How to Use JIRA and Confluence Outside of Development Teams (PDF file)
Virtual Presentation (recording)
Evan Golden of Isos Technologies led a discussion on how to use Atlassian Confluence and JIRA in Agile documentation projects. Promotional clothing and accessory items were also provided, courtesy of Isos Technologies.
Atlassian Confluence and JIRA
Evan Golden of ISOS Technology provided an overview of Atlassian technology, tailored specifically for this audience of technical communication professionals.
Participants emerged from Evan’s presentation and the ensuing Q&A session with many valuable takeaways, including:
- What is Confluence?
- Wiki-based team collaboration software
- Documentation repository and content management system
- Confluence is organized into:
- Spaces
- Pages
- Parent-child page relationships
- Why use Confluence?
- Move away from stand-alone document editing.
- Organize data and teams online.
- Collaborate, communicate, and share.
- Gain efficiency, productivity.
- Useful add-on components to augment Confluence functionality:
- Workflow
- Table filtering
- Graphics
- Many more
- What is JIRA?
- Anything routed through a process can be tracked in JIRA.
- Flexible, customizable issue types
- Issue types routable to workflows
- JIRA is structured into:
- Project Categories
- Projects (containers of issues) with Components and Versions
- Issues (processes that track something) with Issue Types
- Sub-Tasks (children of parent Issues)
- There are 3 flavors of JIRA that are targeted for:
- Business teams
- Software teams
- Help desk teams
- JIRA is easy and highly intuitive to learn.
- Enables anyone to report on anything, without development skills.
- Documentation for JIRA is “phenomenal.”
- Anything routed through a process can be tracked in JIRA.
- Confluence and JIRA together:
- Confluence and JIRA are highly integrated.
- Confluence acts as the knowledge base, JIRA acts as the service desk.
- Manage versions in Confluence; report on deliverables in JIRA.
- Create and track JIRA issues from Confluence.
- Route for approvals in Confluence or in JIRA.
- Benefits of JIRA and Confluence for communications professionals:
- Collaboratively work on documents in Confluence.
- Benefit from easy document formatting and rich text editing.
- Include content from many pages within one page.
- Leverage add-on components.
- Easily search for materials.
- Easily interface with other departments.
Key takeaways from the session
Recommended approach for new Atlassian adopters: Begin with trials of the free cloud versions of the tools. Then, incrementally build up license tiers with small teams. This may be contrasted with with an enterprise cutover approach.
JIRA is sometimes viewed as an “everything tool”. However, it is not intended for use as a documentation repository, because it does not function as a rich-text searchable editor. Confluence is the correct tool for that purpose.
A good rule-of-thumb to remember is, “Document with Confluence. Report and track with JIRA.”
Meeting Recap
A total of 24 people attended the meeting, 4 of whom attended remotely via Adobe Connect. In-person attendees networked and enjoyed a buffet of deli meats, cheeses, and condiments from Milton’s Delicatessen, accompanied by fruit, dessert, and drinks from Costco.
President Alice Brzovic led the business portion of the meeting, which included 30-second elevator pitches from each of the attendees. Job seekers and employers were called upon to identify themselves to the group, resulting in several productive connections during the formal and casual networking activity that followed.
Alice then presented Immediate Past President DJ Towne with the San Diego Distinguished Chapter Service Award (DCSA) for 2016. The DCSA recognizes the hard work and commitment of STC’s community leaders, and represents the highest level of recognition that a member can receive for service to their community.
DJ Towne has been involved with the STC San Diego council for more than 6 years, serving as V.P. of Employment, V.P. of Finance (now Treasurer), as well as President. She holds a B.S. degree in Management Information Systems from SDSU. DJ has been a technical writer for about 9 years, but also has a broad background in IT, having worked in quality assurance, customer implementations and knowledge-based technical support. In the application to nominate DJ for the DCSA, Alice Brzovic wrote:
DJ Towne has been a cornerstone of STC San Diego since 2008. She has served as VP of Employment, Treasurer, President, and Immediate Past President. Without her steadfastness and guidance, our chapter would no longer exist. Because of her efforts, we have a strong future. I can’t think of anyone else who is more deserving of the Distinguished Chapter Service Award (DCSA) than DJ Towne.
Meeting Resources
How to Use JIRA and Confluence Outside of Development Teams (PDF file)