Hey PMOs and Project Teams, do you find it hard to get a read on your tech team’s projects on Jira because of, well, it’s techy-ness? Fluid has you covered with our Jira integration!

What is Jira?

Jira is a task management tool to increase productivity, particularly suited to tech teams. Additional functionalities like bug tracking are one of the many reasons making it popular amongst development teams. For developers and software engineers, Jira is a breeze to use, but it’s notorious for being complex and having a far from friendly interface for everyone else (which is usually why it’s not company-wide project management software).  

With Jira being so detailed and often full of complex agile reporting metrics, it’s difficult for Project Managers to get a read on their deliverables so they tend to try chasing down busy tech teams for a status report - another painfully time-consuming task. 

Why has Fluid integrated with Jira?

The Fluid integration is designed to complement Jira, taking full advantage of the benefits of both solutions. This integration allows you to send high-level deliverables from your Fluid Gantt chart or Kanban to Jira for your tech teams. In Jira, these deliverables will get entered in as user stories, features, and epics, ready for iteration; creating sub tasks, work items, test releases etc.

Your tech teams are then able to work within their processes, iterating on Jira which is comfortable and best suited to their style of working. As the tech team iterates and changes take place, the progress of that work is reflected on Fluid under the deliverable. Unlike most Jira integrations, Fluid’s doesn’t just duplicate all the sub-tasks across both platforms (which just causes unnecessary noise!), instead it brings to the front what each user really needs to see.

How does the Fluid integration with Jira work?

Let’s say you’re a busy project lead using Fluid to manage a large internal IT application project. As well as clear reporting from your project managers, you need clear visibility of the overall status of your tech team’s deliverables and when they are due to be completed. You don’t need to see the iterations, sub-tasks and sprints it takes to get it completed. Although Fluid isn’t populated with each sub-task (you can drill down to see them should you wish to), Jira syncs back the status of each task so Fluid can produce an overall status of the tech deliverable as a whole, creating simplicity and transparency for project managers to understand the status. Essentially, project managers get to see how much work is being done in Jira, and when it is expected to be complete.

As a Project Manager, it’s likely that a project requires output from multiple teams (Marketing, Tech, Finance etc.). The Fluid Jira integration means you don’t have to force your tech team to keep multiple tools up to date. Work will automatically sync on both solutions saving time, whilst being able to see the status of the entire tech deliverable according to the bigger strategic project that it’s playing in to. You can also ensure everyone can continue using the language they are used to by configuring the labels on Jira to match the correct corresponding field on Fluid (this way the status makes sense on both the tech team’s Jira board, and the PM’s Fluid board).

How can I set up the integration?

It’s simple to get your Fluid and Jira boards talking to one another, it only takes 3 steps:

1.    Input your Jira domain and username on the Fluid integrations page

2.    Choose what projects and boards you want Jira to give you updates on 

3.    Map out statuses, work items and any relevant field names to ensure they’re displayed accurately on both platforms

And you’re done! It really is that easy to make your working life free of double admin, time consuming chasing and confusing statuses.

When will the integration be available?

The Jira integration is available on Fluid now and can be set up on your existing account. Simply get in touch with your Customer Success Manager to get started. If you’re not using Fluid yet, you can find out about the many other great benefits that it can help you with. Get in touch with us today to learn more.

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