Optimizing Product Management with Jira: Part 1

As a product manager, Jira is one of the most powerful tools at your disposal. It helps you keep track of tasks, manage projects, and ensure that everything runs smoothly.

In this article, I’ll share how I use labels and components in Jira, make querying my best friend, and how all of this ties into effective roadmapping. These strategies can greatly improve your product management process.

Using Labels and Components

One of the first things I do when working in Jira is organize my tickets using labels and components. This not only keeps everything tidy but also makes it easier to find and manage tasks later on. This practice is crucial, especially when you’re dealing with complex projects where adding layers, like additional labels or components, can increase complexity. I’ve discussed the impact of adding layers in a project management context in one of my previous posts, “Adding Layers Adds Complexity”, which you might find helpful.

• Labels: I use labels for tickets that, while important, don’t necessarily belong to a specific project. For instance, if you have legal requirements that span multiple projects, you can tag those tickets with a label like “legal.” This way, you can easily retrieve and manage these tickets whenever needed, regardless of the project they pertain to.
• Components: Components are incredibly useful for categorizing tickets based on parts of a software service or the specific teams responsible for them. For example, if a bug is related to the payment system, I assign it to the “Payment System” component. This helps me quickly identify and address issues within specific areas of the product, streamlining the management process.

Make Querying in Jira Your Friend

Querying in Jira is an essential skill that can save you a lot of time and effort. While Jira offers a rich UI for filtering issues, I prefer to manually type queries using Jira Query Language (JQL) for more precise control.

Here are some of my favorite queries:

• Search by Text:
  text ~ "example text"
  This query returns all issues containing the specified text. It’s a quick way to find related tickets based on keywords or phrases.
• Filter by Label/Component:
  component = "ComponentName"
  This query fetches all tickets associated with a specific component, helping you to focus on issues within a particular area.
• Filter by Multiple Labels/Components:
  component IN ("ComponentName1", "ComponentName2")
  If you need to retrieve tickets tagged with more than one component, this query lists all relevant issues, making it easier to manage complex projects.
• Filter by Recent Updates:
  updated >= -7d
  This query pulls up all tickets updated in the last seven days, which is useful for tracking recent changes. You can apply this to any date-type field for flexibility.

You can also combine these basic filters to create more complex queries. For instance, if you want to find tickets related to a specific component and updated within the last seven days:

project = "Project Name" AND component = "YourComponent" AND updated >= -7d ORDER BY updated DESC

This query helps you stay on top of recent activity within a particular component of your project.

Roadmapping Made Easier

Once you’ve assigned components and labels to your tickets, managing your roadmap becomes significantly easier. Jira’s roadmapping tool allows you to organize your roadmap by team, project, or specific filters. This level of organization ensures that you can see the bigger picture while also diving into the details when necessary.

For example, by filtering your roadmap by component, you can track progress across different parts of your product and ensure that everything is aligned with your overall strategy. This approach not only helps in planning but also in communicating your plans to stakeholders and team members.

Conclusion

Using labels, components, and JQL querying effectively in Jira can transform how you manage your projects. These tools help you stay organized, improve your workflow, and ensure that nothing slips through the cracks. Additionally, by integrating these practices into your roadmapping, you can create a clear, actionable plan that guides your team to success.

By leveraging Jira in this way, you can enhance your product management capabilities, making it easier to manage complex projects and deliver high-quality products on time.

In my next post, I plan to dive deeper into automations and explore how we can make the best use of some of the Jira features I mentioned in this article.