JIRA Interview Questions & Answers

Following are frequently asked JIRA testing interview questions in for freshers as well as experienced QA professionals.

1) What is JIRA?

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. It is widely used in software development and software testing.

2) What is a workflow?

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 Atlassian JIRA?

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?

It integrates with source control programs such as CVS, Git, Subversion, ClearCase, Visual SourceSafe, Mercurial, and Perforce.

5) Why use JIRA software?

The reason behind using JIRA is

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

6) Is it possible to access JIRA cloud site via a mobile device?

Yes, it is possible to access 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?

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 labeling and linking issue in JIRA

• 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.
• LinkingIssue: This feature enables you to link an association between two issues on either on the same or different JIRA servers.

9)  Name the types of reports generated in JIRA

JIRA offer reports that show statistics for projects, versions, people or other fields within issues.  Various reports included with JIRA are

• 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) What is Cloning an Issue?

Cloning as 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) What are the things not included in cloned issue in JIRA?

• Time tracking
• Issue History
• Comments

12) What is the use of "Move Issue" wizard in JIRA?

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 custom 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 security setting helpful in JIRA?

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) How can you share an issue with other users in JIRA?

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) How you can modify multiple bulk issues?

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) How you can disable mail notification for Bulk Operations?

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?

Issue change history includes

• Deletion of a comment
• Deletion of a work log
• Creation or removal of an issue link
• Attachment of a file
• Changes to an issue field

18) Explain what does the three color indicates tracking times or duration for an issue?

Three colors will be displayed representing the amount of time spent behind the issue

• Original Estimate (Blue): The amount of time estimated initially 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) What are some of the popular add-ons for JIRA?

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) What is Schemes in JIRA?

Schemes are a major part of 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 are a total of seven types of schemes.

21) What can be configured for the JIRA project and issue type?

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) Is it possible to get back up your JIRA cloud data?

In JIRA, you can take a backup of your JIRA cloud data using Backup Manager.  But only one backup file is stored at a time. The existing backup is overwritten by new ones.

23) What data can be backed up?

The backup data includes,

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

24) Give some useful tips on JIRA Workflow

• 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) What are the limitations when editing an active workflow?

• 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 JIRA workflow, is it possible to transition an issue back to its previous status?

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 prior status. Here are the steps,

• In a workflow, Create a global transition to the ‘On Hold’ state.
• 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) What is the role of Validators in JIRA?

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) What types of Post functions are carried out after the transition is executed?

Types of Post functions carried out after 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?

The events are classified in 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?

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?

For an Agile project to create user stories in JIRA, follow below steps.

• Issue type -Epic and Issue type – Story linked to it. In order to do so, in the ‘Create Issue’ page, go to “Configure Fields” and select “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) What is an “issue collector”?

An “issue collector” enables you to easily embed a JIRA feedback form into your own web site. This helps website visitors to log issues into JIRA through our website.  To use JIRA feedback form, visitors to our website do not need a user account in JIRA.

33)  State 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 Project.
Bugzilla’s has a powerful advanced search option	JIRA lacks advance-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 which 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 to link an issue to any other entity outside JIRA.

34) How you can modify multiple bulk issues?

You can modify multiple bulk issues by using option “Bulk Change” option.

35) What is JIRA dashboard?

JIRA dashboard is a dashboard which you will see when you opens up Jira.

JIRA Tutorial: A Complete Guide for Beginners

What is JIRA?

JIRA is a tool developed by Australian Company Atlassian. It is used for bug tracking, issue tracking, and project management. The name "JIRA" is actually inherited from the Japanese word "Gojira" which means "Godzilla".

The basic use of this tool is to track issue and bugs related to your software and Mobile apps. It is also used for project management. The JIRA dashboard consists of many useful functions and features which make handling of issues easy. Some of the key features are listed below. Let's learn JIRA Defect and Project tracking software with this Training Course.

In this tutorial, you will learn-

1. JIRA Scheme
2. JIRA Issues and Issue types
• What is JIRA Issue?
• Issue Types
3. JIRA Components
4. JIRA screen
5. Issue Attributes
6. Issue Security Schemes
• System Administration
7. How to create an issue in JIRA
• Sub-Task
• WorkFlows
• Plug-ins in JIRA
• JIRA Agile
• Creating issue in Agile
• How to create an Epic in Agile
• Use of Clone and Link in JIRA
8. Reports in JIRA
• Kanban Board and Managing issues
• JIRA Scrum Vs JIRA Kanban

JIRA Scheme

Inside JIRA scheme, everything can be configured, and it consists of

• Workflows
• Issue Types
• Custom Fields
• Screens
• Field Configuration
• Notification
• Permissions

JIRA Issues and Issue types

This section will guide you through JIRA Issue and its types.  

