JIRA Agile Interview Question Answers

Most of the people who has used JIRA for defect tracking purpose think that JIRA is just for logging defect and tracking them via defect life cycle. JIRA is a software provided byATLASSIAN, an Australian company. Before we go into the JIRA Agile Interview Question Answer, you must know few facts about them. It will surely help you to answer confusing interview question. If you have used JIRA in your project effectively, don’t waste your time reading this “JIRA Agile Interview Question Answers” blog.

  1. JIRA Software is #1 tool used by Agile teams. It is designed specifically keeping agile team in mind.
  2. JIRA can be hosted locally, in your organization's data center or in cloud.
  3. JIRA can not only do the defect tracking, but it is primarily for Agile work plan, tracking, release management & reporting

If want to explore all the feature and power of JIRA, read the JIRA Agile in 24 Hours & Scrum Master Interview Questions

You would see 5 different section having JIRA Agile interview questions with brief elaboration. I strongly suggest to bind these interview questions with experience to create your version of truth.

JIRA Software for Agile SCRUM Methodology

General Awareness -JIRA Agile Interview Question Answers

  • Your project is executed using Agile SCRUM. So what tool do you use for Agile SCRUM?
    • Certainly JIRA.
    • You can also answer JIRA Agile by Atlassian.
  • What is JIRA?
    • Some time the interviewer might be checking your awareness & your knowledge depth.
    • You are just an average user of tool or you know the power of tool and use it effectively.
  • Who creates user stories and how they are estimated?
    • Interviewer will mix the question to check your Agile knowledge
    • When you create a user story, you can assign a number 1,2,3,5,8 and they represent a relative size of work. They are not necessarily be convertible to hour scale but some team uses a range of 3-4 hours per user story. A small task can take 3 hours and a big user story last for 24 hours. 8 user story point may need further logical separation or sub-tasks.
    • You must know what and how it is done in your project and additional questions may arise from your answers.
  • What is the Project Key in JIRA?
    • When a project is created by JIRA Administrator, a project key is assigned.
    • It is a 3 or 4 character item which appears before every user story or bug in your JIRA project.
    • Administrator can configure the format and also change during project creation.
    • If you have used JIRA, you must have paid attention to this, if not, go and do it.
  • The JIRA version you are using is a organisation installation or cloud one?
    • you must check the URL or ask your administrator.
    • If the URL looks like mycompany.atlassian.net, it is a cloud subscription.
    • Else it is an enterprise or local deployment in your company's data center.
  • Can I create a sub task under a user story? Do you have any limit?
    • You can create as many as sub task and each task can be assigned to one person or many.
    • If I have to write a functionality and give it for peer review to other team member as part of process, then I can create 2 sub-tasks and assign respectively so when report comes up, it reflect the true picture of work progress.
  • Do you also give time estimation to sub task part of user story in JIRA?
    • It can be given but we don't do it. Or you can answer what you do but it is possible specify the expected hours
  • Your company has done any specific customization to JIRA implementation?
    • Many enterprises do some kind of customization to map their software development cycle and you must know that if so.
    • It is also possible that the interviewer may not know so be careful answering such question. there might be big difference in cloud version and enterprise configuration.
  • How do you know when a task is assigned to you?
    • When a task is assigned to me, I receive an email about it with changes done on it.
    • I also check the dashboard to review the task which are assigned to me.
  • Who defines the priority to a user story in your project and what does it mean to you?
    • Product Owner (or functional specialist) defined the feature priority.
    • If a feature is part of MVP (Minimal Viable Product) and it has a potential larger benefit for user community, it is tagged as high priority item and we act on first.
  • Have you ever used Linked Issues? and How?
    • When 2 issues (task or user stories etc) in JIRA are linked, means they have a relationship.
    • Each linked issue in JIRA has a definition like "blocked by", or "duplicate"
    • If you are writing a database procedure which need access to few tables and table access is a separate task, then you can link it. You can says that it is blocked by this issue.
    • When project is big and more than and number of owners are more, we get a situation where items are created twice in such cases you can link them and define as duplicate it.
    • When you are tracking bugs, it is possible that one bug can only be fixed after another bug, and you can link JIRA issues saying "blocks"
  • Do you have sprint-0 in your project?
    • Your project may have a sprint-0 but better read this detailed article
    • Many Agile projects, even a mature organisation has sprint 0, so be careful answering this questions.
    • If you are part of development team, then you must give your opinion and tell the truth what happens in your project.
  • Where do you give sprint goal & how do you know about it in JIRA tool?
    • Your project, if true agile, should have sprint planning where you create sprint backlog items. During that time you define sprint start/end dates and also give sprint goal.When we finish one sprint and create another one, we
    • Sprint Goal Objective Textbox </ul>
    • How do you use Affected version and fixed version?
      • If your project is developed from scratch, this might not be a useful feature, but for enhancement project or for product development, it is a useful item for tracking.
      • You registered or identified a issue in a particular release (assume 1.5) and you are planning to fix it in a future release then this can be used
      • JIRA allows you to record in which release this issue is logged and in which version the fix will be moved. You are free to change these values and also assign multiple values.
    • Why an issue can not be assigned to two people?
      • It can be assigned to two people but not at the same time. It is better to create sub task and then defined the linking between them.
      • In Agile, it is better to have separate small task and avoid a dependency which hampers the definition of done for one logical unit.
      • If a task is in pending mode due to intermediate task, then it will show an ageing issue and to avoid such scenario, JIRA does not allow one item to be assigned to more than one people at a time.

    JIRA Dashboard -JIRA Agile Interview Question Answers

    • Do you have any dashboard in your JIRA tool?
      • You must have a dashboard in your project and add necessary widget and answer this question accordingly.
      • Anybody can create dashboard and available widget can be added
    • What widget do you have in your dashboard?
    • Do you have velocity chart in your dashboard
      • Velocity chart is a report which you can see from report menu and can not be pulled in dashboard.
      • Velocity chart shows your velocity trend sprint over sprint and any spike can be instigated.
    • How do you share a dashboard with others in JIRA tool?
      • Whatever you created in JIRA whether dashboard or filters or any other objects, can be shared with other security groups or roles
      • Once it
    • How to copy a JIRA Dashboard?
      • On the right side of the dashboard, you would get menu and you can clone and make a copy.
      • Same thing can be done for other shared objects to create
      • Cloning is an easy productivity feature which saves time to rebuild the dashboard and just by changing parameters, you can customize for your other projects.
    Clone Agile Dashboard

    JIRA Reporting -JIRA Agile Interview Question Answers

    Agile JIRA Report Menu If you have not see or not used where the reporting menu comes, then follow the above picture. You can see the following reporting option
    1. Burndown chart - Most popular and widely used Agile Metrics.
    2. Epic Report
    3. Epic Burndown
    4. Version Report
    5. Release Burndown
    6. Velocity- Most popular and widely used Agile Metrics.
    7. Control Chart
    8. Cumulative Flow Diagram