another transition to every other status you want to come back to
• Since the transition names cannot be the same, add a blank space at the end of it.
• Now you don’t want the status transition from the ‘On Hold’ and ‘Done’ to ‘On Hold’ So you will hide the other status “On Hold” by adding the value field condition on the global transition.

27) Mention what is the role of Validators in JIRA?
Answer: The Validators in JIRA checks that any input made to the transition is valid before the transition is performed. If a validator fails, the issue will not progress to the destination status of the transition.

28) Mention what types of Post functions are carried out after the transition is executed?
Answer: Types of Post functions carried out after the transition is executed includes

• Adding a comment to an issue
• Generating change history for an issue
• Updating an issue’s fields
• Generating an event to trigger email notifications

29) What is an event in JIRA?
Answer: The events are classified into two a System event (JIRA defined events) and Custom event (User-defined events). An event describes the status, the default template, and the notification scheme and workflow transition post function associations for the event.

30) What is the Audit Log?
Answer: Under Audit Log, you can see all the details about the issue created, and the changes made in the issues.

31) For an Agile project, how user stories in JIRA are created?
Answer: For an Agile project to create user stories in JIRA, follow the below steps.

• Issue type -Epic and Issue type – Story linked to it. To do so, in the ‘Create Issue’ page, go to “Configure Fields” and select the “Epic Link” field to be included in the issue creation screen.
• Or you can have a product backlog by creating a main User story and having various sub-tasks under it.

32) Mention what is an “issue collector”?
Answer: An “issue collector” enables you to embed a JIRA feedback form into your website easily. This helps website visitors to log issues into JIRA through our website. To use the JIRA feedback form, visitors to our website do not need a user account in JIRA.

33) Mention the difference between Bugzilla and JIRA?

Bugzilla	JIRA
It is an Open Source	It is a commercial tool
Using Bugzilla might be little complicated for few due to grouping users and granting permissions	For some using JIRA would be more convenient than Bugzilla
Bugzilla allows you to show/hide the whole custom field or specific values based on the value of some other field	JIRA enables conditional configuration based only on Type fields and Projects.
Bugzilla’s has a powerful advanced search option	JIRA lacks advanced-level search options. JIRA has a flexible JQL language (JIRA Query Language). It enables you to build arbitrary boolean expressions.
Unlike JIRA, Bugzilla allows users to select the initial status of a new issue.	Unlike Bugzilla, JIRA enables you to define multiple workflows that are applied based on the issue’s Project and Type.
Bugzilla has only one link type: Blocks/depends and a Bug ID custom field	JIRA has configurable link types with user-defined semantics. JIRA enables one to link an issue to any other entity outside JIRA.

34) Explain how you can modify multiple bulk problems?
Answer: You can modify multiple bulk issues by using the option “Bulk Change” option.

Conclusion:

Through this article, I have covered everything necessary to know as a part of understanding and learning this famous and most useful issue tracking tool, i.e. JIRA. Although it was not possible to take any ongoing project as an example to make things clear, I have created a new id and new project in JIRA so that I can provide my answers with screenshots for better understanding. I hope this article proves helpful for your preparation for interviews. All the best, and keep learning.

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