What is JIRA Issue?

JIRA issue would track bug or issue that underlies the project. Once you have imported project then you can create issues.     

Under Issues, you will find other useful features like

• Issue Types
• Workflow's
• Screens
• Fields
• Issue Attributes

Let see JIRA Issue in detail

Issue Types

Issue Type displays all types of items that can be created and tracked via JIRA. JIRA Issues are classified under various forms like new feature, sub-task, bug, etc. as shown in the screen shot.

There are two types of Issue types schemes in JIRA, one is

• Default Issue Type Scheme: In default issue type scheme all newly created issues will be added automatically to this scheme
• Agile Scrum Issue Type Scheme: Issues and project associated with Agile Scrum will use this scheme

  

Apart from these two issue type schemes, you can also add schemes manually as per requirement, for example we have created IT & Support scheme, for these we will drag and drop the issue types from the Available Issue type to Issue type for current scheme as shown in the screen shot below

  

JIRA Components

Components are sub-sections of a project; they are used to group issues within a project into smaller parts. Components add some structures to the projects, breaking it up into features, teams, modules, subprojects and more. Using components you can generate reports, collect statistics, and display it on dashboards and so on.

To add new components, as shown in the above screen you can add name, description, component lead and default assignee.

JIRA screen

When issue is created in JIRA, it will be arranged and represented into different fields, this display of field in JIRA is known as a screen. This field can be transitioned and edited through workflow. For each issue, you can assign the screen type as shown in the screen-shot. To add or associate an issue operation with a screen you have to go in main menu and click on Issues then click on Screen Schemes and then click on "Associate an issue operation with a screen" and add the screen according to the requirement.

Issue Attributes

Issue Attributes encompasses

• Statuses
• Resolutions
• Priorities

Statuses: Different statuses are used to indicate the progress of a project like To do, InProgress, Open, Closed, ReOpened, and Resolved. Likewise, you have resolutions and priorities, in resolution it again tells about the progress of issue like Fixed, Won't fix, Duplicate, Incomplete, Cannot reproduce, Done also you can set the priorities of the issue whether an issue is critical, major, minor, blocker and Trivial.

Issue Security Schemes

This function in JIRA allows you to control who can view the issues. It consists of a number of security levels which can have users or groups assigned to them. You can specify the level of security for the issues while creating or editing an issue.

Similarly, there is a Default Permission Scheme any new project that are created will be assigned to this scheme. Permission Schemes allow you to create a set of permissions and apply this set of permission to any project.

System Administration

Some of the useful features that JIRA admin provides to users are:

• Audit Log
  Under Audit Log, you can view all the details about the issue created, and the changes made in the issues.
• Issue Linking
  This will show whether your issues link with any other issue that is already present or created in the project also you can de-activate Issue linking from the panel itself
• Mail in JIRA
  Using Mail system in admin you can mail issues to an account on a POP or IMAP mail server or messages written to the file system generated by an external mail service.
• Events
  An event describes the status, the default template and the notification scheme and workflow transition post function associations for the event. The events are classified in two a System event (JIRA defined events) and Custom event (User defined events).
• Watch list
  JIRA allows you to watch a particular issue, which tells you about the notifications of any updates relating to that issue. To watch an issue, click on the word "watch" in the issue window, and if you want to see who is watching your issues, you have to click on the number in brackets.
• Issue Collectors
  In the form of JIRA issues, an issue collector allows you to gather feedback on any website. In administration if you click on Issue collectors an option will open asking Add Issue Collector. Once you have configured the look and feel of an Issue Collector, embed the generated JavaScript in any website for feedback.
• Development Tools
  You can also connect your Software development tools to JIRA using this admin function. You have to enter the URL of the application to connect with JIRA.

How to create an issue in JIRA

JIRA Dashboard will open when you enter your user ID and password. Under JIRA dashboard you will find option Project, when you click on it, it will open a window that list out options like Simple Issue Tracking, Project Management, Agile Kanban, Jira Classic and so on as shown in screen shot below.

  

When you click on option Simple Issue Tracking, another window will open, where you can mention all the details about the issue and also assign the issue to the responsible person.

When you click on "Submit" button, a window will open where you can perform a list of work like creating issues, assigning issues, check the status of issues like- resolved, In-Progress or closed and so on.

