Getting familiarized with the Atlassian
I started using Atlassian products, Confluence and Jira because I found colleagues in my newly joined company use it. I signed up and navigated our organization's previously published and shared confluence space and Jira projects. Navigating those pages and Kanbahn boards in the various projects have given me ideas like what it is for and how I can use this platform for my work.
These are collaborating tools intended to reduce the silo in an organization and make a team more efficient. I had no idea that such kind of a cloud service existed.
Previously, I collaborated with my colleagues using dropbox. Confluence provides another layer of an interface to integrate services like dropbox. The ability to create a project base or team Space sounds exciting, especially with many customizable 'action items.' Moreover, there is a 'blog' option with each Space. One can create as many Spaces as they like and, under Space, as many Pages as needed.
Jira is a comprehensive project management tool that is widely used by software development teams. But I have not heard anyone from biology/medicine background mentioned it to me. It offers a range of features and functionality, including agile tools and reporting and analytics capabilities, and is highly customizable to fit the needs of not only technical people’s needs but any team, including researchers. While some users may find the learning curve steep at first, overall Jira has a user-friendly interface and is generally well-regarded in terms of user experience.
So, how did I learn to use these tools?
The followings were my steps to get to know this platform:
Explore
Get an intuitive understanding of the environment
Search for an organized tutorial
Finish the tutorial
Use it for my purpose
Hands-on training course:
While I was trying to get my head around this Confluence Cloud site, I also searched for a quick tutorial to understand its use of it in a systematic way. And I found a hands-on training on Coursera showing how to set up a project site and Space in Confluence.
The course was a recorded demonstration of creating Space and Pages for various purposes. Some key features and settings which might be useful when customizing its use for your purpose. It took me approximately 2 hours to finish the course.
In the course, you-
Create your Confluence site and learn about the types of spaces you can create in Confluence.
Create a Team Space in Confluence.
Tailor the Team Space by adding a page from a template and using the page menu in Confluence.
The course provided access to a real-time side-by-side log-in option to repeat the work they showed. In the end, there is a quiz where you must answer 80% of the question correctly to earn the certificate.
Short Course on Confluence
The enclosed certificate is the one I received after finishing the course.
Agile with Atlassian Jira
Agile with Jira
The course is well-structured, with each lesson building upon the previous one to give a comprehensive overview of Agile methodologies and how to use Atlassian Jira to manage Agile projects effectively.
One of the things I appreciated most about the course was the practical focus. The instructor provided numerous hands-on exercises and real-world examples to illustrate the concepts being taught, which helped me to better understand how to apply the material in my work.
Overall, I highly recommend the "Agile with Atlassian Jira" course to anyone looking to gain a solid understanding of Agile principles and how to use Atlassian Jira to manage Agile projects effectively.