Once the issue is created a pop-up will appear on your screen saying your issue is created successfully as shown in the screen shot below

Now if you want to edit an issue or you want to export the issue to XML or Word document, then you can hover your mouse on main panel and click on Issues. Under Issues options click on search for issues that will open a window from where you can locate your issues and perform multiple functions.

When you select the "search for Issues" under Issues, a window will appear as shown in the screen shot

1. Search for issues option will bring you to a window where you can see the issues created by you like here we have issues ST1 and ST2
2. Here in the screen shot you can see the issue "Bug detected while User Acceptance Testing" and all the details related to it. From here, you can perform multiple tasks like you can stop the progress on issues, edit the issues, comment on the issues, assigning issues and so on
3. Even you can export issue details to a XML or Word document.
4. Also, you can view activity going on the issue, reviews on the issue, work log, history of the issue and so on.
5. Under the time tracking option, you can even see the estimation time to resolve the issues

In the same window, you can set a filter for the issue and save them under Favorite Filters, so when you want to search or view a particular issue you can locate it using the filter.

To view the summary of the issue, you can click on options summary, this will open a window which will show all the details of your project and progress on this chart. On the right-hand side of the summary window, there is an Activity Stream which gives the details about the issues and comments made by the assignee on the issue.

Sub-Task

Subtask issues are useful for splitting up a parent issue into a number of smaller tasks that can be assigned and tracked separately. It addresses issues more comprehensively and segregates the task into smaller chunks of task to do.

How to create Sub-Task

Sub-Task can be created in two ways

• Create sub-task under parent issue
• Creating an issue into a sub-task

To create sub-task in JIRA, you have to select an issue in which you want to assign the sub-task. Under the issue window, click on Assign more option, and then click on create sub-task as shown in the screenshot below. You can also select convert to sub-task under same tab to convert the parent issue into a sub-task.

Once you click on Create Sub-Task, a window will pop up to add sub-task issue. Fill up the details about the sub-task and click on Create as shown in below screen-shot, and this will create sub-task for the parent issue.

It will create a sub-task under parent issues, and details will appear about when to complete the task on the issue type page as shown in the screenshot below. If you would like to add more sub-task, you can click on the plus (+) sign on the corner of the sub-task panel. Likewise, if you want to note down the time spent on the present task, click on (+) plus sign in the corner of the time tracking and put down the details in the log sheet.

Some important points to remember while creating Sub-Task

• You can have as many sub-task as needed under an Issue
• You cannot have a sub-task for a sub-task
• Once a sub-task is created under a parent, parent cannot be converted into a sub-task
• A sub-task can however be converted into a parent issue
• You can work on your sub-task without having navigating away from the parent issue

WorkFlows

A JIRA workflow is a set of statuses and transitions that an issue goes through during its lifecycle. JIRA workflow encompasses five main stages once the issue is created.

• Open Issue
• Resolved Issue
• InProgress Issue
• ReOpened Issue
• Close Issue

 

While workflow in JIRA comprises of Statuses, assignee, resolution, conditions, validators, post-function's and properties

• Statuses: It represents the positions of the issues within a workflow
• Transitions: Transitions are the bridges between statuses, the way a particular issue moves from one status to another
• Assignee: The assignee dictates the responsible party for any given issue and determines how the task would be executed
• Resolution: It explains why an issue transitions from an open status to a closed one
• Conditions: Conditions control who can perform a transition
• Validators: It can ensure that the transition can happen given the state of the issue
• Properties: JIRA recognizes some properties on transitions

You can assign the status of the issue from the window itself, when you click on the check box for IN Progress status as shown in screen shot below, it will reflect the status in the issue panel highlighted in yellow.

For the issue that we have created, JIRA will present a workflow which maps the progress of the project. As shown in screenshot whatever status that we have set in the Issue panel it will be reflected in Workflow chart, here we have set the issue status in "In Progress" and same status is updated in the workflow, highlighted in yellow. Workflow can give a quick overview of the work under process.

Plug-ins in JIRA

There are plug-ins available for JIRA to work more effectively, some of these plugins are Zendesk, Salesforce, GitHub, Gitbucket and so on. Some of them enables support team to report issues directly into JIRA, creates unlimited private repositories with full featured issue and test management support, etc.

JIRA Agile

Agile or Scrum method is generally used by development teams who follows a roadmap of planned features for upcoming versions of their product. Agile follows the same roadmaps to track their issues as in other JIRA methods To do -> In Progress -> Done , as shown in the screen shot below, we have one issue in To do and the second issue in In Progress. Once the issue in In Progress will be resolved, it will move to Done status and in the same way the issue in To do will move to the next stage In Progress.

Creating issue in Agile

To create agile issue, go to main menu under Agile tab, click on "Getting Started", when you click on it, it will ask to create new board for the issues for Scrum or Kanban. You can choose your option as per your requirement, here we have selected Scrum method.

How to create an Epic in Agile

In JIRA Agile, an epic is simply an issue type. The epic captures a large body of work. It is a large user story which can be broken down into a number of small stories. To complete an epic, it may take several sprints. You can either create a new epic in agile or either use the issue you have created in normal JIRA board. Likewise, you can also create a story for agile scrum.

Plan Mode in Agile:

Plan mode displays all the user stories created for the project. You can use the left-hand side menu to decide the basis on which the issues need to be displayed. While on the right-hand side menu clicking on the issue, you can create subtasks, logwork, etc.

Work Mode in Agile

It will display the active sprint information. All the issues or users stories will be displayed into three categories as shown in the screen shot below To do, In Progress and Done to show the progress of the project or issues.

Use of Clone and Link in JIRA

In JIRA, you can also clone the issue, one advantage of cloning an issue is that the different team can work separately on the issue and resolve the issue quickly.

There is another useful function is JIRA Link, Issue linking allows you to create an association between two existing issues on either the same or different JIRA servers. As shown in the screen shot, we have linked the current issue "ST-6 Drop down menu is not working" with another issue " ST-4 GUI is not responsive- retest GUI functions".

Like here we have set sprint for 1 day and it will run sprint for that specific time period as shown in the screenshot below. If you are working with scrum, and want to prioritize the issue or rank the issue then you just have to simply drag and drop the issue into the backlog.

Apart from this there are multiple task that you can do, for instance if you click on the right side corner of the window a list of function will pop up which you can use it as per your need.

Reports in JIRA

To track the progress in Agile, a Burndown Chart shows the actual and estimated amount of work to be done in the sprint. A typical burndown chart will look somewhat like this, where the red line indicates the actual task remaining while the blue line indicates ideal task remaining during the scrum cycle.

Apart from Burn down chart there are other options available in JIRA like Sprint Report, Epic Report, Version Report, Velocity Chart, Control Chart, Cumulative flow diagram. You can also use different chart option to represent the progress of your project.

Like here in the screen shot above, we have selected a pie chart for issue priorities. It will generate a Pie Chart representing the priorities and severity of the issues in percentage for the whole project as shown below. You can view the pie chart from different perspectives like Assignee, Components, Issue Type, Priority, Resolution, and Status and so on.

You can also configure how you want to see the scrum board. Scrum board gives various options through which you can make changes into your board appearance. Various features you can configure using scrum are Columns, Swimlanes, Quick Filters, Card colors and so on. Here we have selected column management, and selected the options Issue count, and it will show the total number of issue in progress, to do or done. In column management, we can add an additional column as per our requirement likewise there are different features that you can configure in board.

Filters

You can also set filters other than default filters to filter the issues. The filters that you can use are date, component, priority, resolution and so on.

Kanban Board and Managing issues

Like Agile Scrum board, we can also create a Kanban Board, here we have created a project name Cloud Testing. Kanban board is useful for the team that managing and constraining their work in progress. Kanban boards are visible in Work mode but not in Plan mode.

Here we have created an issue " Bug detected while load testing" and "Check issues related to cloud server" in Kanban Board as shown in the screenshot below, it also shows their status as well highlighted in red.

Kanban is considered as the best methodology for bug fixing and maintenance release, where incoming task is prioritized and then worked accordingly. There are few measures which can make Kanban more efficient.

1. Visualize your workflow
2. Limit the work in progress
3. Work on Issues
4. Measure the cycle time

JIRA Scrum vs. JIRA Kanban

Scrum	Kanban
Reports Burndown Chart: The chart shows all the changes and scope changed while the sprint is still on, other charts include Sprint Report, Velocity Chart, Epic Report, etc.	Reports Control Chart: It allows you to measure the cycle time for issues, showing the mean time and actual time taken to complete issues
Agile Board It allows the team to see the progress of sprints. This is the work mode, where you can see the board itself broken down into different statuses.	Constraints Team can decide whether to increase or decrease the number of issues that should be displayed in each status.
Backlog This is where team will plan sprints and estimate stories that will go into each sprint	Workflow You can map columns to the statuses of your workflow. Simply by adding or removing columns the workflow can be changed when required.